Image Description: A digital meme divided into two main panels: a mathematical whiteboard explanation at the top and a reaction image at the bottom. Top Panel (The Whiteboard): Titled “P-ADIC FINANCE where p = profit.” It explains a fictional financial system using real advanced mathematics. Left text: “In this metric, a number’s size is how little profit divides it. The more profitable the crime, the closer its penalty sits to zero. String together ever-bigger crimes and the fines don’t blow up, they converge.” A sequence shows: “p, p^2, p^3, … arrow pointing to 0.” Right chart: A table titled “Crime, Profit, Fine, Fine Size in P-Adic Metric.” It lists crimes: Outsource pollution: Profit = p, Fine = $1M, P-adic size = 1/p (small). Fake the numbers: Profit = p^2, Fine = $10M, P-adic size = 1/p^2 (smaller). Fix the market: Profit = p^3, Fine = $100M, P-adic size = 1/p^3 (tinier). Ruin a country: Profit = p^4, Fine = $1B, P-adic size = 1/p^4 (minuscule). Repeat infinitely: Profit = p^n, Fine = p^n (lol), P-adic size = 1/p^n which approaches 0. Below the chart: A number line showing 0 on the far left (labeled “Where your fines live”) and numbers increasing to the right (labeled “Big in absolute world”). A final box states: “The true crime in a corporate environment is not choosing p.” Bottom Panel (The Reaction): A sepia-toned photograph of a group of wealthy white men in suits, including former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, laughing uproariously together at a gathering. Edited comic speech bubbles are assigned to them: One asks, “Why’d we even need lawyers?” Another laughs, “We just changed the metric lmfao.” A third says, “Fines are for poors.” A man in the foreground laughs, “Infinite money glitch found boys.” In the bottom right corner, a modern internet meme character (a crying, angry “Wojak” in a suit wearing a badge that reads “REGULATORS”) has a thought bubble that reads: “They took us for absolute fools.” Bottom Caption: Superimposed across the bottom in large, bold, white Impact font: “THEY TOOK US FOR ABSOLUTE FOOLS”—a pun on the word “absolute” referring to both being deeply tricked and the standard mathematical “absolute metric.”
Until it’s not. Until there are more poor but well-educated parents who educate their children in turn.
In Arabic, we have a word with no direct English equivalent: tarbiya (تربية). I think the closest translation might be “custodianship of upbringing,” but it describes the dynamics of learning rather than the mechanics. It’s a bidirectional process (though not everyone will admit that)—it doesn’t just teach children how to solve a specific problem; it teaches them how to develop their own way of tackling an unfamiliar one.