Submitted 1 year ago by gogosempai@programming.dev to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Explanation: Random walk in 2D has a unity probability of making it back to the starting point as the number of steps approach infinity but random walk in 3D only has ~0.34.
Gravity gives up and down a lack of symmetry that left and right maintain. A drunk bird is more likely to fall than fly to the moon.
Also, in materials science, randomly walking atoms (Brownian motion) in a crystal structure displace roughly at, if I recall, the square root of their velocity, on average.
But a drunk bird will start from the ground, and probably end on the ground, which collapses its random walk back to a 2d plane
I don’t think that changes it actually. Even if the drunk guy lives on a floor that’s high up, he didn’t fly to get there, so there is some combo of random walking and moving that gets him back there. Like walking into an elevator that happens to be on the ground floor, and also happens to be going up to the right floor at that time. Or walking to the base of a staircase, and (50/50) randomly going up it. It definitely isn’t technically a 2d plane anymore, but there are still a finite number of 2d planes that he could be trying to get to ( the highest floor on the building with the most floors).
Youre telling me people aren’t actually entirely 2 dimensional?? No way captain obvious, next thing youre gonna say is that knock knock doors are factually incorrect because no one is actually knocking on a door
Tbh your lack of understanding the inperfection of mathematical models is the only stupid as fuck thing here
It’s a “shower thought” lol, not a research paper. Take it as a meme on random walk, which is always explained in universities using the example of a drunk guy so much so that it’s also known as “drunkard’s walk”. Should’ve posted this in a science/physics meme community, my bad.
usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I don’t think a drunk bird can fly
foggy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not with that attitude.
Sylver@lemmy.world 1 year ago
More like ALTITUDE amiright lmao xD