• Doctor xNo@r.nf
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    10 months ago

    One could argue that negative and possitive infinity, unlike natural numbers, boils down to the same thing, though. Just like 0, infinity technically has no + or -.

    • MacGuffin94@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Don’t think of infinity as a value. It’s more of a concept to explain numerical behavior. What you described would be like running north at 5 mph south. The limit diverge do it does not exist.

      • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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        10 months ago

        But it is a value. Just one we tend to avoid by claiming it doesn’t exist or is impossible… Our minds just have a hard time imagining it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Our minds? Infinity isn’t something we don’t understand - we invented the concept of infinity. The mathematics community agreed on its definition, which includes the fact that infinity is not a real number, it literally does not exist. Show me infinity, I’ll give you infinity+1.

          You deciding that infinity means something else is not a math problem but a language problem, so if being right about this is that important to you, start a petition or something

          • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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            10 months ago

            So you believe the universe just ends somewhere with nothing behind it?

            • 0ops@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              What’s that got to do with anything? Infinity is just shorthand for “ever-increasing number”.

                • 0ops@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  First sentence from Wikipedia: “Infinity is something which is boundless, endless, or larger than any natural number.”

                  In other terms give me a natural number n, I’ll show you a larger number, n+1, and I’ll do it again and again. That’s the definition of infinity. There’s always a bigger number.

                  • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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                    10 months ago

                    Boundless and endless (and the fact it’s larger than any number) doesn’t mean it’s ever-growing. It already is.

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          No, it’s not a value. It’s defined as not being a value. No after how much you bend and break maths, infinity will never be a value. Why do you keep telling people wrong things?

        • MacGuffin94@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          It is explicitly not a value. The reason you cannot perform arithmetic on infinity is because it has no value. It has cardinality but that is not unique. The set of all integers is infinite as is the set of all real numbers but they have different cardinality as integers are countably infinite whereas real numbers are not countable infinite.

      • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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        10 months ago

        I’d only break argumentative math, not actual calculatable math…

        Unlike many always say, math has too many agreements and ‘definitions’ and things we added to be universal. On a universal level infinite solves the +/- by the fact it’s infinite…

        • 0ops@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          It breaks calculus, the math that made your phone and has a billion other uses. Directionality of infinities is critical. In calculus, infinity refers only to the magnitude of the resulting vector. Because I suspect you don’t know, integers are a 1-dimensional vector.

          • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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            10 months ago

            Nothing in my phone is either infinite, nor negative.

            • 0ops@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              No but some of the values/specs were calculated by summing an infinite number of infinitely small values. Take a calculus class brother, it’s a cool subject if you’re interested in infinity

              • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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                10 months ago

                I kinda already did many, though. Do you honestly think I argue math from my own imagination? Not sure I can do that while remaining logical ánd finding exactly the same info online if I look it up, cause that would be kinda amazing.

                • 0ops@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  You did many. Well, yeah, I honestly don’t believe you as a matter of fact. By our conversation: You don’t seem to know what a limit is, you don’t know the difference between natural and real numbers, you don’t know the formal definition of infinity, and you don’t know any applications of calculus, the subject built around that definition. So yeah, I have a really hard time believing that you’ve ever taken a college level math class, or even paid good attention in your highschool math classes either.

                  • Doctor xNo@r.nf
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                    10 months ago

                    Says the guy who claimed infinite was ever-expanding. 😅

        • FooBarrington@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Okay, so what? Breaking useful things is bad, no matter what group they belong to. What is positive about no longer being able to use L’Hopital’s rule?