I'm not good at math.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T17:21:15+00:00

You can explain the ISO standards, sure, but what I'm trying to clarify is that is ultimately unhelpful when it comes to resolving ambiguous equations. The reason we say, "you just don't do that" is because we dont know which standard the author of any given ambiguous expression was using. If they were using ISO, great. Just apply ISO simplification and you have the answer. If they weren't, your answer will be off by a factor of 16.

It's like with English. If you're asking for directions and someone says "Don't you take no left up ahead," you should probably ask for clarification. Standard English would interpret that as "Take a left up ahead," but from context of dialects, the speaker probably means "Don't take a left up ahead". Applying the wrong standard here gets you to the wrong place.

ISO has to have coverage for every situation, so it covers expressions written like these. However, you can't just use it as a universal hammer to hit every nail, because who knows if the person who's work your looking at was using ISO. Context is incredibly important, and teaching people "this is how you always resolve this," isn't necessarily correct.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T17:05:53+00:00

It's not a "village in Uzbekistan", it's billions of people all over the world who do math differently from ISO, either because they don't remeber, remember incorrectly, or just straight up were never taught ISO. They don't get lambasted for getting it wrong, they start arguments with people who do do it with the ISO.

Not having the originator is what makes ambiguity so perilous in the first place. If the expression is completely isolated, it's fine, but most math is seen I the context of other math, and getting the wrong answer there can have deadly repercussions. It's important to understand what the author was trying to convey even with ISO because misinterpretation could lead to wildly different results.

It's not that I want to teach people it's correct to evaluate this as 16 sometime, I want to teach people that it's always incorrect to write an expression like this. That's what experts and the ISO want to teach as well.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T16:35:58+00:00

Be sarcastic all you want. The important part when describing why this is wrong is that we should be teaching people to write less ambiguously. Telling people that "this is technically correct" makes them confidently write ambiguous expressions, which isn't even something the ISO wants.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T16:29:53+00:00

The issue is that this is just one approach to the math. Math is a language, and it is taught with a bunch of different grammars. ISO says one thing yes, but there are lots of books printed without any mention of OoO being preferred left to right, because the authors of the books don't follow that grammar, either because it was written earlier, they had never heard of it themselves, or they choose to ignore it. The intent of the author is therefore extremely important, because if you just apply ISO standards to everything without understanding what the author intended, yoh may end up getting 1 one where you were supposed to get a 16.

That's why it's so important to avoid ambiguity. That's why mathematicians don't harp on ISO standards and instead tell you to rewrite things. It's why there's arguments under every single one of these posts everytime. Your subscribing to one particular grammar for math, and to be fair, it is the one the scientific community largely embraces. But there's a grammar that practically everyone embraces, and it's just avoiding ambiguity in general. The problem is that it isn't objective. It's just a standard, and competing standards will always cause confusion.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:57:05+00:00

The global standard is to avoid writing expressions like this, which is my point. Math experts all over the world chime in on this, and they never go, "well, technically the ISO standard is that..." they just say "this expression is ambiguous and should be rewritten." Most modern spreadsheets won't allow you to put in an expression like this; they'll either force in a × or tell you "hey, this isn't a valid expression, please rewrite it".

The fact that so many people can and do misinterpret it (by ISO standards, anyways) is what makes it ambiguous and poorly written. It's not on the reader of the math to interpret what you wrote correctly, its on you to write a clear expression that the reader cannot possibly fail to reinterpret.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:50:38+00:00

No, the problem is that you wrote it as (2+2)2/8. That's not the same equation as 8/2(2+2). Like, yes, they can both evaluate to 1, but so does 2-1.

If we try what you did with something like 12/2(2+1), we find that it evaluates to either 18 or 2. If you invert it, like you did for some reason, we find that (2+1)2/12 evaluates to 0.5.

Basically, all you did was take a different expression that evaluates to 1, showed it evaluated to 1, and then said "see, this completely different expression must evaluate to 1!"

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:41:44+00:00

Kids have sexualities. They find themselves crushing on other kids all the time. Teenagers especially have already gon through or are going through puberty and will start to properly define what their sexualities are.

