this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2024
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Memes

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[–] [email protected] 167 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Low IQ: it's not a straight line

Medium IQ: it's a geodesic on a sphere, so it is a straight line

High IQ: it's not a straight line

[–] [email protected] 89 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

He's right, you know.

About the line?

About everything, damn it!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's a straight line through non-euclidean space

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

unfortunately in reality it is a curved line on a sphere

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago (3 children)

In actual reality there would be wind and water currents diverting any ship sailing that route from the depicted "line" anyway so the whole argument is pointless

The only straight line paths in the universe are followed by electrostatically uncharged non-accelerating objects in free fall in a vacuum. Or massless particles.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

What if we assume the ship is actually a spherical cow

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Nuh uh. My fifth grade math teacher told me that if I drew a line with an arrow on graph paper and no other line intersected it, that it would continue on into infinity!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Whole Universe eh? That exists and is bounded on a curved space time.

I'm just joking, but you can really take this to the extreme lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

Spacetime is curved. Inertial paths through spacetime are straight.

Euclidean space is not the only space where straight lines are possible.