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Round the tree, yes, but not round the squirrel

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/01/02/round-and-round/
24•beardyw•2h ago

Comments

beardyw•2h ago
It took me longer than it should to get this!
beardyw•1h ago
On reflection, does the squirrel consider itself to have been "gone round"? I don't think so.
xlbuttplug2•1h ago
Say instead of just walking, the man was laying down a net/barricade around the tree. As soon as the man completes the circumference, the squirrel must admit that it has been gone around.
xnorswap•1h ago
Now let us suppose the squirrel is at the same distance as the man.

Has the man have gone around the squirrel and the squirrel around the man?

If it's only radii less than the other, where is the limit?

To get it I think I have to re-frame it like this:

If you hold out an object toward the centre, you clearly go around it when completing an orbit.

If you keep extending that to the origin but then go beyond, so your arm is longer than the radius, then you still go around it, until your arm reaches twice the radius.

xlbuttplug2•1h ago
The article says the man was trying to see the squirrel's back implying a larger radius.

But yeah if your circuit completely fits inside the other person's circuit, then you've been gone around, no matter how slow or fast you both are.

moconnor•1h ago
To get what?
xlbuttplug2•1h ago
That the man technically went around the squirrel without ever having caught up to it.
n0n0n4t0r•1h ago
One could argue that the moon is orbiting the sun. The fact that it's orbit is a little wobbly because of interferes from the earth is a rounding detail, no?
OscarCunningham•1h ago
But is a geostationary satellite going around the Earth?
leeoniya•58m ago
> An enduring myth about the Moon is that it doesn't rotate. While it's true that the Moon keeps the same face to us, this only happens because the Moon rotates at the same rate as its orbital motion, a special case of tidal locking called synchronous rotation.

https://science.nasa.gov/resource/the-moons-rotation/

unhba•46m ago
My colleagues once spent a good hour trying to explain this fact to me and I still really struggle to accept it. I can see that the moon is rotating on its own axis from the point of view of a space that is external to the system it forms with the earth. But then isn’t everything on earth rotating about its own axis with respect to that external space? It seems arbitrary to isolate the moon from all this other stuff and make a special case of it…
Hendrikto•31m ago
Pick the sun as reference: the moon rotates. Pick the earth as reference: the moon rotates. Stand on the moon and pick any star as reference: the moon rotates.

From which reference frame would it not rotate?

omnicognate•21m ago
1. Unlike position and velocity, which are relative (there is no given "origin" for them, no way to say where a thing is or how fast it's moving except relative to other things), rotation is absolute. A thing is either rotating or not, regardless of its relation to other things. Objects that rotate "experience (centrifugal) forces as a result" or "require (centripetal) forces to hold them together" depending on how you choose to describe it. This is detectable: hook two weights together with a newton-meter in space - and the newton-meter will read non-zero when the assemblage is rotating, zero when not. The reading tells you how fast it is rotating regardless of any external reference point. (An equivalent device to detect position or velocity is not possible, but it is for acceleration.)

2. Yes, everything "at rest" on earth is in fact rotating at the rate the earth rotates. If you stand on the equator at midday and do not rotate you will be standing on your head at midnight.

charcircuit•10m ago
>no way to say where a thing is except relative to other things

This is always true. The origin is just a thing that other things are relative to. It's just as possible to define an origin un the real world as it is on a piece of graph paper.

Tistron•1h ago
I take it that the squirrel didn't circle the man? Two squirrels running around the same tree, are they circling each other? Or is it that when two bodies are orbiting the same center, then the body with the larger orbit is circling the one with the smaller? What is the definition of "circling"?
weinzierl•1h ago
Similarly, a rolling wheel (without slipping and on flat ground) does a pure rotation around the touch point and not its center.
sudosays•1h ago
This tickled my brain in a nice way.

I'm probably butchering this, but in my mind it is something like:

1. From the squirrels frame of reference and local coordinate system, the man has remained "in front" of the squirrel. The squirrel is orienting and rotating in sync with the man and therefore has not observed that the man has "gone round" it.

2. From our perspective (and on reflection from the man), the man has circled the squirrel in the global coordinate system of the scene.

As the reader we assume that our perspective is the authoritative one, but I am sure the squirrel disagrees.

NAR8789•57m ago
From the title I thought this was going to be a variation on the bear and swimmer puzzle.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/can-math-help-you-escape-a-hu...

koenh1•47m ago
I remember this being mentioned by Charles Peirce as an argument for pragmatism (the philosophical kind): It's a nonsensical question unless you can phrase it in terms where the answer has some practical consequence.
zkmon•7m ago
That's true. The man did not go around the squirrel. They both were orbiting some point near the center of the tree trunk. Otherwise, one could say that the farther point on the Moon's surface is going around the point that is facing Earth.

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Round the tree, yes, but not round the squirrel

https://www.futilitycloset.com/2026/01/02/round-and-round/
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