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[–] moobythegoldensock@infosec.pub 16 points 1 month ago

It depends on the exact context, but:

“Trivial” usually means “not important.” For example, a person gets an echocardiogram and the cardiologist reports “trivial regurgitation,” it means the valve is leaking so little that it’s not worth worrying about.

“Naive” means not having experienced that thing. For example, in pain management, there is a distinction between “opioid naive” people, who have not previously had opioids, vs. “opioid tolerant” who have taken opioids long enough that the effects are lower on them. The tolerant group can take higher doses that might put the naive group at risk of death.

[–] salmoura@lemmy.eco.br 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The way I understand it, trivial is something that takes little to no effort to accomplish; naive, without previous knowledge or without solid assumptions about a problem.

[–] piconaut@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 month ago

Naïve can also mean research subjects or animals before or without exposure to some operation or treatment.

[–] tequinhu@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

In maths "trivial" is usually when the author has a statement they could prove, but chose not to (either because is too obvious, stems from a result in another text, or is a lenghty proof)

[–] MysteriousSophon21@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

In physics and other sciences "trivial" also refers to solutions that are technically correct but uninteresting (like x=0 for many equations) or cases where the result is so straightforwad that it doesn't need explanation to experts in the feild.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

In physics, two terms that I often seem to notice together are "trivial" and "local". Local is easy to define clearly: within the speed of light/causality. Trivial seems like a vaguer term.

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Then it sounds like the term "trivial" is subjective, which feels kinda icky in math. Worse, it sounds as if the "dear reader" is supposed to figure out what the author or lecturer means by "trivial" in each case; sure, there is context involved, but still... icky.

[–] tequinhu@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Indeed it is, back in the university there was a kind of meme among students

Whenever you had any bullshit argument you pulled out of your ass you could say: "this is trivial and the proof is left to the reader"

On a more serious note, it was one of the main points of attriction betwee professors and students

[–] nandeEbisu@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Trivial solutions are often ones that don't provide any useful insights to explore. Not that they're not part of the solution space, or valid solutions, just that for the purposes of the lecture or paper which is likely to glean some deeper insights, that they are not worth explaining.

Often these are things like something moving with 0 velocity, you can trivially show conservation of momentum for example, or if a system is in equilibrium there are technically dynamics but there's not much about the rules of those dynamics that are illustrated in that system.

Naive in mathematics is usually a solution or attempt at a a solution that is the obvious one. Often times it's in the context of the naive solution being a slow or laborious baseline that can be contrasted with a more clever solution.

[–] dumples@midwest.social 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Also to note that there's a statistical term called Naive Bayes which basically has no assumptions to calculate some things. So basically no assumptions is the best definition

[–] howrar@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 month ago

I would actually interpret "naive" in this context as making very strong assumptions. In particular, a strong assumption of independence between variables that likely doesn't hold, but is good enough for many purposes.