PROOF INFINITY DOES NOT EXIST! Not even ONE type
in [Math]
|
From: Nam Nguyen on 11 Jul 2010 02:03 Marshall wrote: > On Jul 10, 10:38 pm, Nam Nguyen <namducngu...(a)shaw.ca> wrote: >> K_h wrote: >>> "Nam Nguyen" <namducngu...(a)shaw.ca> wrote in message >>> news:MTSZn.2663$Bh2.125(a)newsfe04.iad... >>>> K_h wrote: >>>>> Mathematical truth exists. >>>> Sure. In your mind for example! >>> And also outside of the human mind. >> Did you mean _physically outside of human mind_ ? That's very bizarre to say >> of mathematical abstractions that human thinks of. No? >> > > Just an FYI for K_h, Nam is a complete buffoon and you > should not feel the least bit compelled to respond to his > nonsense. As I'm sure is already clear from the above. You must have agreed with K_h that "Mathematical truth exists ... outside of the human mind", because you don't seem to be able to recognize and gave a technical critique such a nonsense, right? Of course _that's all Marshall could utter in technical matters_ in the foundation: _idiotic babbling and attacks_. -- ---------------------------------------------------- There is no remainder in the mathematics of infinity. NYOGEN SENZAKI ----------------------------------------------------
From: Transfer Principle on 11 Jul 2010 02:54 On Jul 9, 6:22 am, Wolf K <weki...(a)sympatico.ca> wrote: > IOW, you stopped thinking around grade 5 or 6. Wolf K.'s reference to grades 5-6 here is interesting, since this is around the age that students are required to refer to infinitary concepts. For example, according to the Common Core Standards for Mathematics, Grades 6-8: 6.EE Expressions and Equations 8. Write an inequality of the form x > c or x < c to represent a constraint or a condition in a real-world or mathematical problem. Recognize that inequalities of the form x > c or x < c have _infinitely_many_solutions_; represent solutions of such inequalities on number line diagrams. (emphasis mine) 7.NS The Number System 2d. Convert a rational number to a decimal using long division; know that the decimal form of a rational number terminates in 0s or eventually repeats. 8.EE Expressions and Equations 7a. Give examples of linear equations in one variable with one solution, _infinitely_many_solutions_, or no solution. (emphasis mine) I give the (controversial, here in the U.S.) Common Core Standards rather than my own state's as in order to avoid leaving out the other 49 states. But then again, this is an international audience. I see that Wolf K. has a Canadian email address, while I know that Herc is an Australian. I believe that Canadians enter the sixth grade at around the same age that Americans do, but I don't know about Australia's age grouping. So Wolf K. accuses Herc of having stopped thinking since he was 11 or 12, since this is the age at which one typically learns about infinity. But Wolf K.'s comment about the sixth grade becomes ironic when we juxtapose it with another comment that he makes in this very thread about that same grade level: > The dictionary records what the dictionary maker figures people mean > when they use words. The dictionary doesn't stipulate anything, even > though many people (still dazed by the nonsense passed off as "grammar > in grade 6) believe that the dictionary tells you waht words "really" mean. Aha! So Wolf K. considers dictionary definitions to be "the nonsense passed off as 'grammar' in grade 6" in the exact same way that Herc considers infinity to be the nonsense passed off as mathematics in grade 6. Yet Wolf K. accuses Herc of having stopped thinking in grade 6, since the latter rejects "there are infinitely many numbers," which he should've learned about back in grade 6. Then, why can't I accuse Wolf K. of having stopped thinking in grade 6, since Wolf K. rejects "dictionary definitions are _the_ definition," which _he_ should've learned about back in grade 6? After all, what's good for the goose is good for the gander! But I don't believe that Wolf stopped thinking in grade 6 just because he disagrees with his sixth grade teacher. Instead, I believe that Wolf is a descriptivist -- i.e., someone who believes that it's how people use a word in real life that determines what _the_ definition of a word is, rather than what some dictionary _prescribes_ the definition to be. Likewise, Herc didn't stop thinking when he was 11 or 12 just because he disagrees with his teacher. Instead, I believe that Herc is a finitist -- i.e., someone who believes that the only sets that exist are finite -- since real life deals with finite objects -- rather than the sets that some axioms _prescribe_ to exist. Rather than stopped thinking, Wolf _started_ thinking that what he learned is wrong and became a descriptivist. Similarly, rather than stopped thinking, Herc _started_ thinking that what he learned is wrong and became a finitist.
From: Curt Welch on 11 Jul 2010 12:11 "K_h" <KHolmes(a)SX729.com> wrote: > In regular arithmetic 4+5=9 is true but Curt was claiming > that there is some tiny chance it could be wrong in regular arithmetic. > Curt is obviously wrong there. If you limit the scope of the measure of "truth" to "in regular arithmetic" then you are correct, it's an absolute truth. I was not talking about "in regular arithmetic". I was talking about "in life". I was talking about reality vs the fairy tale stories we make up called "in regular arithmetic". In the stories we make up, we pretend that absolute truth can and does exist, and all of math takes place in that fairy tale land. It's highly useful and important to do math under that belief. But what's invalid, is to assume the lies we use to do math, actually happen (or exist) in the real world. I can produce language that describes a reality where pink flying elephants with no mass exist. But no one is going to get confused about whether the reality I am talking about actually exists in our universe or not. It's just a story I made up by taking things that do exist in our universe, and combining them in a way that has never been seen, and which is highly unlikely to ever be seen in our universe. That's how the idea of absolute truth was created as well. But yet, somehow, many people get so engrossed in the stores we make up as we talk the language of mathematics, they start to believe the world of mathematics is not just a story, but that it actually exists. That it not only exists, but that it "lives on" even after all the story tellers die off. It is as if they believe the pink elephants exist and live on forever, even after everyone that's heard the story has died off. -- Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/ curt(a)kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/
From: George Greene on 11 Jul 2010 12:15 On Jul 10, 12:31 pm, Wolf K <weki...(a)sympatico.ca> wrote: > The dictionary records what the dictionary maker figures people mean > when they use words. True. > The dictionary doesn't stipulate anything, False. > even though many people (still dazed by the nonsense passed off as "grammar > in grade 6) believe that the dictionary tells you what words "really" mean. We are not going to fight the prescriptive/descriptive battle all over again here in this thread. That battle long predates us and it really is a philosophical battle. OF COURSE the dictionary prescribes. It cannot ENFORCEABLY prescribe, but neither can anybody else. There is a sense in which it doesn't even matter if stipulations are enforceable. You may choose to believe if you like that words don't really mean things. Good luck "THINKING" that, and thinking is in scare-quotes for a reason. The obvious problem with your skepticism about whether "words really mean" things is that it doesn't cope too well with fuzziness about the meaning of "really" or of "mean".
From: George Greene on 11 Jul 2010 12:16
On Jul 10, 12:31 pm, Wolf K <weki...(a)sympatico.ca> wrote: > (still dazed by the nonsense passed off as "grammar > in grade 6) No farting in church. This is sci.logic. Even if grammar isn't all that coherent for NATURAL languages, it is still very much necessary&relevant for computer programming languages, formal languages, and logic. Around HERE, what you call "nonsense" was a noble attempt to get people to think straight and write clearly -- even if it got a little Procrustean at times. |