Some things don't change

Religious Texts: .. that text was written by some half literate guy living in a desert who heard tenth hand folk stories from his community from people who had died about a hundred years before his time, mixed in with legends, myths and fairy tales that are thousands of years old ... but it's all true because it came from God, believe it or you will burn in hell forever.

You, a loser Christian, reading from a 2000 year old book of morality fables.
Me, a sophisticated Scientologist, reading from a 70 year old Sci-Fi/fad health trilogy.
- Maybe L. Ron Hubbard was a time traveller that had already started everything 3,000 years ago and decided to restart it all again 70 years ago.
And don't worry, it definitely wasn't completely written a thousand years later to push the preferred political agendas of the time.
Q: How can you tell if a Lemming is an atheist?
A: Don't worry, they'll tell you.
You saw a meme about science and math and your first thought was "how can I make this about religion"?
That wouldn’t be true for Christianity as 3 of the 4 Gospels were cribbing off the 4th one. Heck the Gospel of John and the Revelation unto John were written by at least two different people and the Revelation likely was included at the Council of Nicea because they both had John in the name. Christianity would be very different without revelations.
- The prevailing consensus is that the gospels of Matthew and Luke were cribbing from the gospel of Mark and a text that is lost to us that is referred to as Q. The gospel of John is original as far as we know.
  Also, a lot of the Pauline epistles weren't even written by Paul.
Also rewritten, heavily translated with a large variety of biases, and with whole sections taken out or added in depending on the version AND there has been lord knows how many instances of stacking errors because new interpretations often come from already dubious later versions and not the original texts.
But it’s also all the undeniably word of god and you better not question whatever version you grew up with.

Electron was discovered in 1897. If you own a textbook on chemistry which is older than that, put it up on Ebay in the antiques category.

Newton lived in the 17th century, so if you got a textbook older than that give it back to the museum
- I'll drop it off for anyone if needed.
  I'm very trustworthy.
  Very.
  I promise.

Web development: Oh, that textbook is obsolete. It was written last year before Angular v18 was released.

*French SpongeBob voice
"2 hours later"
Laughs in PHP + HTML5 + CSS3 + Vanilla JS
- Laughs about PHP
- My condolences
Whoops, 18.1 just released breaking changes
Was just watching a kubernetes tutorial recorded a year ago, and the entire website / package repository it uses doesn't exist anymore because modern devs can't go six months without changing everything.
- A colleague called it "Hype driven development" the other day and I have to say that describes it perfectly.
Meanwhile you can still get away with most of what you learned in Java 1.4.

But math does change, and it has a lot in the last 1000 years.

Math doesn't change, we just learn more about it.
The mathematical knowledge we had thousands of years ago is still true, and it always will be.
- Math doesn't change, we just learn more about it.
  Isn't that true of almost all the sciences?
- yeah, and physics changes as a science because the actual physics of the universe changes. what are you on about. "we just learn more about it" is pretty much the definition of all sciences.
Has anything changed in Euclid's Elements?
- We discovered one of the postulates was really interesting to fuck with.
  It's better to say that we've discovered more math, some of which changes how we understand the old.
  Since Euclid, we've made discoveries in how geometry works and the underpinnings of it that can and have been used to provide foundation for his work, or to demonstrate some of the same things more succinctly. For example, Euclid had some assumptions that he didn't document.
  Since math isn't empirical, it's rarely wrong if actually proven. It can be looked at differently though, and have assumptions changed to learn new things, or we can figure out that there are assumptions that weren't obvious.
- The number of hypotheses we've proven, mostly. Also, we have this whole field of non-Euclidean geometry. And the modern Pythagoreans are a lot more chill about people knowing the irrationality of Pi.
- Yes, some of the shit he wrote was basically meaningless (the "definitions" before the axioms) and we would just leave it out.
- Not sure, I've only gotten to the middle of the third season. No spoilers, please!
- Nope. Thats why I gifted it to my son, who studies math.

Programming: that book was printed a month ago, and it's already obsolete.

Oh that book is outdated. That's the second edition, you need the third addition to complete the one math problem I am basing your entire grade on for the course.

"Why yes I do happen to also be the author of the textbook for this course, why do you ask?"

Computer programming books ... Lol we don't print them any more, they'd be obsolete before hitting the shelves.

Do be fair, that's less because the fundamentals behind programming are changing and more because the specific implementations are changed all the damn time.
- Yep, I got that "introduction to algorithms" (1100 pages tightly written, love it) and it still holds up ofc. I should have stayed in uni...

Mathematics ^teacher: That textbook was written thousands of years ago, and it is still as useful and relevant as ever, but I want you to buy this one I co-authored instead for the mere sum of $120, otherwise you won't pass.

