Is there a largest number? Surely, numbers can only go as high as there is information in the physical universe.
I can imagine something going 300,000,001kph, but that doesn't mean anything will ever go that fast.
Is the concept of infinity fallacious?
Other urls found in this thread:
>Is there a largest number?
No
I wonder who could be behind this post.
Information can't be compressed infinitely. Eventually, we would run out of material in the universe to represent or simulate a higher number.
When infinity was explained to me, I was told to imagine the largest number and then add one.
What happens when you physically cannot add one?
(Assuming the universe is finite)
>Wildburger pls go.
>Is the concept of infinity fallacious?
Depends, in physics we use the idea of infinity and infinitesimals because it's a convenient approximation to reality (leaving aside the debate of whether these things actually exist in nature), and the results from them agree with experiment to high precision. In mathematics they don't care if infinity is a real, tangible, physical object (what ever that might mean).
>Wildburger pls go.
Who is this?
You're all idiots. There is a largest number: 1.
let n be the largest number. since n is at least 1, multiply both sides n >= 1 by n to get n^2 >= n
but n is the largest number, so n >= n^2
therefore n^2=n, so n=1
I, too, read SMBC.
>Surely, numbers can only go as high as there is information in the physical universe
define information
define physical universe
define go
define high
define numbers
I don;t know about Jellyfish, but it is not true of lobsters -- they eventually reach a point where their shell no longer sheds properly, and they die.
I think the concept of "limited" is fallacious.
Time and space but the same; and confusing most people because it's what they were taught to believe and they're incapable of learning (only of being taught as a dog that sometimes does the correct thing but never all the time; cannot change, grow, mature...by feeling and empathy).
That's some good fuckery. I'll add it to my list of flawed logic
...
>I always thought it would be cool to develop a field where the class of an object could change.
Number's don't need to be rendered to conceptually exist. Pi is more precise that can be rendered in our universe, as is 1. That is unless future people figure out some neat infinity within the universe hacks.
Well, there are only 18 digits, so I guess 18.
The logic isn't flawed, the hypothesis is.
>define information
information
>define physical universe
physical universe
>define go
go
>define high
high
>define numbers
numbers
There you go. Q.E.D.
Stupid answer to stupid question.
>portion of one
So in order to produce "e" you would have to divide a pumpkin infinitely many times?
God, I think you are wrong. No wonder everybody hates you. *unsheats fedora
Thumb is not a finger.
English is a dumb language. Why would you make a distinction like that?
Does no one want to call out the fact that OP said 3 x 10^8 km per hour rather meters/second
Why write out the number when you're using the wrong units anyway?
getting a piece of pumpkin to be exactly ((e-2)*100)% of the original pumpkin is just as hard as getting a piece of pumpkin that's exactly half
no infinite slicing needed zeno
What the fuck is this preoccupation people have with thinking that is it somehow "bad" or "wrong" to consider things that can't physically exist? They always bring up infinity, but seem to realize this also applies to irrationals and hell, even most rationals of sufficiently high denominator.
never seem*
irrationals can very well physically exist
like?
do you mind backing up that statement you made?
diagonal of a square with sides of length 1
circumference of a circle with diameter 1
>Surely, numbers can only go as high as there is information in the physical universe.
Graham's number is much, much more than the "information in the Universe" and that was used in a proof. So I doubt it.
'1' what?
Can someone explain Graham's number to a plebian like me? I don't understand arrow notation so it makes little sense
can it be written in standard form?
The representation of Graham's number is, however, rather easily stated, which is why we don't have trouble dealing with it. I would extend that guy's definition somewhat.
Since the universe can only contain a finite amount of information, the "largest number" is the largest number capable of being expressed by the most compact notation/representation taking up all of that information.
1 times the distance light travels in a vacuum during ( 9192631770 / 299792458 ) periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom
if i have a base-pi number system then make a line of length 1
i have disproved your argument
what, 1 in base pi is still 1
>can it be written in standard form?
No. It would take more space than the universe.
