Professor Sean Carroll talks about the simplest numbers

[@MrManultra]

using the word "number" and "infinity" together goes against everything in my body.

[@thomaskaldahl196]

We usually avoid calling infinity a number, but there are specific circumstances when infinity is best described as being a number. Certainly it is not a real number, not even a complex number for that matter, but in some "number systems", infinity is a member. Some instances include: Projective Geometries, The Riemann Sphere, The Extended Reals, Wheel Algebras, and probably more

[@smoko7113]

Wait until you find out there are smaller and bigger infinities

[@MrManultra]

@@smoko7113 I am no stranger to the hebrew alphabet. They are still no numbers.

[@smoko7113]

@@MrManultra and fractions

[@noahhughes127]

@@Razlin what exactly was disproved? Is he not talking about whether a set is countably infinite or not?

[@blueboy189]

And this is why Physicists aren't Mathematicians.

[@rhobx]

And your comment tells us that you're neither

[@blueboy189]

@@rhobx - please explain how.

[@Daniel-ih4zh]

​@@blueboy189 because you clearly missed his point.

[@jarredsmith1509]

Many of the best mathematicians ever were primarily physicists

[@well_said7846]

​@@jarredsmith1509 Best physicists ever were great mathematicians. The other way round is slightly less true.

[@derekjenkins1878]

He starts every first date that way. He goes on a lot of first dates. Infinity first dates. Zero second dates. Call him the singularity.

[@awwomegrasscalledalfalfa6437]

damn

[@lukastaken]

Sheesh, call him an ambulance first.

[@AsceticFocus]

Underrated comment

[@nonsugarfree]

Underrated comment

[@Destroyer-hs8pi]

Underrated comment

[@kozomi_]

Once I’ve earned $318 my boss may as well hand me infinity bucks

[@SarahHarty-mh3pm]

😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@jangohemmes352]

It's called 'chicken counting' in programming. When writing code, only 3 cases matter: - There's no thing - There's a thing - There are things

[@jneal4154]

Yes, but that isn't what he said, and that's not what the audience understood, making the statement misleading at best. I don't know who this is, but they lose all credibility trying to use infinity as a cardinal the way they did. "You might as well have an infinity of things" is just dumb in this context. He could have said this any number of ways and been fine, but instead he decided to sensationalize things and since the audience aren't mathematicians, what is understood by the statement is certainly false. Infinity isn't a number in the reals. It's not even a number in the hyperreals. In projective geometry (i.e. Reimmann Sphere) infinity CAN have a defined point in your field, but he's not talking about conformal mapping, he's talking about the cardinality of sets and his statement makes him look stupid. Confidently stupid, but those are the worst kind of stupid...

[@waterbottle6644]

Yeah I don't understand what's making people lose their minds in the comments. This seems fairly intuitive when dealing with real life shit like basically all science except for really abstract math. You have nothing, a thing, or many things. For simplicity you might as well not differentiate between 78, 254, 7 092, 1 932 543, and infinity. Which is exactly what we do everywhere in physics when dealing with large systems (thermodynamic limit baby 😎) Actually I know why people are getting pissy. Just a bunch of "gifted" little kids thinking they can dunk an astrophysicist with their astounding knowledge of "infinity isn't really a number" and completely miss the actual point being made.

[@jneal4154]

@@waterbottle6644 I think people "lose their minds" because they are tired of pop-sci pseudo math that leaves people believing in stupid shit like "0 was a forbidden number" or "1 + 2 + 3 .... = -1/12” or "All numbers above 1 might as well be infinity". Telling lies about math because the speaker thinks the truth isn't sensational enough is still lying. While there is a sense in which these statements hold true, those aren't how the speaker presented those ideas nor is that how the audience will receive it, making it more harmful than good. It doesn't matter what the speaker INTENDED. How the audience receives the message is the only matter of consequence. Martin Luther didn't intend to start protestantism. Oops. Oh well, that's how people received your 95 Thesus. Oppenheimer didn't indent on contributing to war with his invention of dynamite. Oops! Oh, well. That's what humanity did with it! It doesn't matter if the speaker is "correct" in the specific context they are considering if effectively everyone in the audience understood a complete falsehood instead. I'm guessing those "gifted little kids" you despise see something you don't. You sound like a moronic jock, whining about how people smarter than you won't let you just hear what you want to hear. 😅 You seem to be arguing that math doesn't need to be rigorous or that glossing over the substantive facts is fine in STEM. 😬 You really want to argue about what math or science is from THAT position? Clearly you can't actually substantively contribute to the conversation, so why don't you pipe down and quietly spectate? You're supremely stupid if you think math and science wasn't built on the back of corrections and mistakes being made by the brightest minds in the world. A real astrophysicist would be the first to tell you that they get things wrong all the time, or characterize them poorly. The only people that think celebrity scientists are infallible or above reproach are the scientifically illiterate. 🙂