Conflict of interest detected
This really happened?
- I took an environmental science class in college, and the professor was a former president of Shell. As part of the curriculum, we had to read his book, Why we Hate the Oil Companies. Predictably, it's a corporate non-apologia, which—hilariously—completely avoids engaging with why we actually hate the oil companies.
- Not the original commenter, but I briefly had one professor in college that did that (their book was $50, though). It was an elective course for me, fortunately. I was able to switch for a different class that fit the same requirement without being forced to buy a book the professor wrote.
- I admit I exaggerated a bit. It hasn't happened to me, but I've had some teachers that strongly suggested buying their textbooks and frowned if you didn't.

Computer Science:

Oh, that textbook is outdated. That was before NodeJS 22.

Or: The new version is reimplemented and incompatible, so everything you learnt about it from the previous versions is wrong.
- Oh, you use the MediaWiki engine, too? The documentation is always a few versions behind, and between there and now they broke the interface three times...
For me its like "oh great a old textbook, now i can finally understand our legacy codebase".
One of the best programmers I've ever met told me, "All you need is Knuth everything else is just syntax." And I don't know if that's 100% true, but can say I learned more from reading The Art of Computer Programming than I have in basically any other textbook/textbook series I've read on the subject.
Or: "The algorithm and data structure theory stuff is still pretty relevant. However, all of the examples are written in a language no one really uses any more. If they can get away with it."

https://xkcd.com/435/

Philosopher to the right of the mathematician: "You're welcome for the axioms"
Computer Scientists: Physics is just the application of discrete state machines.
- The other way around. Computer Science studies the implications of physical laws - the relation between space and time, what's ultimately knowable given the make ups of our universe, etc.

Theres a lovely scene in Star Trek where Picard is captured, then finds an exposed wire on the cell panel. He takes it and begins tapping out prime numbers, to show to the aliens’ mathematicians that they’re sentient and capable of thought, independent of language.

As nearly always, there is a relevant xkcd.

On the other hand, physicists like to say physics is to math as sex is to masturbation.

I love that Eratosthenes was able to estimate the circumference of the earth with the amount of math we had in his era. Meanwhile, modern flat-earthers are still making me want to vomit.

I used to see fractals in the shadows on LSD. I couldn’t think of the word “fractal,” and told my friend, “You know, that thing in math?” And he said to me, “When you trip you see math?!” Fun times. To be a teen again.

Someday I'd like to replicate Eratosthenes' experiment with a long north-south road trip, but I never remember to make the measurements.
I love that Eratosthenes was able to estimate the circumference of the earth with the amount of math we had in his era.
Not only that, but he was much closer to the right answer than Columbus was, yet Columbus is the one to get a day named after him, even though Columbus would have died due to starvation as most people had predicted he would if he had not gotten lucky and run into a continent that no one knew about except for the people that lived there and the Vikings and the Chinese and other people that didn't count! It just proves the principle that the key to success is not to be smart but to be lucky.

Wrong for physics. Models to describe reality don't magically become wrong just because a model with better predictive power is discovered. Most old models are special cases of newer ones.

Yeah, Newton wasn't just a science bitch who is wrong, sometimes. His equations are the special case of General Relativity when acceleration is very low. Which is the world we live in.

My favorite way to connect people with academia is pointing out how recently zero was invented because even the most reluctant “I don’t know math” person understands zero these days.
- Can you really understand zero? I mean, I get what it represents, but I still sometimes struggle to understand its usage...like, you can’t divide with zero thats for sure, but did you know you can divide a number with a really small number (like an infinitely small number) and you get a really large number (like infinitely large)? So, in that special space, if you suddenly replace “0” with a “number-so-close-to-zero-it-can-smell-it” feel free to divide and conquer, and get infinity.
  Oh, and sometimes, if you feel like math is letting you down, remember, you can always use positive and negative zeroes, so your math-thing can now work!

Math is a thought game with axioms as rules. It’s much more stable since the rules are “self-evident”.

That $300 stack of the cheapest thin paper was last semester. The online code you need for class is void, and the questions won't match the answer key.

Physics books are never outdated, you just discover better models that work in a wider range of conditions.

I’m just wondering who’s using a physics textbook from before the Industrial Revolution.
- Newton's book is from before the industrial revolution and widely used in physics today.
- Nothing I do need to account for relativistic speeds or quantum mechanics so I could get by on Newtonian mechanics just fine. Most people could get by on Archimedes.
We were taught highschool physics from a book published around 20 years before I was born

“It was made up 2000 years ago and is the absolute final word in everything. Well, the parts I pick and choose to fit my own beliefs.” -every religion there is

But none of it is wrong is it? Just that incomplete.
Now makes me wonder what is the most recent mathematical discovery that is understandably useful to an average person.
- Nah a lot of crap is wrong in old curriculum. In many worse ways than Newtonian physics being an exceptionally simplified model, or the old model of atoms being wrong, or chemistry before the periodic table of elements was figured out, etc.
  People assume we've known things for waaaay longer than we have. At least anyone laughing with this comic.

