If you believe the rules of basic arithmetic, Terrence Howard pities you.

The Empire star detailed his version of math — the "true universal math" — in an enlightening new Rolling Stone profile. As the Empire star puts it: "If Pythagoras was here to see it, he would lose his mind. Einstein, too! Tesla!"

It's called Terryology.

Terryology goes back to Howard's college days. The future actor was studying chemical engineering at Pratt — but dropped out when he realized that he fundamentally disagreed with his professors about the basics of math. The argument focused on the simple equation of one times one.

"How can it equal one?" Howard asked Rolling Stone, and the universe. "If one times one equals one that means that two is of no value because one times itself has no effect. One times one equals two because the square root of four is two, so what's the square root of two? Should be one, but we're told it's two, and that cannot be."

Good thing Howard didn't need that engineering degree. He eventually made his way up in Hollywood, receiving an Oscar nomination for Hustle & Flow. He seemed unstoppable — until stories about Howard being difficult to work with, coupled with an increasing public awareness of his history of domestic violence, torpedoed his career.

"There's nothing worse than being a broke movie star," said the actor.

So he focused his attention on Terryology, devoting up to 17 hours a day to cutting up wires and plastic to form building-block-like contraptions he believes will bring truth to the universe. He's created his own symbols so no one can steal his ideas; patents are involved.

"This is the last century that our children will ever have been taught that one times one is one," he told Rolling Stone. "They won't have to grow up in ignorance. Twenty years from now, they'll know that one times one equals two. We're about to show a new truth. The true universal math. And the proof is in these pieces. I have created the pieces that make up the motion of the universe. together."

When the magazine came to Howard's home to observe him for the profile, Howard and his wife, Mira Pak, acted as if they were living harmoniously as a couple. It's since come to light that they've actually been living separately since August 2014.

If spending 17 hours a day messing with magnets in your living room, working to tear apart the laws of mathematics as we know it, can't keep a couple together, what hope for love even is there?