Vagabond

I lost my dad to cancer about two week before last Christmas. And my birthday is a few days after Christmas as well. I’ll be damned if I ever feel like celebrating Christmas or my birthday ever again

It really bugs me that someone highlighted and circled this as if they found this ironic error when it was written as a joke headline in the first place and it went clear over their head. The equivalent of red circles and arrows on thumbnails

Ah sorry just realized what you were saying. I’ve never been taught that. Maybe it’s just a difference in teaching styles, but it shouldn’t be since it can actually change the outcome. The way I was always taught was if you see a number butted up against an expression in parentheses you assume there is a multiplication symbol there.

So you were taught that 2(2+2) == (2(2+2))
I was taught 2(2+2)==2*(2+2)

Interesting difference though because again, assuming invisible parentheses can really change up how a problem is done.

Edit: looks like theshatterstone54’s comment assumed a multiplication symbol as well.

Not quite. It’s true you resolve what’s inside the parentheses first, giving you. 8÷2(4) or 8÷2x4.
Now this is what gets most people. Even though Multiplication technically comes before Division the Acronym PEMDAS, that’s really just to make it sound correct phonetically. Really they have equal priority in the order of operations and the appropriate way to resolve the problem is to work from left to right solving each multiplication or division sign as you encounter them. Giving you 16. Same for addition and subtraction.

So basically the true order of operations is:

1. Work left to right solving anything inside parentheses
2. Work left to right solving any exponentials
3. Work left to right solving any multiplication or division
4. Work left to right solving any addition or subtraction

Source: Mechanical Engineering degree so an unfortunate amount of my life spent in math and physics classes.

8÷2(2+2) comes out to 16, not 1.

Saw it posted on Instagram or Facebook or somewhere and all of the top comments were saying 1. Any comment saying 16 had tons of comments ironically telling that person to go back to first grade and calling them stupid.

Albatross and Nautilus. Not really sure why, just like the sound of the words and the nautical theme. I still have 2 or 3 laying around unnamed because I haven’t thought of any good words that fit the theme

He sure did! And yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt about his beliefs. If everything is decided already, then there’s no point in having any motivation to do anything because it won’t matter. Your destination is decided no matter what, so just do whatever you want regardless of if it’s morally just or not.

It sounds like you know more than this about me so correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is there’s a difference between just plain omniscience (which sounds like what you’re describing in your comment, and is pretty widely accepted among Christian denominations) and actual predestination (which to my understanding is almost exclusively a Calvinist belief).

I had a teacher in school who believed in predestination. Basically, whether you go to heaven or hell is pre-ordained before your even born and there’s nothing you can do to change it. I told him that sounded to me like I should be a Satanist because if I’m predestined for heaven I’ve worshipped Satan all my life for nothing and I get to chill in heaven. If I’m predestined to go to hell I’ve spent so much time worshipping Satan it probably won’t be too bad. I’m personally not really religious myself but I really was dumbfounded at the whole predestination thing.