Think about what you're saying though. Abstraction renders your point moot because we can always come up with a new way to represent a number. Imagine we used every single possible symbol and combination of symbols from the planck length to the Universe itself as a numberical symbol to count ever higher, and the only symbol we have left is &. We'll call this number &. We have no more symbols left, we've ever possible atom configuation to represent numbers. Well that's OK, the Earth is a curved suface, so we can travel around it an infinite number of times. We can represent the next number "&+1" by writing & and travelling around the Earth once. "&+2" can be represented by writing "&", travelling around the Earth once and then again. And we just keep doing this for infinity. We'll never run out of ways to represent numbers.
this is why sqrt(2) can not physically exist
in fact the natural numbers do not physically exist either, there is no '1' that i can hand you or manipulate. there are measurements such as 1 metre etc. but with this reasoning any real number x would physically exist by just taking a line of length y metres and coming up with a new measurement system (say 'netres') where 1 netre = y/x metres. then your physical line of length y metres is also a line of x netres, but this doesn't mean the real number x physically exists
I thought the whole meme was that certain numbers exist but once they get too large they don't exist anymore, which the original post I replied to stated
if you look at it like you do the whole discussion is kinda pointless since then no numbers "exist"
Numbers do exist though. The square of 2 is used, in the A series of paper to give an example. Therefore, it exists. I mean, you can argue whether they exist or not in a metaphysical sense, but the argument that must come first is "what does it mean to exist?", well clearly the square root of 2 does exist, and it makes the argument for its existance everytime you scale the A-series.
That's still not infinite, though. you said that you enumerated every possible combination of symbols that could fit in the universe save for those that contain & (this is finite). Then going and making every combination that involves & doesn't suddenly make it infinite any more than any of the previous combinations. And suddenly allowing "overwriting" by calling "& + 2" "&" makes the whole system fall apart because now you have no idea what someone is referring to with a single symbol.
>The square of 2 is used, in the A series of paper to give an example. Therefore, it exists
So if I talk about how you had thousands of sexual escapes with other men, it actually happened? Wonderful logic.
>Then going and making every combination that involves & doesn't suddenly make it infinite any more
I chose & arbitrarily, when I said every possible combination was used, I meant the "&+" series, "&-" series, and every possible way to write "&" withabsolutely anything other than just having "&" on its own. I'm only using "&+1" for your convienience, in this hypothetic universe we couldn't use that because "&+1" would have already been used. & + 1 trip around Earth going to infinity would be the only way to describe it.
You're making an argument for that situation's existance, which I can deny. You can't deny sqrt2 existance because you use it everyday.
>& + 1 trip around Earth going to infinity would be the only way to describe it.
I think I understand what you're saying, but it involves time now, rather than just a series of symbols, like some formula which means something and then every possible way to write out that formula ALL individually meaning something completely different, correct? In that case I suppose I would have to concede your points if we assume that time goes on forever.
Well of course you're right that we would eventually run out of time and space to write every number, but that doesn't discount their existance. It just means we don't have the resources to represent them. Pi is infinite, and you can prove it because you can't calculate its final number. Even with Graham's Number, which we physically could not represent in this Universe, we know it's last digit is 7. Can't do that with Pi, and yet Pi is something we use everyday.
Imagine an A4 paper that cover the surface of earth.
If one person starts to write a random number on it to fill all the paper, how many digits it would have?
Notations and shit aren't allowed
>if you look at it like you do the whole discussion is kinda pointless since then no numbers "exist"
that's why i said physically exist, which is the claim i was replying to
>The square of 2 is used, in the A series of paper to give an example. Therefore, it exists.
this is not clear at all, please elaborate
I am really just trying to push my shitty pun/joke based on the etymology of the word "digit".
search engine says the earth has 510,064,472 km^2 surface area, so assuming a digit covers 1 cm^2 on your piece of paper, you would get 510,064,472 km^2 / 1cm^2 = 5.10064472 × 10^18 digits
for comparison of magnitude, 10^18 seconds is 32 billion years
So how big are these numbers? Centimeter^2 seems alright so we'll go with that. Earth's surface area is about 500 million km^2. There are 10 billion cm^2 in a km^2. So you can have 500 million x 10 billion digits, or 5 quintillion.
The ratio between A4 paper to A3 paper, and from A3 to A2 and so on is defined as sqrt2.
en.wikipedia.org
>have the same aspect ratio, 1:√2, at least to within the rounding to whole numbers of millimetres
not a real sqrt(2)
It is a sqrt(2), if wasn't the ratio wouldn't work.
Then what is the most amount of ones measured in apples that you can fit in a basket whose volume is composed of the most amount of ones in cubic mm?
That begs the question can God possess so many apples that even he can't count them?