There was a time where the world only knew a rational number system (where any number could be expressed as p/q where p & q are integers and q != 0)

Turns out there are irrational numbers like the square root of 2. The man who proved this did so using the Pythagorean Theorem unfazed by the irony the Pythagoras’s himself thiught all numbers were rational until the day he died.

The man with the proof, Hippasus, was murdered by Pythagoras loyalists and the murderers made a pact to keep the world from seeing the proof.

They failed and the proof is known to be the second most well known proof in the history of mathematics.

They failed because the truth is ungovernable, especially the truth about irrational numbers.

https://www2.math.uconn.edu/~glaz/Square_Root_of_2/index.html#:~:text=Hippasus%20discovered%20that%20square%20root,to%20square%20root%20of%202%20.

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1x1=2 😉

This is neither so in the rationals or irrationals but there do exist number systems where one can say this.

I truly think the problem stems from an identity numeral being used to multiply being at best redundant. Multiplication is the slight of hand in using the same symbol to denote a group value and an integer(or float) value. We see [number]×[number] but really it's [group]×[number] (or vice versa). The translation of reality to language always has its hiccups.