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Am at my pay-check-job, mentally floating about. There are som things I "should" be doing, like being engaging in conversations (not really the social type), book some meetings (good god, no!) take initiative (for what?) and stuff like that. But, nah. I use my time at the moment to ponder upon if one can actually measure infinity. I mean, there are mathematics claiming we can, but can we really? If something is infinite, is it really measurable by human standards? If infinity really is real, how could we possibly prove it by our limited minds? Is infinity defined differently depending on who you ask (like from cultural, social and religous point of views) or is there a "standard" definition of what infinity is? I know I could just google this shit up, but I like to hear other peoples point of views and ideas instead of being recommended information from an algoritm.
So, do you think humans have the capability to actually define, prove and calculate infinity? Or is infinity just a term used by us humans to define something that is beyond our minds?
What is your thoughts about infinity?
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pmasonl
I like to think of infinity as un-countable quantity. Countable quantity is like when you have a pile of socks on the floor, and you can count out 11 of them. But uncountable is like ... air, or water. You can have a sock and make it plural, 2, 3... 11 "socks", etc. But you can't really pluralize air or water. It's just "more air, more water".
However, of course, we do have number-based, countable ways to measure these things. Fluid ounces, gallons, whatever. But those sizes are totally arbitrary. And if you have a sectioned off piece of water - like in a 12oz cup - you can decide to count it as one (1) and not make it "more water" but not adding more to the cup, but instead putting another cup of water on the table. Once you do this, you realize that one single sock is no different. And what it means for something to be "un-countable" is to look at the matter it's made of. You can get scissors and cut up a sock into as many pieces of fiber as you want, like how you can split up a cup of water into as many drops as you want. You can (in theory) keep going with these acts of division, (until you reach a planck length, I suppose, but why can't we just say "half a planck, one one-hundredth of a planck?)
I can't remember where I read this, but someone jokingly once said that a crumb is the smallest unit of measurement. You can't have half a crumb. It's just a smaller crumb.
...
Of course, now I'm talking about things that are infinitely small. Normally when we think of infinity, we think of things that are infinitely big. But perhaps we can sort of apply this way of thinking of smallness to how we think of bigness. And with that, I think I might have given my answer: I think it's mostly a theory, IDK if we could ever really PROVE infinity. I think the best we could do is use more theories - ideas on how to measure - to prove it. But that'd just be using theories to prove theories. But if the math works out, isn't that all that matters?
Isn't that how a lot of math is? I think a lot about how nice and neat math works out. Like how 7 + 7 = 14 because 7 = 3 + 4, and if you 3 + 3 then = 6, and if you 4 + 4 then = 8, therefore if you 6 + 8 you take 2 out of the 6 and give it to the 8, you get 4 + 10, which is 14. Which ... DUH, that's just arithmetic. I wish I could give a cooler example, like two ways to solve some kind of calculus equation, two ways that are technically the same way, because math just works out so neatly. As a bored kid, I would sometimes try to discover contradictions in math, but of course, I never did.
Likewise, with the right kind of applicable theorems, we can "prove" infinity. A theory based on a theory, but that'll have to be good enough for now :/
(sorry if it's weird that I'm commenting on a year-old blog. I just noticed you as a friend here, and can't readily say I recognize you, [did I recently send a request? have we been friends for a long time? i don't remember -_- ], so I had a look around)