“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million bucks”

Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by lostcolony on Thursday August 19, 2021 @10:47AM (#28234490)

Oh, I understand your points. But I see the joke sailed right over your head; I'm guessing you didn't realize that this joke is presented as a joke, notably due to the phrase "pack it in mathematicians", since it's quite unreasonable to believe that anyone familiar with the Collatz Conjecture would believe that solving it is the only reason for mathematicians to exist (and also quite unreasonable for anyone familiar enough with LLVM and mathematics to assume a compiler's behavior constitutes a mathematical proof).

I can't speak to online forums (I use them for so many things), but I'm sure Twitter is the right place for humor, and not the right place to announce a serious belief you've proved a long standing mathematical problem.

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Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by ColinWright on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:03AM (#28234723)

> "Oh, I understand your points. But I see the joke sailed right over your head ..."

OK, I guess my sense of humour hasn't translated into your context. Clearly my comment makes you think I didn't get the joke, but I did.

> "I'm guessing you didn't realize that this joke is presented as a joke, ..."

Oh, I did. Really, I did.

I guess we're just talking past each other. <shrug> You didn't get my joke, probably because you think I didn't get the original.

Time to give up.

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Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by lostcolony on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:10AM (#28234833)

Okay. I'm not sure dissecting the technical inaccuracies of a joke ("but an imam would never walk into a bar!") is itself a joke (and I'm pretty sure you edited the comment just above to agree it was a joke, but maybe I just didn't read it closely enough), especially when you'd give the exact same response if you didn't know it was a joke, but did know it was technically incorrect, but fair enough.

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Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by ColinWright on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:19AM (#28234970)

I didn't edit any comments, though I can appreciate that a quick skim might leave you with a different impression, and returning might lead you to believe I must have edited it. But I didn't.

I really do think we've just been talking past each other. When something is as obviously "tongue-in-cheek" as the original post, I find it funny when people (a) get the joke, then (b) play it with a completely straight bat. It appears that doesn't cross cultural boundaries in the way I thought it would.

You're not alone ... some of my comments are getting significant numbers of downvotes.

<shrug> ... "Humour".

I'll go back to appearing humourless and commenting purely technically on purely technical things. Meanwhile ... nice to connect with you ... thanks for the responses.

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Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by lostcolony on Thursday August 19, 2021 @11:29AM (#28235108)

Fair enough. I'll say, it helps to indicate you're not being serious in that situation; that's hard in text, but something like a "well akshually" (as a deprecating reference to https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ackchyually-actually-guy) preceding it would help.

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Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by ColinWright on Thursday August 19, 2021 @12:07PM (#28235602)

That's all true, but putting "humour warnings" kinds defeats the purpose, and converts what would be dry humour into something more akin to slapstick, a bit like that person we all know who always insists on going "Bah-doom, Tsh!" on every mildly funny aside. When someone else highlights things that that I no longer find them funny at all, so I'd be reluctant to do it.

I appreciate the feedback ... I think the best thing for me is just not to try again, and to be explicit when I know something is a joke, and clear that I'm adding factual information.

Watching people continue to downvote the comments I've made, HN is clearly the wrong place for me to do otherwise.

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Re:“Pack it in, mathematicians, someone owes LLVM a million ... by alisonkisk on Thursday August 19, 2021 @12:12PM (#28235655)

When people intentionally miscommunicate (even in jest), misunderstanding is a foreseeable side effect.

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