From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Sat Mar 09 2002 - 06:24:42 MST
Eugene Leitl wrote:
>
> On Sat, 9 Mar 2002, Damien Broderick wrote:
>
> > At 09:26 PM 3/8/02 -0800, Spike wrote:
> > >
> > > Since arctan x = x - x**3/3 + x**5/5 - x**7/7 - ...
> > >
> > > pi/4 = 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 ...
> >
> > In our world. But if 2 pi radians is defined = 360 degrees, what happens
> > when a circle has more or fewer than 360 degrees, due to space curvature? I
> > have the feeling that by invoking the arctan function you're being, as it
> > were, circular here.
>
> Do you think that's math you're thinking?
That was probably one of the deepest jokes ever made on the Extropians
list. I just wanted to repost it with Damien Broderick's context, since I
had to dig back through the messages to get this.
-- -- -- -- --
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://singinst.org/
Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
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