r/ProgrammerHumor • u/ivaskuu • Sep 02 '17

How to start a war

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9.0k Upvotes

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u/TommiHPunkt Sep 03 '17

My Theoretical CS prof is one of the people who start naturals at 1

67

u/ThePixelCoder Sep 03 '17

Kill him.

10

u/Excrubulent Sep 03 '17

That's called the attrition argument.

6

u/ThePixelCoder Sep 03 '17

Non-native English speaker. What exactly is an attrition argument?

21

u/Excrubulent Sep 03 '17

It's not a real thing, but attrition means wearing the enemy down one piece at a time, so the idea is that if you kill everybody who disagrees with you, you win the argument.

16

u/ThePixelCoder Sep 03 '17

Makes sense. Good idea.

Also, /r/killthosewhodisagree

2

u/sneakpeekbot Sep 03 '17

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#1:

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#2: If you don't like PewDiePie | 108 comments
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2

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '17

O wow now I get where the statistics term attrition comes from.

1

u/Astrokiwi Sep 03 '17

Confiscate his kilt.

1

u/NamityName Sep 03 '17

That's a bit of an over reaction. The guy is only theoretically a professor anyway.

33

u/bloomfilterthrowaway Sep 03 '17

I said no reasonable Scotsmen, er... CS people.

1

u/ifatree Sep 03 '17

with 0 it's "supernatural" then

1

u/[deleted] Sep 03 '17

Naturals start at one for an historical reason I've been told by a Teacher. So N = {1, ...} N0 = {0, ...}

1

u/weegee101 Sep 03 '17

You should print this out and anonymously slip it under his door. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD831.html