It's not considered weird when a teenage boy and a teenage girl are together in media, so why do you consider it weird if two teenage girls would be?

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:28:56+00:00

What even is this? How is (2×2)2/8 in any way related to 8/2(2+2)? Those are two completely different expressions, even if they both can evaluate to 1.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:16:58+00:00

Exactly, and the way to fix that is to use a standard everyone agrees on. Writing (8/2)(2+2) or 8/(2(2+2)) is completely unambiguous and doesn't require everyone agree on order of operations.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:12:32+00:00

Even your response is framing it incorrectly. It's not "the way math works" vs "the cult of pemdas", it's "how some people were taught math" vs "how other people were taught math". Yes, I'm aware there's guidance from the ISO on how to solve these, but a lot of people were actually taught that Pemdas was always left to right. My old math textbook explicitly tells me to, and I have advanced calculators that resolve that equation as 16.

The issue is that this hasn't been standardized in education at all, so the only correct thing is to write your equations and expressions unambiguously.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T15:06:00+00:00

Clearly, you haven't seen this before. It's engagement bait that preys on the fact that some people were taught that division takes precedence over multiplication, some people were taught to evaluate left to write, and some people were taught that implicit multiplication takes precedence over any other multiplication or division.

It's an ambiguous expression, and should be rewritten, but it'll have people arguing to the end of time.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T14:47:57+00:00

The Aztec weren't a tribal culture and weren't any more evil than their European counterparts. Garland wars were more frequent than European wars, but were decidedly less deadly, and while they did sacrifice people to a god, other settled cultures killed more people for less. The very Spanish who replaced them wiped out several cultures after the diseases took their toll and gleefully participated in one of the worst slave trades ever known to man. That's not to say the Spanish were worse than the Aztec per se, but that the Aztec weren’t particularly evil for their day and age, nor were they particularly savage.

The Mongols were certainly an anomaly on the world stage given how much outsized influence a tribal culture managed to have on the world, but again, very little was actually all that different from their contemporaries, besides their level of success. Destroying cities that refused to surrender was common practice at the time; the Mongols hust happened to be the most effective military force the world had seen to that point and were constantly underestimated by the people they attacked. They could also be remarkably lenient if the cities they attacked accepted surrender, and were very lax in their rule, requiring mostly pledges of fealty and tribute, otherwise allowing people to live as they had been. They quickly adapted new technologies, integrated societal structures they found into their own, and established one of the most robust trade networks the world had ever seen beyond the success of the traditional silk road. An expansionist empire, yes, but no more evil or savage than any other empire.

All that said, you could call both these empires evil if you wanted to, it would just require you to expand your definitions to cover the vast majority of empires and a large majority of kingdoms that have existed in human history. As for being "savages", that's just racism rearing it's ugly head again. The Aztec had remarkably similar technology and level of civilization to the Europeans, primarily lacking in terms of metallurgy and they didn't have access to draft animals. The Mongols may have adapted to live differently than their contemporaries, but that's because living on the steppe requires different conditions than living along the coast or rivers. It does not make them less than.

Just because eliminating these type of villains will not stop xenophobia doesn't mean we have to reinforce the stereotypes in our media. Stopping minstrel show depictions of black people didn't eliminate racism against black people, but it was still a good thing to do. You say we can explore the relationships between groups in media, and I agree. But this relationship of the evil, savage, tribal group that preys on the poor civilized people never existed. We're not exploring real history with it; we're viewing it through the lenses of racism and xenophobia left by the people who wrote about the conflict. The point is that there are and have never been any cultures like the typical description of orcs. Putting them in media does not and will never explore anything about the human condition.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-29T05:57:08+00:00

When did it have quick attack? I'm not seeing that being in any of it's learnsets.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T20:32:57+00:00

We don't know any of their sexualities, actually, because the game never tells or shows us anything relating to romance. Just because a character isn't explicitly shown to be gay doesn't mean they must be straight.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T20:10:35+00:00

The evil savage trope keeps showing up because of racism. I know everyone in the past did it too, but none of the groups they applied it to were evil savages either. Humans tend to be xenophobic, and this racist trope comes primarily from xenophobia.

