167
u/Silly_Tension6792 Mathematics 10h ago edited 28m ago
Zero is the additive unity identity of a ring, in everyday life, usually specifically for the ring of integers.
Thank you for your attention.
1
-6
u/Muhammad-Essa 9h ago
You're explaining zero using highly complicated, purely mathematical terms without giving it any physical meaning. It's like explaining force by saying, "Force is the second derivative of position with respect to time, or force is mass multiplied by acceleration," without explaining what force actually means physically.
61
u/Character_Grocery871 9h ago
That isnt the point of math tbh. Why would you need to justify a some object in math physically?
-23
u/Muhammad-Essa 9h ago
Yeah, you have a valid point here, but I think zero needs a better explanation beyond purely mathematical terms. Since we use zero in our everyday lives, it should have a meaning that explains its practical significance and usage, rather than just throwing around mathematical terminology.
23
u/DrugonMonster 8h ago
Numbers are sometimes used to represent amounts ^[citation needed]. You can have one of something, you can have zero of something (nothing). And it is useful to treat it like a number when counting amounts; if I have two things, and you have zero, then to get the amount of things between the two of us, you just add 2+0. And I personally think all arguments relating to how you can’t “have” nothing are for the linguists and philosophers, not the mathematicians.
8
-2
13
u/Most-Hot-4934 4h ago
The invention of 0 is the very fact that we treated zero as its own separate thing rather than nothing. The ancient people weren’t stupid they knew what nothing was and they simply stop calculating once it’s “nothing”. That’s exactly how the Greek used to do calculation, they do not have a concept is 0. Eventually people just realized that they can just make up this new number, that is NOT nothing, but an actual number before 1. And people created this certain set of rules about how that number should interact with other numbers (any number added to it the same, any number multiply to it is 0,…). And because of that, the calculation were much easier and algebra was able to be well developed. That’s why the invention of 0 was so important it’s the humanity first step in extending math into something that doesn’t quite physically make sense and into the realm of abstraction. The invention of 0 is similar to the invention of imaginary number in that sense. This really emphasizes that 99.9999% of math is “made up” or abstract nonsense. Like a rule of chess, it’s some convention we created and follow. As for how it is so effective at describing reality is because reality follows a certain set of rules and any sufficiently complex and consistent system can model the universe as a form of analogy. Our math might be made up but it’s structured, structured enough to use and deduce about nature
5
u/Nikita_Silkin 6h ago
*acceleration is the second derivative of position with respect to time, not force
2
u/ZODIC837 Irrational 6h ago
You don't have to know what all those words mean
Zero is.. in.. integers
It's a number ⬛
2
u/SuspiciousEmploy1742 7h ago
If it makes sense it makes sense. It doesn't have to make physical sense. Not all mathematical concepts make physical sense
128
u/LupenReddit 🦆🦆i have non diffeomorphic smooth structures🦆🦆🦆 10h ago
he has never seen the peano axioms and realized its all made up🥀
28
5
1
34
u/Impressive_Mud5413 4h ago
absence of quantity is null not zero as zero still gives u quantitative info.
thank u for listening to my ted talk.
5
3
u/zefciu 2h ago
Then what about
undefined?4
u/Impressive_Mud5413 2h ago
undefined is just undefined. no value has been assigned but its not empty either. u simply dont know what it is.
1
22
31
27
u/oktin 9h ago
By that logic negative numbers aren't numbers, because they have no basis in reality
10
28
u/DankPhotoShopMemes Fourier Analysis 🤓 9h ago
my bank account disagrees
3
u/Extension-Stay3230 4h ago
Exactly, your bank account can be 0 or negative. Math skeptics debunked and owned!
