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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>trivial</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../T.html" title="T"/><link rel="previous" href="trit.html" title="trit"/><link rel="next" href="troff.html" title="troff"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">trivial</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="trit.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">T</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="troff.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="trivial"/><dt xmlns="" id="trivial"><b>trivial</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">adj.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> 1. Too simple to bother detailing. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. Not worth the speaker's time. </p></dd><dd><p> 3. Complex, but solvable by methods so well known that anyone not
utterly <a href="../C/cretinous.html"><i class="glossterm">cretinous</i></a> would have thought of them
already. </p></dd><dd><p> 4. Any problem one has already solved (some claim that hackish
<span class="firstterm">trivial</span> usually evaluates to
&#8220;<span class="quote">I've seen it before</span>&#8221;). Hackers' notions of triviality may be
quite at variance with those of non-hackers. See
<a href="../N/nontrivial.html"><i class="glossterm">nontrivial</i></a>,
<a href="../U/uninteresting.html"><i class="glossterm">uninteresting</i></a>.</p></dd><dd><p>The physicist Richard Feynman, who had the hacker nature to an
amazing degree (see his essay &#8220;<span class="quote">Los Alamos From Below</span>&#8221; in
<i class="citetitle">Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!</i>), defined
<span class="firstterm">trivial theorem</span> as &#8220;<span class="quote">one that
has already been proved</span>&#8221;.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="trit.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../T.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="troff.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">trit </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> troff</td></tr></table></div></body></html>