[@jjpswfc]

​@@waterbottle6644 yeah but the point is you DO have to differentiate all of those from infinity, but not necessarily from each other. In the vast majority of examples in maths, things go wrong if you treat infinity as a number. Before you say I'm also one of those wannabe "gifted" kids, I am qualified to comment on this. Maybe not if he was a maths professor.

[@bokchoiman]

Anything greater than 1 is a combination of 1's and 0's. But binary cannot explain infinity which is why its separate.

[@fahrenheit2101]

And he just broke every mathematical bone in my body

[@lukaswalker2342]

Wow he actually mentioned the the most difficult numbers

[@raexhii]

“Hi, i would like two coffees please” “Sure, infinity coffees coming right up”

[@anttonhammarskjold8233]

0 and infinity are actually very complex. The concept of 0 wasn't introduced to the world until 100-300 AD. We had other numbers well before that.

[@jolanmoussier9267]

He was speaking about algorithmic complexity to encrypt a number

[@user-nz2ct2xb8r]

Not only that, but infinity was never used until calculus was invented in the late 1600s

[@ZxZNebula]

@@user-nz2ct2xb8rdoesn’t make it complex tho

[@isthatyoucedric7854]

The concept of null is something even dogs can understand. I don't know how you're defining "the concept of 0" but what you're saying doesn't seem to make sense.

[@jolanmoussier9267]

@@isthatyoucedric7854 like the number 0 were literally made late like by the arabic

[@jayworldjs]

Infinity shouldn't be a number because a number is definitive and infinity is not. It is a concept. You can't have an infinity of something. We are absolute beings.

[@janmeeus3380]

Generally infinity isn’t defined as a number, but it’s absolutely possible. Remember that mathematics doesn’t care about anything in the real world. Mathematics starts from a set of definitions from which the rest is derived. All numbers can be defined as sets. If you’d like you can define infinity as the set of all the natural numbers or the set of all the rational numbers (as often done when constructing the real numbers with dedekind cuts).

[@eyadfareh9340]

Google hyperreal numbers

[@popackard]

Aren’t all numbers concepts?

[@janmeeus3380]

@@popackard In a philosophical sense they might be, but in a mathematical sense they are not concepts (neither is infinity). If you're interested you can look up a bit of set theory and, most importantly, the peano axioms. Everything in pure mathematics is defined rigorously. Nothing is taken for granted or to be understood naturally. One of my profs once got really angry saying we didn't even know what numbers actually were.

[@starfishsystems]

The problem with regarding infinity as a number is that it can't be TREATED as a number. To give a simple example, the arithmetic operators don't work for infinity in the same way as they do for finite numbers.

[@NikHuhr]

"Once you have 300 things, you might as well have infinity things" - Mathematicians

[@geegeetomlinson2316]

I really think its just this one moron mathematician saying that. No-one who has more than one brain cell would make such a claim

[@EverythingAlwaysGoesMyWay]

Goes to bank with $300 -me

[@jjpswfc]

Nahhhhh bro he a physicist, I'm not claiming him lmaoo

[@JustBrowsing23]

“When you are talking about 300 things you might as well talk about infinity things” except for money😂

[@citofire9985]

Interesting to see how no one is getting the message behind what he is saying and just focusing on the literal message

[@TheAgentJesus]

It really makes it clear how few people actually have any reasonably extensive experience with mathematics lol

[@rareszbucea]

What is he saying?😊

[@thecrazygamertarun5265]

So what is he saying

[@TheAgentJesus]

