this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
1603 points (99.0% liked)

News

23320 readers
4113 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras's name, or said "praise be to Pythagoras" if you're a bit of a fan of triangles.

But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Kirkkh@lemm.ee 62 points 1 year ago (19 children)

I think the consensus at this point was Pythagorus probably didn't even exist, given no writings of his were ever found. It's more likely he a was a mythic/ideological figure.

[–] JoshRW@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You encouraged me to go look him up on Wikipedia. The history and legend of Pythagoras is some crazy shit apparently

[–] KreekyBonez@lemm.ee 31 points 1 year ago

damn. why did schools only teach the super boring part about the triangles. dude had the golden thigh of apollo and the super-speed of hermes.

also, it really sounds like he was a cult leader.

[–] neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No shit… these are like old Chuck Norris facts:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagoras

the priest of Apollo gave Pythagoras a magic arrow, which he used to fly over long distances and perform ritual purifications

A fragment from Aristotle records that, when a deadly snake bit Pythagoras, he bit it back and killed it.

he once convinced a notoriously destructive bear to swear that it would never harm a living thing again, and that the bear kept its word

[–] Bread@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kinda makes you wonder if future archeologists would know the difference between the jokes being jokes about chuck Norris vs us believing he was a god that we worshipped. Maybe that's all mythology is, some running gags that everyone took seriously.

[–] Elohim@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

a god that we worshipped

Would they be wrong? What’s the line between idolization and worship?

[–] Bread@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would argue praying to them and doing acts in their name. Although that last part could be twisted.

[–] DeanFogg@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

👏 Dear Harambe...

load more comments (16 replies)