this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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[–] moobythegoldensock 12 points 1 day 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 day 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 11 points 1 day ago

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

[–] tequinhu@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (1 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 5 points 11 hours ago

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.

[–] dumples@midwest.social 2 points 22 hours 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 1 points 20 hours 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.

[–] meyotch@slrpnk.net -5 points 1 day ago

It means the researchers are high on the smell of their own farts and will be offended if you ask them to show their work