this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Science Memes

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If you are here asking: "Is this a science meme?"

Probably, yes. We use the Dawkins definition of meme: a replicating idea, not just an image macro with a fact on it. A good post here doesn't need to teach you something. It needs to make you ask something: who, what, where, when, and especially why or how.

Science isn't a filing cabinet of facts, it's a conversation. For example, a photo of an eel or other localized wildlife counts because most people never see one, and wonder is the first step of inquiry. A car meme counts if it makes you curious about what's under the bonnet. If you want to talk about something you noticed in the world, chances are someone else wants to talk about it too.

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[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)
(* (+ 2 5) (- 8 5))

Hope some LISP can clear this up

Edit:

( + 2 ( * 5 ( - 8 5 ) ) )
[–] yboutros@infosec.pub 21 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Is this a meme? Shouldn't it be

( + 2 ( * 5 ( - 8 5 ) ) )
[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 7 months ago

Damn you are right haha.

Mine evals to 21.

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 months ago

So, if 2 5 8 5 - × + is "RPN" does that mean that the LISP version is Polish Notation?

[–] Reginald_T_Biter@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

This is called "prefix notation". The operator comes before the operands and every expression goes in parentheses.

For instance you could write:

(+ 1 2 3 4)

Which would evaluate to 10.

This syntax is from a family of programming languages usually called LISP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_(programming_language)

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

Also, you can use this for more than just arithmetic. The first thing in the list is the name of the function, and everything else is something that you pass to the function. So you could instead write

(plus 1 2 3 4)

Which would be like plus(1, 2, 3, 4) in other kinds of programming languages.

[–] call_me_xale@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I understand prefix notation, but you got the order of operations wrong...

[–] vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] call_me_xale@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 months ago

Knowing is half the battle!

[–] Reginald_T_Biter@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

Awesome thanks for explaining that. That's cool as hell.