Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Paracompact 64 days ago
What's your definition of trivial?

The one I've always flown with is, trivial means (1) a special case of a more general theory (2) which flattens many of the extra frills and considerations of the general theory and (3) is intuitively clear ("easy") to appreciate and compute.

From this perspective, everything is trivial from the relative perspective of a god. I know of no absolute definition of trivial.

2 comments

It originally hails from the trivium: the grammar, logic and rhetoric taught to beginner students.
the absolute definition of trivial is trivial to show