Complexity Memes

Posts tagged with Complexity

Fields Arranged By Scientific Ego

Fields Arranged By Scientific Ego
The scientific hierarchy in its full glory! Physicists strutting around like they're the purest science ("It's nice to be on top!"), while mathematicians are so abstract they don't even notice anyone else exists. 🤓 But flip the script to complexity and suddenly everyone's defensive about their turf! Sociologists dealing with unpredictable humans, psychologists ignoring consciousness because it's TOO HARD, and physicists perking up at the mention of "small-scale interactions" like quantum gossip they can't resist. Meanwhile, mathematicians are off in their own dimension, manipulating numbers without units like some kind of reality-free wizards. The ultimate scientific family feud where everyone thinks their problems are the hardest!

Wikipedia: The Mathematical Rabbit Hole

Wikipedia: The Mathematical Rabbit Hole
Wikipedia: simultaneously your best friend and worst nightmare in mathematics. You search for a simple concept and suddenly you're staring at notation that looks like it was written by aliens with advanced degrees. Nothing says "welcome to math" quite like an equation containing more Greek symbols than an entire fraternity row. Pro tip: if you can pronounce all the symbols in a Wikipedia math formula, you're probably hallucinating.

The Notation Spectrum: From Cellular Encyclopedia To Zigzag

The Notation Spectrum: From Cellular Encyclopedia To Zigzag
Biologists labeling every microscopic organelle like they're naming parts in an IKEA instruction manual, while chemists just draw a zigzag and call it a day. The biology diagram has 47 labels, 23 footnotes, and probably a bibliography. Meanwhile, chemists are like "behold: carbon chain." Truly the difference between writing a novel and sending a text that just says "k."

Keep It Simple, Physicist

Keep It Simple, Physicist
Ever notice how physicists can't resist overcomplicating everything ? The left shooter is calculating Newton's Third Law with centrifugal and Coriolis forces while the right one is applying the Euler-Lagrange equation... all to hit a target! 😂 It's the perfect metaphor for science itself - we can either make things unnecessarily complex or just... aim and shoot. Sometimes the simplest approach works best, but where's the fun in that? This is why engineers and physicists never finish projects on time!

The Photosynthesis Progression

The Photosynthesis Progression
Remember when you thought photosynthesis was just "sunlight + water = plant food"? Top panel shows the simplified version they teach 10-year-olds. Bottom panel reveals the biochemical nightmare waiting for you in college—complete with electron transport chains, ATP synthase, and the Calvin cycle that haunts biology majors' dreams. Nothing says "growing up" quite like discovering that the simple processes you learned in elementary school are actually complex enough to make you question your career choices.

The Greatest Graph Theorist Of Our Time

The Greatest Graph Theorist Of Our Time
Behold! The most scientifically accurate representation of human relationships I've ever witnessed! This magnificent directed graph transforms the chaotic mess of teenage romance into a beautiful mathematical structure that would make even Euler weep tears of joy! What we're witnessing here is essentially a complex network theory problem with edges labeled "likes," "dating," "dumped," "can't stand," and my personal favorite, the elusive "currently available" node sitting awkwardly in the middle. The topology of this love graph is more tangled than my headphone cables after 5 minutes in my pocket! If you tried to solve this using traditional graph theory algorithms, your computer would probably catch fire and then ask for relationship advice. Trust me, I've tried. The NP-hard problem of figuring out who's going to prom with whom remains unsolved!

Mathematicians Love Abstraction To A Scary Degree

Mathematicians Love Abstraction To A Scary Degree
The evolution of a vector definition is like watching someone spiral into mathematical madness! Computer scientists keep it simple—"just an array, bro." Physicists get a bit fancier with their "magnitude and direction" talk. But mathematicians? They're off in another dimension entirely! They've transformed a simple concept into an abstract nightmare of vector spaces, closure properties, and axioms that would make even Einstein reach for the aspirin. This is what happens when you let mathematicians loose on definitions—they don't just explain things, they create entire universes of complexity where none needed to exist! 🧮🤯

It's All Relative!

It's All Relative!
The ultimate academic switcheroo! Music teachers think complex equations are impossibly hard, while physics professors think musical notation is child's play. Meanwhile, both are equally mystifying to the rest of us mortals who can't tell a quaver from a quasar! Perspective is everything in academia - your "basic knowledge" is someone else's PhD thesis. Next time someone says "it's not rocket science," show them a treble clef and watch their brain short-circuit!

Pneumatic Cruise Control Do Be Like That

Pneumatic Cruise Control Do Be Like That
Control system engineers confidently claim they can understand anything, right until they're faced with the labyrinthine nightmare that is a transmission control module. That intricate maze of hydraulic passages might as well be alien technology! The cockiness-to-confusion pipeline takes approximately 0.3 seconds. Engineers spend years mastering differential equations only to be utterly defeated by what's essentially fancy plumbing with extra steps. Next time your car shifts gears smoothly, thank the poor soul who had to decipher that mechanical Rubik's cube.

Physics Basically: The Four Pillars Of Confusion

Physics Basically: The Four Pillars Of Confusion
The perfect visual representation of physics in its natural habitat! A dog standing on four cans labeled "math," "math," "math," and "some cool theory you don't understand." Physics is literally being held up entirely by mathematical foundations and incomprehensible theoretical concepts. This is the unspoken truth every physics student discovers after thinking they'd just learn why apples fall from trees. Instead, they're drowning in partial differential equations wondering where all the actual physics went. The relationship is clear: physics is just applied math wearing a fancy tinfoil hat.

The Scenic Route To Five

The Scenic Route To Five
Someone spent hours crafting the most convoluted way possible to calculate 5. This is what mathematicians do for fun on Friday nights while the rest of us watch Netflix. They're not showing off their brilliance—they're just allergic to simple solutions. Next week: using quantum field theory to calculate a 15% tip.

Chemistry: The Art Of Matter's Transformation

Chemistry: The Art Of Matter's Transformation
That massive textbook vs. that tiny pamphlet is the perfect representation of chemistry education! Imagine if they just gave us the correct concepts right away instead of making us memorize 800 pages of exceptions, edge cases, and "it depends"! Chemistry would be a single-page leaflet: "Electrons do stuff. The end." Instead we're lugging around textbooks that could double as home defense weapons. The sheer audacity of chemistry to be so unnecessarily complicated! 🧪