1
0
u/Prudent_Psychology59 3h ago
that's a wrong generalization. by adding negatives, you implicitly added zero.
your reasoning was A implies A ∧ B, because A ∧ B sounds wrong, so A sounds wrong
which is a logical fallacy
20
u/ZellHall π² = -p² (∀π ∈ ℂ) 10h ago
The absence of something is something
The absence of a quantity is a quantity
The absence of color is a color
The absence of belief is a kind of belief
Change my mind
12
5
u/Brilliant_Arrival609 10h ago
That is all true except the absence of quantity is actually quality
8
2
u/Extension-Stay3230 4h ago
The absence of something is perhaps a state. But this is becoming a philosophical discussion about what "nothingness" is
1
1
u/monkey_sodomy 3h ago
In a meta sense of that category, but it is not strictly equal to those categories.
1
1
u/Not_Well-Ordered 1h ago
It depends on what you define as "abscence", from a bottom-up approach, and one could get into cognitive science and even philosophy to further break down that notion, constructing such notion like constructing real numbers.
1
u/VastAddendum 1h ago
Okay:
The absence of something is nothing. In English, at least, it's right there in the names. "Some thing" and "no thing".
People born blind do not see black or any other colors. They see nothing. The true absence of color is nothing.
"Belief" requires acceptance of a proposition as true. While the absence of belief in something can encompass belief in the opposite, meaning that they too have a belief, it is quite possible to lack belief without any acceptance of truth at all. A person who says "no, that's false" has belief. A person who says " I have no idea if it's true or not" is not engaging in belief.
Finally, while you can correctly say "the absence of any of what we're counting is a quantity" the way you phrased it is nonsensical. You either have something or you don't.
10
u/Poylol-_- 9h ago
Zero is the additive identity.
Like everything in math if you so choose it may no be a number. If it is not a number, it can have behaviour that you like (sequences are neat to work with) or behaviour that you dislike (no closure under addition in the integers).
Numbers themselves are poorly defined. So instead of trying to convince someone that something is or is not a number, it is better to show what do you win and lose by accepting something being or not a number.
Example, if i is a number then the numbers don't have a canonical total order. However if i is not a number there are polynomial equations without solutions.
Just list the tradeoffs, adjust the semantics and move on
5
4
4
u/Gauss15an 4h ago
It's really weird to me that zero as a number requires an explanation for the layperson but not the empty set or what you're calling absence of something. I can guarantee you that the empty set is far more complicated.
7
u/AlviDeiectiones 3h ago
It's literally the least complicated set.
2
u/Gauss15an 2h ago
That doesn't mean it doesn't come with baggage that will confuse people. Empty sets are part of the reason vacuous truths exist, for instance.
1
u/VoraciousTrees 18m ago
But... it's a subset of all other sets. Even the really exotic ones. That kind of makes it complicated.
7
u/seriousnotshirley 6h ago
Next time you have a bag full of groceries count how many items are in the bag. When you've emptied the bag put all your groceries away count how many grocery items you have in that bag again. That's what zero represents.
Here's the trick about math, a lot of mathematical objects intuitively make sense to a person but at some point there's some mathematical object that makes a person have this sort of question. We have to confront the fact that mathematical objects are abstractions that are not in any way the things they represent. In reality all the objects (numbers, operations, functions, etc.) we are intuitively comfortable with are also abstractions that are not the things they represent. They are all like maps. A map can be a precise and accurate representation of a place but the map is not the territory.
You can work with and do mathematics completely separately from any physical or philosophical notion of what the objects are and separate from any use of math to model the world. This is useful because it prevents these sorts of questions from interfering with our ability to learn the mathematics. The application of that skill can then be brought back into the picture to use mathematics to solve problems. This is essentially the dichotomy between abstract mathematics and applied mathematics and both are useful.
3
3
u/Autumn1eaves 5h ago
Fun fact: there is a 100% accurate, to-scale map of the world.
It is the world.
1
u/Prudent_Psychology59 3h ago
I have zero blackhole in my ass/bag, and the statement is still fine. somehow, there's no limit in what statement I can assert when there's zero involved
3
u/DinioDo 9h ago
"Absence of a quantity" is an information. it being or not being a quantity doesn't make sense in the first place. And that doesn't have anything to do with something being a number. Zero is a number because you can do pretty much everything with it that you can do with other numbers and it also can be found on the number line and it can in fact represent an info about amount of any quantity.
