Real Gone Cat

Yeah, I think there is a gradation in consciousness as well. Had too many intelligent dogs to think otherwise. Not so sure I'd include plants and bact...

Fair enough. Truth be told, I believe in a gradation of consciousness as well.

So life is conscious, all else is not. Based on what evidence? Plants? Amoebas? Bacteria? What besides personal prejudice proves consciousness? Machin...

Perhaps. We'd have to meet the monkey. To avoid solipsism, we all assume that other humans share the trait we call consciousness - and we deny this tr...

Judging efficiency requires the user to recognize some difference between the two black boxes AND place a value on those differences. Five differences...

In the immortal words of the Boss :

The problem is that you're focused on what happens to the previous occupant of room 1. Whereas your compassion is commendable, that's not how subtract...

It's no difference at all. For the number system (i.e., the hotel and it's occupants), the resulting states are identical (room 1 is empty and every o...

Switching to binary was an inspired choice. Now in the infinite hotel, every value between 0 and 1 has meaning when announced by the manager (though t...

Let me explain in detail why your scheme is flawed. I'll only use a minimum amount of math, promise. The hotel manager uses the technique of "announci...

Yes, I also wondered about the reference to Propositional Calculus. Prop Calc would appear to be a purely intellectual pursuit. One might dabble in it...

Oh, I see. So you don't believe that an infinite set can be dense. Got it. We speak different languages. (And I gotta hit the hay. TIDF, have fun.)

Which one? Be specific. (Hmm, coming up with your own definition of infinity ... is this MU ?)

Yeah, I couldn't figure out how to indicate repeated digits. The underscore also seems to work if we agree on usage.

As with other debates we've had on TPF, we find philosophy majors trying to bring the wishy-washy terminology of philosophy into a math discussion. In...

Let me help : There are an infinite number of rational numbers between 0 and 1. Also between 1 and 2. And so on. An infinity of infinities. And yet Ca...

You think the phrase "infinity of infinities" is suspect? How so? Use math please.

And I still don't see how you get from keystone's linear approach (numbers are only added or subtracted) to non-linear systems. Seems like a fair amou...

So where's the wall?

Example, please.

I'm using an underscore as the symbol to represent an infinitely repeated digit, as keystone has. Try reading it again.

What "tweaking" of keystone's incorrect approach "solves" the problem? Also, claiming Hilbert constructed a wall for mathematics is a strange take.

Wow, you're way off base. See my reply to keystone, above. Again, 0.9 - 0.89 = 0.09 (You don't need 1 on the end) and 0.9 - 0.9 = 0.09 So, 0.89 = 0.9

You're trying to use "announcing numbers" to stand for two different things : emptying a room into the hallway and shifting occupants to successive ro...

So what's to be done, man?!? What might be the preferred response to this situation? Does your pessimism allow for action? Or is the disconnect perman...

I thought the definition of profit was revenue - cost, when revenue > cost. I didn't realize the definition of profit was what you did with it! My bad...

Obviously, profits go into the owners (and shareholders, CEOs) pockets. In a perfect world (re ), owners are benevolent, and profits are plowed back i...

So there are no truths of math? What, in your wisdom, is math after all? I assume that - other than simple arithmetic with positive integers (basicall...

Fine, willy nilly then. You miss the point : somehow the truths of math have been revealed to no one else but you. I ask that you stop being so selfis...

Oh Great Anonymous Forum Poster - who clearly knows better than some of the greatest minds humanity has produced for the past 5000 years - enlighten u...

Sadly, it seems math discussions on TPF are doomed to descend to the level of farce. Notice that most folks on TPF avoid these topics like the plague....

Adopting an ultrafinitist system leads you to several conundrums not faced with infinitism. Here are two : 1. The real numbers no longer form a contin...

Oh, I'm no finitist. As I've pointed out, finitism (or worse, ultrafinitism) leads to some odd results : you have to truncate \pi (which turns circles...

Another interesting discussion topic (and perhaps what the OP was alluding to) would be the distinction between pure math and applied math. And the us...

Agreed that many of our TPF worthies misunderstand what is meant by \infty. But as a minor defense, we often do get sloppy with our use of this symbol...

What surprises me about our math-phobic friends on TPF, is that philosophy majors usually love the esoteric. You would think they would revel in knowi...

I gotcha! \frac{5}{5}=1 and \frac{8}{8}=1. What about \frac{0}{0} or \frac{\infty}{\infty} ? Gotta be 1, right? 0 and \infty, rather 1ish! A little ad...

Now the nature of infinity is an interesting topic to explore! I have much empathy for your position. Since our lives are finite, it seems impossible ...

You're correct, of course. I apologize to AS. I now realize that AS is asking for something even more restrictive than the ultrafinitists. Correct me ...

Why am I nuts? Ultrafinitism is usually defined as the belief that really large FINITE numbers do not exist because of constructive limits - what is p...

When I said "too clearly an example of ultrafinitism to be an accident", l was implying that these ideas most likely originated from an ultrafinitist ...

Yep. Just trying to help you counter the three-headed anti-modern-math beast. The OP is too clearly an example of ultrafinitism to be an accident. All...

Um, you can google ultrafinitism if you don't know what it is. It is clear the OP is an example of ultrafinitism. I suspect the original poster knew t...

It's an interesting dualism (over here are humans who have reasons, over there is the rest of the universe that does not have reasons) that seems to b...

For your edification (after a jokey intro and build up, it gets really fascinating) : https://waaa.wnyc.org/radiolab_podcast/radiolab_podcast072922_wh...

Again, the problem I have with Foolos4 is switching between meanings of "is" in a single sentence. You shouldn't say, "3+1 is 4" AND "3+1 is not 2+2" ...

The problem is your definition of "plus", and you won't answer me. To be generous, I think you mean something like "3 things over here and 1 thing ove...

So "is" means equal to. Unless it doesn't. I'm sorry, but that's incoherent. If "is" means equal to, then 3+1 is 2+2. If "is" doesn't mean equal to th...

Gotcha. But we've moved on from the ancient Greeks' weird take on numbers. Now we accept that one is a number, and so is zero. So are negatives, and i...

A math joke to lighten the mood ... A biologist, a physicist, and a mathematician are sitting on a bench across from an apartment building. They obser...