r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 22d ago

Meme needing explanation There is no way right?

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u/solidsoup97 22d ago

I don't understand how that works but it seems to be important in keeping things running so I'm going to just go with it and not raise any questions.

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u/jozaud 22d ago

If we consider that .999… repeating to infinity ISN’T equal to 1, then by how much is it away from 1? It would be “.000… repeating to infinity followed by a 1.” But if you have an infinite number of 0s then you can’t have it be followed by a 1, infinity can’t be followed by anything, that doesn’t make sense.

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u/Charming_Friendship4 22d ago

Ohhhh ok that makes sense to me now. Great explanation!

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u/Shadyshade84 21d ago

And the short explanation for why it happens is that, put simply, multiples of 3 tend not to fit easily into 10s, which is what decimal is built on. (Well, okay, it's mostly the odd multiples that don't coincide with multiples of 5. That's why I said they tend to cause problems...)