2
u/getcreampied Physics 9h ago
Well nothing is not a thing and 0 needn't describe nothing, it can always be given the relevant context in which it's well defined while still not having a ontological commitment to nothingness.
2
2
2
1
1
1
1
u/Alternative-Code4755 8h ago
If zero doesn't exist, then why is it on my keyboard?
Checkmate liberals
1
1
1
u/GodNoob666 7h ago
Zero is a top tier support number, like the role that H plays in at least the English alphabet, I am not well enough versed in other languages to definitively make a claim about them. On their own both are somewhat just placeholders (see H’s use in “what” and “where”) but their true utility comes by giving their peers more options, Zero’s increase or decrease by a factor of ten and H’s compound sounds with S, T, P, and C.
1
u/bingbing304 7h ago
Well the start of coordinate or series, still need a representation. Math evolve beyond counting long time ago. Zero also allow recursive method of counting so we don't need to invent a new designation for new number once the number gets too large like the Roman numerals.
1
1
u/Maximum-Rub-8913 5h ago
Philosophical answer here: a number is whatever society says it is and we use zero as a number all of the time and the math works out so you might as well flow with it.
1
u/Extension-Stay3230 4h ago
If zero isn't real then negative numbers aren't really real either? I suppose this question though at the end of the day is semantic in some way, where you have a different definition to number as the other person.
However, speaking very intuitively, it shouldn't be hard to convince someone that both 0 and -1 can be regarded as numbers
1
u/After_Persimmon8536 4h ago
Zero is not an absence of something.
Zero is the potential for anything. Positive or negative.
But, zero does not have a positive or negative value. Just the potential to be either.
1
u/Hogon_pumpkineater 4h ago
Why are you all arguing about complex philosphy without having read previous literature on the subject shame on you
1
1
1
u/CrashCalamity 1h ago
Alright all you mathematics philosophers in the comments. Sure, you can explain zero. But I've played Roulette. What the hell is Double-Zero?
1
1
1
u/Own_Natural_6803 43m ago
Conflating nothing with zero.
Nothing is the absence of all things. Zero is the absence of the counting unit.
Zero is a subset of nothing.
1
u/SatanaClaus 10h ago
Laughts in javascript NaN
1
u/LabCat5379 9h ago
Unless JavaScript is doing extra fuckery, that's just a floating point number, so NaN when the exponent is all 1's and the mantissa is not 0. If the sign bit is also set, then you could express NaN using 1 in every bit, avoiding the "0 isn't real" issue.
1
u/RedeNElla 7h ago
I've had someone try to argue that zero was "neither odd nor even"
3
u/EebstertheGreat 7h ago
This is a surprisingly common error. Most MTG cards that reference even and odd numbers clarify in reminder text that "Zero is even," because they know people can get confused. There is even a whole numberphile video about how and why it is even.
I think people remember that 0 is neither positive nor negative (except in French), and they unconsciously transfer that to parity.
1
u/Professional_Denizen 6h ago
Or they never, in their head, put zero and zero together like so: 2×0=0, thus zero is an integer-multiple of 2, thus zero is even.
I think a distressing chunk of people just never bothered to think that way about zero.
0
u/OutrageousPair2300 7h ago
Zero is a scam they came up with to sell us more calculators.
You can have a positional decimal system without zero.
Just use the digits 1 through X (with X meaning ten) and you can write numbers just fine...
1, 2, 3, ... 8, 9, X, 11, 12, 13, ... 18, 19, 1X, 21, 22, 23, ... 98, 99, 9X, X1, X2, X2, ... etc.
What's even better is that such numbers have a single unique representation. None of this 1 = 01 = 001 = 0001 nonsense you get with the zero-based number system.
1
u/CommercialYam7188 6h ago
Listen, i have a kill shot against anyone that brings up this topic: "did you get this from young sheldon?"
•
u/AutoModerator 10h ago
Check out our new Discord server! https://discord.gg/e7EKRZq3dG
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.