this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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No Stupid Questions

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There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!

Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.


Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!


Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice ๐Ÿ‰.


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[โ€“] dom@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

The question still has to make sense to get an answer....

[โ€“] howrar@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

I think you're looking for epistemology?

[โ€“] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Proof by induction was one of the coolest "how to prove things" lessons I'd learned in math. To prove something works for every natural number (so in effect any thing or formula you can count discretely, and start from somewhere going to infinity), you prove the initial case, then you prove that it works for the (n+1)th case under the assumption it is true under the nth case. Only two steps!

[โ€“] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How do you extend that outside mathematics?

Like say I have a hunch about something. How do I formalize that in basically any domain?

[โ€“] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

The first thing is you need a way to prove the initial case, and in real-world domains it may be harder to do so axiomatically. Then you need to be able to find a way to generalize it in a discrete (countable) manner.

[โ€“] shweddy@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Are you asking for proof of proof?

[โ€“] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

The what

Like evidence as a general topic?

[โ€“] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yes. What treatise helps best etablish the concept of evidence as a universal concept

[โ€“] adespoton@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is it a universal concept?

[โ€“] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[โ€“] adespoton@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Do you have evidence to back that up?

If I did we wouldnt be having this convo ๐Ÿ˜‚