People who think they are the shit

It's a little hard to be excessively angry right now after I got an unexpected hug from Sandra in the halls. But I was good and mad before, so I'll try and bring that back.

There's this guy in my math class who thinks he's the shit and it pisses me off. I mean, it's one thing to be confident that you know what you're doing, but it's another to claim you have all of the answers despite being proved wrong repeatedly (at least once per class). Can you trisect any angle given a compass and straight edge? I thought I could, and I thought I had a pretty good solution. But theoretically you can't. Who am I to say that I can. This guy apparently can. He is adamant that he can do it. With my solution, I wondered what the problem was, not demanded that it was the truth.

This isn't what bothers me. He's just a little overzealous, I thought. So we start talking about mathematical impossibilities. We get to talking about this guy, Kurt Gödel, who theorized near the beginning of the century that, essentially, given any set of mathematical rules there will be statements that can neither be proved nor disproved. Kinda like how God can neither be proved nor disproved. In his time, the problem of trisecting an angle given the axioms (rules) that you can form a line from any two points and a circle from a point and a radial line was still in question. It was a good example. However, now there are absolute proofs that explain in great detail how trisecting an angle given the axioms of line forming and circle drawing is impossible. This guy in my class says, "Well of course it's impossible. This guy isn't a genius. He's an idiot!"

Sure, buddy. This coming from a guy who two minutes ago was convinced that he discovered the secret to complete a mathematical problem that he was even told was impossible. What a dickhead.

Then we go on to talk about Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and this guy in class goes off to claim that you can't find a point in space because it will always have a width, just like you can't find a point on a plane because it will have an area when you draw it.... Come on! That's like saying the number 5 doesn't exist because you count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 5 counts as 4.5-5.5. No. 5 is 5 is 5 is 5. It's fucking 5. It's a fucking point. You approach it and it's not 5. You pass it and it's not 5. You are at 5, then you are at 5. It's a fucking point. Then he extrapolates that and says you can't find a point in 4 dimensions because you can't define a point in space and time. I'm not even at the real facepalm moment. Then our professor goes on to explain that theoretically (and more important, mathematically) speaking, there are an infinite number of dimensions. Mathematicians think in infinite dimensions all the time. Another guy in the class tries to help him out by saying that you live in 3 dimensions and imagining much more than 3 is impossible.

What does buddy-guy say? "Well, that's what I'm asking. Help me imagine 5 dimensions."

AUGH! What the fuck? I mean, really. What the hell is this guy's deal? What a fucking idiot. I understand that the concept of me saying that other people are so full of themselves for thinking they are right all the time is hypocritcal. But the difference is that I'm not a fucking idiot.

I don't even want to try and explain to him how wrong he is. I just want to punch him in his hollow fucking skull.