@rareszbucea sorry, I remember wanting to reply to this but not having the time to! The way I would phrase what he's talking about has everything to do with the structural *uses* of numbers, and how those use cases are reflected in this notion of the three "simple" (hyperreal/surreal/projective real) numbers: 0, or the null/vanishing/additive identity entity, 1 or the unity/probability/multiplicative identity entity, and *infinity* or the cyclic/inductive/"potential identity" (my own term and definitely being used tongue-in-cheek - i.e. not rigorously lol - so take it with a grain of salt) entity...any other numbers on the number line - if NOT on, say, the complex plane - are just going to be some "version of these": of which essentially all, it's worth noting, will be *scaled versions of 1* - this essentially the definition of 1, in fact, in some sense; though a somewhat incomplete one. I would be remiss if I didn't point to 3blue1brown's excellent and by now rightly celebrated Essence of Línear Algebra as a visual/conceptual aid for understanding what I'm getting at here, particularly the sections where he talks about null spaces and spans, plus of course the critical one (I believe it's the third) about matrices *as linear transformations*

[@jneal4154]

​@@TheAgentJesus He's not talking about conformal maps. He's not even talking about group identities. He's literally talking about how many things you have (cardinality), which by definition is the additive group. |X| \in Z+ Z+ \in \R \infty in \R If he had said that the set of all sets U can only have one of threes possible cardinalities (0, 1, >1) then he would have been fine. Instead he said you can have an infinity of things if you don't have 1 or 0 and that makes him sound supremely dumb. I think you're bending over backwards to give this guy's statemens some semblance of rationality, but as he presented the idea, he sounds dumb as hell and it's not the first time I've seen this particular person in my feed saying something egregiously false for the sake of sensationalism. Misrepresenting math so it's fun, but false is a disservice to math. 3Blue1Brown does an EXCELLENT job of teaching for exactly the reasons this guy does a fucking terrible job of it. Grant cares enough to double check his work and will tell you if he's waving his hand or oversimplifying things. This dude talks out of his ass, loosely based on real concepts, and then does fuck all to clarify his over-reaching, handwaving or gross simplifications. Infinity is absolutely not a real number and talking about cardinality (the number of things) in the context of "which numbers exist" is just plain stupid. These are the kinds of people that spout sacred geometry BS and then try to have a serious discussion with an algebraic geometrist. Don't justify his bad statements by trying to find a way that they can be interpreted as anything but made up pop-sci BS only loosely based on real math.

[@MichaelJanzer]

Me negotiating my salary

[@ruidritabeek9167]

Goated comment. I don’t typically laugh out loud like that

[@jacobglidewell1883]

For those of you thinking infinity is not a number, it depends on what your definition of a "number" is. In an algebraic sense, infinity makes no sense. You cant add it or multiply things by it naturally to keep a consistent structure with the rest of the numbers (google a ring for more on this). However, in an analytic sense, infinity makes perfect sense for the reason he is describing (google the extended real numbers for more on this).

[@vannersp]

I use this principle all the time in software development. In computing they are termed the three rational numbers. If you can have more than one, it doesn't matter how many you prepare for - if it can reach that number, chances are it will exceed it.

[@exotic80]

Mind giving a quick example where this? Kinda curious on where you would use it

[@Hamza-qs7ez]

bump

[@burns83]

“The biggest number isn’t INFINITY, its UNIVERSE” -Daniel Hernández P

[@beckinfidelis3916]

Omg 😂 he sounds almost exactly like Alan Alda! 🤣🤣 Trying to figure out why I felt like I recognized his voice.

[@analysistime9799]

thats you nailed it.... these three number constitutes our whole university

[@leonunyabusiness6966]

Infinity is the least simple "number" there is and zero is a part of several equations/numbers that result in indeterminants.

[@casualfool122]

Calling the concept of infinity a mathematical number is melting my brain

[@jneal4154]

Good. I'd say that indicates you have decent mathematical reasoning skills. Your cognitive dissonance is warranted. Infinity is not a number and the word is misused to hell by whoever the fuck this pop-sci/pop-math persona is.

[@cmar6461]

Then you need to learn some more advanced math such as analysis. Your brain will melt even more.

[@vikingthedude]

Its okay your brian evolved to hunt and shit and eat. Not think big number. Just be monke

[@casualfool122]

@@vikingthedude infinity isnt a specific mathematical value, its j the symbol for "never ending."

[@orionkenya1]

@@casualfool122infinity can be a number if you define it as the set of all real numbers or natural numbers.