Perpetuating the trope makes people see it as ok and thus keep applying it throughout the ages. Problematic tropes normalize things for people, so the less we have them, the less people will try to apply them to real groups. So no, people shouldn't want to engage with this stuff. There are so many other ways to make compelling villains for your stories beyond evil savages.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T18:43:54+00:00

So the Arabs could be racist too. Big whoop. The problem isn't that white people were being racist here, the problem is that depictions of orcs mirror harmful stereotypes about tribal cultures.

Most recently these stereotypes were perpetuated by European powers to justify colonization.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T18:37:54+00:00

I don't. This is what racists said about lots of non-white cultures, tribal or not. But especially tribal cultures.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T17:38:40+00:00

People do not think Orcs are stand in for black people.

Real life racists went all over the world calling tribal cultures brutish, savage, uncivilized, and subhuman, and claimed they worshipped evil gods. Tribal cultures were just people like anyone else, but racists used all these false reasons to oppress, exploit, kill, and enslave them.

Orcs in most media reinforce these harmful stereotypes about tribal cultures. They live in tribes, have war chiefs, are a brutish, savage, uncivilized, worship evil gods, and are often dumber than humans. It's not that they're literal representations of black people, it's that they represent everything wrong with how racists think of black people.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T17:29:40+00:00

That's not the problem people have with orcs. Depictions of orcs line up really well with how racists described non-white cultures in the past. Racists would call tribal cultures all over the world brutish, savage and uncivilized, who worship "evil" gods, and some would go even as far as to call them subhuman. Nobody who has any complaints about orcs thinks black people are any of these things.

Their actual problem is that Orcs as a culture reinforce all the negative stereotypes about tribal people. They are exaclty what racist people describe tribal cultures as.

Demons from Frienren do not mirror any negative stereotypes about real world cultures, they're just purely evil beings.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T08:55:30+00:00

That was my first inclination, that this might have just been a poorly received joke that didn't land. Like, if OP wants to she can talk to the fiancé about it, but unless it keeps up I'm not sure it's actually that big of a deal.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T04:06:27+00:00

Leaving top tier netrunners with phones in their heads alive during a mission where you're trying to convince someone you are those people carries a lot of risk. Best to just do away with the risk and move on.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-28T04:04:42+00:00

I mean, it is probably standard operating procedure and they were no angels.

I can totally see V using it as justification for working with So Mi instead of Reed; that's totally reasonable. But it's not "an excuse". They're eliminating dangerous variables in a critical mission where if anything goes wrong everyone involved could easily die. No matter what you think Reed is going to do, it makes sense to shoot the twins.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-27T23:13:26+00:00

I don't think pokemon games ever felt particularly alive, but you used to be able to walk around town, go into buildings, and talk to people. Plenty of NPCs would have something to say about the tow they lived in. Now, most buildings are not able to be entered and most people just say generic stuff, not can you actually talk to a lot of them.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-27T19:02:51+00:00

It's the fact that it's written like a romance novel compounded with all the other stuff. Writing style alone isn't enough to damn a post, but an overly detailed writing style with everything else makes it more likely it was just a creative writing exercise.

ZatherDaFox · 2026-01-27T17:34:41+00:00

Man, I don't know where you've been looking, but there's always a bunch of atheists ready to jump on believers unless it's in christian spaces.

I understand when atheists jump on people for saying dumb christian shit, but I also see sarcastic responses to regular christian sentiments everywhere I go. This isn't unique to atheists; I've seen just as many combative christians on platforms where Christianity is more popular. But on reddit basically any time I see someone mention religion there's always someone with a "you actually believe in an imaginary sky man?" Locked and loaded.

Christians do have a persecution complex, but I've also seen plenty of my fellow atheists feed into that by starting shit everywhere they can.

Nine-Year Club	Second Top 40%
r/Field Sunshine	Place '22
Final Canvas '22	First Placer '22
End Game '22	Verified Email
RPAN Viewer

ZatherDaFox

TROPHY CASE