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hermitdev

https://imgur.com/iU7oc8d

Theories are not laws; only takes one counter-example to disprove them.

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Is this a joke? The four color theorem is a proven theorem and not some crackpot theory.

https://i.imgur.com/m3Ruasq.png

You didn't even try it, did you? Took 10 seconds.

https://imgur.com/a/1sdJ6

I love that OP was at least willing to provide an example of a planar map that he believed could not be 4-colored. Credit for sticking his neck out.

Red, blue, yellow, green. And white. That's five colors! ;-)

This is like a textbook case of the Dunning-Kruger effect

I'm really glad I'm almost never this cocksure of myself. I can't imagine the embarrassment.

There's a difference between a "theory" (in popular usage) and a "theorem" (in a field like mathematics).

A theory is a hypothesis. It's a plausible-but-unproven guess.

A theorem is a fact which is known because it has been proven.

I would correct that, for physics at least -- "theory" is just an explanation for something. "Law" is an experimental observation that holds true, but doesn't provide an explanation. E.g. Newton's laws describe macroscopic non-relativistic motion pretty well, but do not explain motion. The theory of relativity, on the other hand, explains the description of a bunch of physical phenomena, and also has lots of evidence behind it.

Just to be clear: "theory" has a lot of different meanings, depending on the context. It can mean "hypothesis", but I can think of at least three other meanings, with example phrases: "Marxist theory"[1], "the theory of evolution"[2], "group theory"[3]...

As you're probably aware, this confusing patchwork of similar and overlapping yet distinct meanings is ripe for abuse: it's what allows people to get away with saying things like "evolution is just a theory".

[1] Here it means "the collective body of work of some school of thought".

[2] "A widely-accepted, well-tested scientific explanation for a phenomenon".

[3] "A subfield of mathematics; the set of definitions, theorems, and techniques related to a particular type of abstract object" (in this case, groups).

Yeah, the word "theory" is heavily overloaded and I wanted to keep it snappy so I just specified "general usage" and "in mathematics" to try and keep it on track. :)

Theories are not laws; only takes one counter-example to disprove them

I agree, apparently it only took a couple of minutes in mspaint to disprove yours :)

On a serious note, what hermitdev did we've probably all done at some point in our past, especially in our youth (disparaging long-standing theories about life, science, philosophy, etc.), no need to be mean.

Few times this leads to groundbreaking revelations that help humanity progress, but most times it leads to the embarrassing conclusion that past generations were not idiots.

When I was in high school I was convinced I could trisect an angle using compass and straightedge, and I told my math teacher so. He just smiled and said "Prove it."

He was a good guy. Took me several days to finally understand my mistake, but afterward I had a much better understanding of the problem

So put your money where your mouth is. How much are you willing to wager?

there are more than 7 billion people in the world. every 4.2 seconds, we collectively live more than 100 years. there's a lot of clever-thinking time in a day, it's always nice to keep that in mind

I guess that's technically true, since 931 years is more than 100 years.

yeah, sorry, that was a typo, it's 1000, not 100. I calculated it a while ago. now population estimations are around 7.61 billions, which is around 1014 years every 4.2 seconds. it's an impressive amount of time

upboated for providing a pic. Thanks man but sorry man.

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