[@pinkwooty150]

Lol literally the two most diffcult numbers. Had a good chuckle over that one.

[@moonliteX]

to me, 0, 1, and infinity are the weirdest.

[@seemyhodge7405]

Wow, now I can say that, I have an infinite amount of cash in my bank account and still be broke AF…

[@rap5374]

It’s strange because in the beginning we say there was nothing. Then there was one thing and then out of nowhere, that one thing created infinity. Infinity, as far as we know.

[@0-Nothing]

How beautiful is this comment 😍

[@jolanmoussier9267]

Forst comment that understand infinity ahahaj

[@user-up7yw9vp3f]

Sean Carroll is my favorite living human being ! I watch and download every lecture of his I can get hold of !

[@rodnunsky]

In my mind, this logic is devised that 1,0,infinity are fundamental numbers because 1 is a principle something whereas 0 is nothing and infinity is everything by the fact that the limit of 1/x = inf when x->0

[@SasquatchMushrooms]

He’s right, then I should have ‘infinity’ dollars in my bank account 😂

[@Brandon-dy8us]

Damn I must have infinity dollars in my bank account

[@Abon963]

You mean you took 1/12 dollars loan from bank?

[@abbylutz1927]

Lmao

[@onolicious9147]

Think of it like this: You get 0 dollars, 300 dollars or infinity dollars to live the rest of your life. Suddenly becomes real practical and meaningful.

[@martinvonlanthen1427]

If you have infinity dollar, you’ve just ruined your own currency

[@shiinondogewalker2809]

@@martinvonlanthen1427 you have also created a black hole

[@giddycupcake5231]

In life it's me, you, and everyone else.

[@marsbanditnyc9043]

Infinity is simple when you think of it like the opposite of zero, $1 of 0 days is the same as $0 for 1 day and $1 for ♾️ days is the same as $♾️ for 1 day. It’s just the endless absence of value vs the endless sum of value.

[@captaintuna1323]

I find it interesting that 0 and infinity didn’t exist until relatively recently in math history

[@jneal4154]

Both of these statements are false and I'm betting it was Up and Atom that gave you this impression. 0 and ∞ (as concepts not the symbols themselves) go back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, which predate the Romans. In reality, both concepts have probably been used for so long that we can't possibly know their first use. 0, as a symbol, is from Arabic and first found use roughly 2000 years ago, but the concept of nothing vs something goes back to the dawn of humanity. Infinity was also a major part of heated philosophical and mathematical debate by the ancient Greeks. Look up Zeno's paradox sometime. Both 0 and infinity have been around for a very long time and Up and Atom should have talked with a real mathematician before publishing their pop-math fantasy.

[@TheGoobsters]

Do you actually think cavemen had no fucking idea that they had no water left in their cup?

[@mattysee24]

Why does this have inspirational music attached?

[@IamKnucks]

This is when you spend so much time in your field that you move to a different level and the reality the rest of us experience is just a little bit further away

[@steevehoyoufat9155]

I made a mistake and paused it at the beginning when he said three the first time and man he looked derpy. Lol 😆 🤣 😂

[@tofu-munchingCoalition.ofChaos]

Interesting view of a physicist. I can see what he says from multiple perspectives. But from a empirical science perspective (interested in predictive power of models) the complexity relevant for a parameter in your theory is just one bit usually (more precisely measured by things like the VC-dimension or the Kolmogorov-Rademacher complexity) that goes into the predictive power estimates. And that bit is independent of the value of the parameter.

[@SuicideRedemption100]

Intresting take, I think he's talking about representation there. When representing 318, you have to say within what, that's why you need a lot of bits or you can build models boiled down to nothing 0/something 1/many things infinity. Mathematically, it's not a mystery that finite groups display weird behaviors and it does come up in physics ( Moonshine )

[@tofu-munchingCoalition.ofChaos]

@@SuicideRedemption100 I'm not sure what you wanted to say. Could you make an example?

[@tofu-munchingCoalition.ofChaos]

@@SuicideRedemption100 Nevermind. I think I get what you want to say. Example models with X input, Y output: Y=0 (nothing) Y=X (something) Y=infty (many things) are simpler than the model Y=318*X or Y=36728003844*X. This is correct. But it's not very relevant because the model Y=a*X (a being a parameter determined by data) includes all models above and has as much complexity as the model Y=X. Even if the parameter a turns out to be 36728003844 (which needs a lot of bits to be represented), this model is as simple as Y=X. I don't claim it's obvious that the complexity of a typical parametric model is so low. But it is (statistical learning theory). I was surprised by that fact. Had to check the math to believe it.

