Work Text:
It was supposed to go something like this:
Thanos gives his villain monologue about how he’s actually saving people from themselves by killing people. Then the heroes make some witty comebacks about how killing people is bad. After some back and forth, the battle begins. Interspersed with one-liners and puns, the heroes and Thanos go at it with their various weaponry. The heroes sometimes temporarily pausing their assault to save random bystanders 1 through 5 since the Thanos doesn’t care about collateral damage. Eventually, the battle concludes.
This is how it actually went:
Thanos gives his villain monologue about how he’s actually saving people from themselves by killing people. Random bystander 3 looks at Thanos like he’s insane and asks, “You do realize that population growth is exponential right?” and it all dissolves from there.
2 minutes later and random bystander 3 is revealed to be random engineering student 1 who, of course, has paper and pencil in a backpack. There’s an impromptu tutoring session on exponential functions going on. Everyone is confused as to why this is happening, but free tutoring is free tutoring.
“So, an exponential function is a function where the power is the variable and the base is a constant. Let’s take 2 to the power of x as an example.” Random engineering student 1 does word to deed, sketching out the function and its equation. Everyone else is crowding close to see the paper.
“Now, if I multiply this function by ½, we get 2 to the quantity x minus 1, which is still an exponential, meaning it still grows at the same rate we had before. If this function is our population, then all you’ve done by halving it is delayed the problem by however long it takes the population to double, not stopped the problem from happening”. Thanos seems alarmed, the heroes are nodding, and the random bystanders are happy with their fun fact of the day.
“I see” Thanos responds “instead of halving the population, I need to utterly destroy it. I need to make it zero”. Random engineering student 1 sighs and rubs the bridge of his nose. The heroes’ eyes are widening, their stances shifting subtly to defensive. The random bystanders are getting on with their lives.
“Look, Thanos” random engineering student 1 begins “Zero solutions to problems are trivial and uninteresting. Of course, you can work around every problem in existence by just saying you start at zero and never change anything. It’s just not helpful for when you want to use the result to solve a problem.” Thanos has lost interest in the conversation. He has a new better goal. The heroes are blatantly preparing for the fight ahead. The random bystanders have already left.
“I have learned from my mistakes” Thanos begins his new and improved villain monologue “the resources problem cannot be solved how I wished to solve it. This is disappointing; however, I have adapted. The best way to solve the resources problem is to eliminate all life in the galaxy. This is better for everyone, as it solves the resources problem. Join me in my quest to solve this problem, or I will solve this problem by force!” The fight begins. Random engineering student 1 turns and walks sadly away, faith in intelligence absolutely shattered. One more lecture on Differential Equations and random engineering student 1 will have a Bachelors. Maybe people will listen then?
And so, nothing was learned that day (except random engineering student 1 who learned a bit about non-linear differential equations. Also, the random bystanders who learned what an exponential function is. Which is actually quite a bit of learning, so never mind!)