Science is validated by the new information replacing the old. Al-Khwarizmi worked out numbers so we don’t have to,

Nah mate, it was already in existence by last Tuesday afternoon and there is no way for you to disprove it.
Since you made the claim, the onus of proof is on you. Go on, it'll be interesting to see your proof.

There's a whole bit in The Incredibles about how math has changed since Bob was in school

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QtRK7Y2pPU
That was probably inspired by the USA's crappy national curriculum system of forcing kids to learn and use the lattice method which is 100% some sort of scam to make it look like math illiterate children are passing class and failing upwards.
I mean seriously, we've been using base 10 arab system for a millenia, but you're trying to tell me the department of education came up with a better method of drawing a damn chi square matrix abomination that makes even the two millenia old roman numeral system look good in comparison.

"… Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would [produce] the same result.”

― Ricky Gervais

Good, I didn't wanna learn calculus anyway

Calc 1 & 2 were fine for me. Calc 3 I either couldn't get because I didn't apply myself at all or my professor was terrible. 4 grades. 2 tests totaled 95% of our grade, 2 quizzes that equaled 5%. Got a 100 on the first quiz they said to use as a "progress report". Got a 60 on the first test. Clearly the quiz wasnt a good way to tell my progress.

You could make the same argument for things like mathematics before the discovery about imaginary numbers.

Ehh imaginary numbers added to the scope of mathematics it didn't take away anything other than no's.
- "hey look, i got your no's!"
- No, it changed things like "how many roots does x² + 2x + 2 have" from "none" to "two".

Meanwhile, Psychologists:

The correct way to learn math is chronologically

Wrong. Good look fooling around without algebra for years. New methods make old maths easy.
- ...and even newer methods make old math insanely complicated, but much more generalized. Like building definitions for things like numbers and basic arithmetic using set theory.
- /s

Lol bro doesn't know about calculus

Weird flex

Easy as

I/II= ,V

(OK, that was confusing, it's I/II= .V in barbaric` )

I actually find the outdated textbooks simpler and easier to understand. Sure the information may not be entirely accurate but it's enough to get you started.

Totally agree. Sometimes its just easier to understand what something is by understanding what it was.

Now for applied mathematics on the other hand...

watched a video on tensors with 'no math'. dude lost me in analogies. matrix vectors sumthin... brain is failing. no really the math is advancing more than that with computers and better theories for the physics experimenters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2FP-T6S1x0

or this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5liqUk0ZTw

Have you met a bayesian guy? All prof on statistics in my uni keep talking how "traditional" approach is stupid, inferior, blah blah

This is one reason I really liked my Dynamics professor. On the first day of class, he wrote "F=ma" on the white board and said, "See that equation? It hasn't changed much in the last 200 years. You don't need to buy the newest edition of the textbook; it's mostly just fixing errata. The lessons are virtually the same as the first edition."

Okay, but do I really need to draw this many circles to prove what value Pi has? Also, it's all in Greek.

what? didn't physics start with Newtonian mechanics? how would there be textbooks before that?

There are plenty of textbooks of physics before then, even predating Greece. Waterworks, astronomy, ship building, architecture, war machines, not to mention metaphysics, alchemy, atomic theory, etc.
We didn't have a rigorous scientific method until thereabouts though.
- Waterworks, astronomy, ship building, architecture, war machines,
  I would say that's engineering, not physics (except for astronomy)
  Physics is when you start describing the laws of nature, not how to build something
- I always maintain that Aristotle's notions of how to test theories of 'natural philosophy' are a reasonable starting point for 'science'

I think you'd get better traction out of this if it said quantum mechanics

The textbook:

“After the likeness of [this] angel. He made the incorruptible [generation] of Seth appear to the 12 androgynous [luminaries. And then] he made 72 luminaries appear in the incorruptible generation according to the Spirit’s will. Then the 72 luminaries themselves made 360 luminaries appear in the incorruptible generation according to the Spirit’s will so that there’d be 5 for each. And the 12 realms of the 12 luminaries make up their father, with 6 heavens for each realm so there are 72 heavens for the 72 luminaries, and for each 1 [of them 5] firmaments [for a total of] 360 [firmaments. They] were given authority and a [great] army of angels without number for honor and service, along with virgin spirits [too] for the honor and [service] of all the realms and the heavens with their firmaments.”

Indeed. There is a reason I gifted my son, who studies math, Euclids book 'Elements'. It is still relevant.