[@unsure0fflifem913]

sir you used the three most interesting and complex numbers. those 3 are infinitely fascinating.(pun intended)

[@mastervibes2296]

1 is not that interesting, there was 1 apple on the table, wow dies that sound interesting, no it doesn't

[@qlutch2998]

​@@mastervibes2296 i mean thats not how it works but yeah 1 isnt as interesting as 0 or infinity

[@cmar6461]

Your lack of understanding doesn’t change anything

[@flameguy3416]

I have 6$ in my bank account, but it is technically infinity because why should we stop counting? And my taxes are 0%

[@celestialknight2339]

Because the IRS has infinite power 😂😂😂

[@taksojdet]

For some reason this is really interesting and makes sense.

[@keithgaffaney8061]

Does anyone realize what impact the postulate of mathematics has on our species. Our gift is that we observe.

[@Guitarisforgrins]

Nope. Only you because you're so special... 🙄

[@keithgaffaney8061]

@@Guitarisforgrins I like your reply. I love music. I play guitar. Be well and that.

[@Mr.RueBean]

I think a good way to explain this is having more than you need. Let’s say hypothetically, you need trees, and the trees are growing faster than you can ever cut them down. You essentially have infinite trees. It’s less important to know precisely how many trees there are and more important to know you’ll never run out. That’s my 0.02

[@woodworkinggunnybear581]

There is an infinty contained between 0 and 1, making infinity a set of ever increasing numbers, not a number in and of itself.

[@asparkdeity8717]

Well when talking about the extended complex plane and Möbius maps, the whole image of the map is solely identified under the mapping of 0,1 and ∞ . They are by far the 3 most important elements in the field of complex analysis

[@jersefrenzer1265]

Based on what I see in this youtube short, I would bet my left nut he is not talking about mobius maps or the extended complex plane.

[@fritz4468]

I thought infinity is not a number, but rather a concept.

[@noodle7788]

correct

[@cmar6461]

@@noodle7788incorrect

[@cmar6461]

It can be treated as a number. Google “extended reals”

[@noodle7788]

@@cmar6461 oh cool, thanks for letting me know

[@seemlyme]

♾️ is not number but concept!

[@seyyednaser7674]

Exactly like positive zero

[@RoseGoldKR]

@@seyyednaser7674 0 is a number actually :)

[@janmeeus3380]

I say it’s a number. Definitions, definitions…

[@hitbox7422]

You can have zero, one or infinite sets of numbers, therefore you could also have one set of infinity or infinite sets of infinity. That's what describes it as a number.

[@Daniel-Davies-Gonstead-Student]

What isn't a concept? Isn't "reality" (or more accurately, our concept of reality) just our brains perception of whatever all of this is?

[@Ahmed-iam]

I dont get why but I found it relaxing

[@calvinwingerd]

318 is so many little bits, but infinity, ez money baby we get there in one count

[@superspecialty5169]

How is infinity a number? 🙄🧐🙃

[@janmeeus3380]

It could be

[@Aryan-oc2zh]

Studying Limits and Continuity and these three are nightmarish stuff dude !

[@OmP-sr5zs]

But it is the easiest in calc 1 I don’t know about the higher stuff

[@Aryan-oc2zh]

@@OmP-sr5zs I am talking about the Indian syllabus and here I prepared for entrance exams and I couldn't solve a single question of LCD in Advanced exam

[@OmP-sr5zs]

Bro I have tried all advance and mains questions limits is easy

[@Aryan-oc2zh]

@@OmP-sr5zs hey Bravo to you ! It's not my cup of tea . I prefer to end my day by doing some good organic chemistry

[@jolanmoussier9267]

I think he said 0 and 1 are "simple" because of the fact that you can encrypt them easily with 1 bit and infinity is simple in the way that if you get 1 and the + operator. You that you can get as far as you want so you get infinity even if you know pretty much nothing else about others number like 328

[@EyesofOd]

In a second year physics class I had a professor who would put something up and ask the answer...nobody wanted to look dumb and answer so he just said, I'll let you in on a secret...if i ask you for the answer without time to do calculations it's always 0, 1, or infinity.

