system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Dimensions: How can there be more than 3 dimensions?
gpt
A dimension is simply a variable that is independent of any other variable. In this universe there are only 3 spatial dimensions (I.E. in the x, y, and z directions). However a dimension is not restricted to simply being a spatial one. An example of another one is time, for instance if you wanted to know the temperature at a certain location the answer depends not only on spatial location but time as well. So a universal temperature function would be 4 dimensional, as it is dependent on the x, y, and z location as well as the time the temperature is recorded.