[@johnfairweather9188]

There is one language rule that is simple: “there is” is singular, and “there are” is plural. It’s not that complicated. Learn it.

[@mastervibes2296]

English grammar is nonsense, just a bunch of pointless rules that we insist on following for no reason. Do not try to suggest that English grammar rules are even comparable to mathematics. Mathematics is a pattern in nature, English is just a random mixture of Latin, German and Gaelic that never had a proper revision in history to make it more uniform and logical like Italian with an alphabet that actually makes sense. English is full of words with the same spelling but completely random pronunciation and silent letters that no one understands, English is trash.

[@michaelorman1205]

Use that logic with an economist or an accountant. Yeah...I have $300, so that's the same as infinity dollars right?

[@timonschneider6290]

Dudes a cosmologist. Ofc an accountant would not agree but he has an interesting Perspektive

[@michaelorman1205]

@@timonschneider6290 I was being facetious because it does not make sense. 300 is not the same as infinity, no matter what perspective you take.

[@cmar6461]

As an economist, I can tell you that you didn’t understand what he’s saying

[@michaelorman1205]

@cmar6461 As an econonimist, you also do not know when someone is being facetious. Stick to your numbers buddy.

[@cmar6461]

@@michaelorman1205 lol, I understood that you were being facetious. That doesn't get around the fact that you clearly don't understand what Carroll is saying here.

What's crazy is the infinity between 0 and 1.

[@Itachi-go3bz]

Yes!

[@Unknownz000]

Whats crazier is when you take the infinity between 0 and 1 and compare it to the decimal infinity between 0 and infinity. Basically an infinity infinitely larger than an infinity. Legit just an acid trip

@@Unknownz000 wait, I was already considering the infinity between 0 and 1 an "uncountable infinity" which represent the infinite precision of decimal values less than 1. This is of course larger than "countable infinity" which is the set of all integers. Because essentially between each integer is another infinity. Are we talking about the same thing? Or is there one extra degree of infinity. I was under the impression it was only these two, but I'm not a mathematician. Just a curious person. 😅

[@Unknownz000]

@Papa Jefé it's an extra degree. Since between 0 and 1, there are infinite decimals. Between 0 and infinity, there are infinitely more decimals than between 0 and 1. It's basically like comparing only whole numbers like 1,2,3 to literally every single number ever. even 0.0000000000000001. Even though 1,2,3 till infinity is infinite. Every number ever is infinitely bigger. Since there's infinite combinations. It's a mind fuck ik.

[@zbrown0712]

This comes from a digital mindset. Mans hasn’t seen a watch before

[@mltn8890]

When "talking a lot and saying nothing" happens.

[@McTestFace]

Infinity is a concept not a number

[@tofu-munchingCoalition.ofChaos]

Depends on the number system you are using. There are multiple infinities in the hyperreal numbers. There are two infinities in the affinely extended real numbers and there is one infinity on the projectively extended real numbers.

[@MarkovChains223]

You just murdered every mathematician in the world.

[@user-le1oc9js4h]

Although infinity is not a number in common sense, there are a lot of applications where it is part of the number line. And there is no problem of considering it a number, it is just a special one, just like zero and one

[@GFJDean35]

"Infinity is not a number". Not quite right, there are multiple consistent ways of designating a number infinity, useful for different contexts. I swear that Professor Sean Carroll knows more than you if you are admitting you are still in high school

[@randallamik3230]

318 is a perfect number. My favorite engine is the Mopar 318.

[@michaelmicek]

User interface design is an example. Either some object is not included in the design (0 are allowed), or you can have that kind of object (1), or you can have multiple limited only by the resources of the machine, not your design.

[@danmiller4725]

Carroll is like Chance in Jersey Kosinski's book Being There. Amazing .

[@levirainville4136]

Another way of expressing this concept is: Something, Nothing, and Everything

[@humagator4049]

My brain cells are deteriorating 💀

[@tjollarna]

“0 isn’t a number. 0 is how we describe the lack of numbers. “

[@TimpossibleOne]

No. It's a number that represents the absolute lack of things in a category.

[@ruidritabeek9167]

@@TimpossibleOnenice rebuttal

[@aReallySwellGuy]

I LOVE James Woods

[@mansionoflostspiritsrecords]

They are simple because basically ever one of them could describe same concept depending on context

[@jamesonrichards5105]

it's like how people comprehend only three percentages, 0%, 50%, and 100%. anything else just gets rounded to these percentages.

[@rabarberellum1017]

Makes sense. Between 0 and 1 there are a infinity of possibilities, the rest is just extra.

[@Heizenberg32]

That is the voice of Alan Alda, my friend

[@anunknownknown]

Talk to Sean! 😮

[@jujuraft]

Well in set Theory just using 2 axioms we can deduce all the natural numbers from an empty set.

[@Tepalus]

"Nothing", "Something" and "Everything" basically

[@kaidenschmidt157]

Many people decisively saying infinity is a concept and not a number. Plain wrong. It is true that plenty of numbers are finite, but there is no objection to producing rigorous theories of infinite numbers. The philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell aided in the development of the theory of both infinite cardinals and infinite ordinals

[@littleturtle3400]

Everyone's talking about how infinty is not a number but the same could be applied to zero

[@benzebub6519]

Even if the universe isn't infinite, it is big and old enough to dwarf all of human existence. Therefore it may as well be infinite, to us.

[@felipeopazo8375]

2 is a hugely underapreciated number imo

[@TheFlorian5000]

There is nothing, there is something, there is everything

[@epicjason21]

If you want to take it a step further technically ther is a n infinite number of decimal point to every number, so 1.00001, 1.00002, etc

[@WilliamFord972]

It’s how physicists count: zero, one, many.

[@dasamont8274]

I feel like a more grounded explanation that comes from human comprehension is: Zero, One, Two, Three, Four, and Many. This is because humans are able to identify that there are up to four of something on sight, but for every +1 after 4 it takes another moment for the brain to recognize how many there are. It requires extra processingtime to see if there are 7 or 8 of something, but if they were clearly divided your brain would probably be able to see that there were 3+4 of the thing. This may also be the reason behind the "design philosophy" of Roman Numerals, because in true roman numerals there should never be more than 4 repeating symbols. You've got the obvious IIII to denote 4, which works because there are 4 lines, but you would not do IIIII, you would do V. This is why they needed a special symbol for 50, because XXXXX does not work, they need L. And then C for 100, D for 500, and M for 1000. And why would you need to count above MMMMDDDDCCCCLLLLXXXXVVVVIIII? 4000+2000+400+200+40+20+4=6664 Totally readable that is. Obviously, it's hard to do math with numbers like these without an abacus to count them out, but we can thank the Arabians for bringing us the better numbersystem we use today.

[@jcb4826]

Infinity is just a physicists go to fill in the blank answer when they don't know the answer to something.

[@angellee9307]

Fresh NERD fodder! I love it! 🤓👍🏽

[@Travis42069]

To get any number in the set of all integers/reals not 0 or 1, you need to do use the math to get that number; but 0,1 and infinity come from our definitions of operations and cardinality immediately.

[@tritesy]

I've had $300 and it sure doesn't feel like "infinity things".

[@tranquilitivity]

What gets me is the infinite numbers between 0 and 1

[@8BitJams]

infinity is not a number, it is more a variable that represents the range of numbers that exist in a respective direction

[@cmar6461]

It can be treated as a number, just google “extended reals”

[@user-gj7vp6wk3e]

I PREFER JUST 0 AND 1, SEAN!❤

[@jomama3465]

As someone studying BS Mathematics, calling infinity a number is sacrilege

[@samurai4663]

my last brain cell during the exam

[@sourabhkumar6950]

I went to a restaurant with my wife and asked for a table for infinity.

[@OneEyedJack1970]

Infinity isn't a number -- it's a concept. Thinking of it like a number is the first mistake.

[@Ennar]

True, as a mathematician, most of the time I use only five natural numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3 and n.

[@blueboy189]

Oh you've stirred up a hornet's nest there my friend; calling 0 a natural number 😉

[@venkyisliving]

Infinity is just 1 number after any quantity one can count.

[@freespeechorgetsilenced]

All numbers are the same. Our perceptions are what give them value.

[@SlimeTheif]

Ah yes, how many years will I live? A) zero B)one C) Infinity

[@gilly_5695]

Cantor's diagonalization proof shows that infitiy is in fact not simple

[@WoundedSnake]

Me looking at my bank balance, “where is my infinity money”?