this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did nobody have math class? The pictures are always misleading!

It never actually specifies the density the people are packed onto the track, the image implies an answer.

I'd argue that the densities should be considered to be equal, regardless of whatever that density value may be. We do not need to solve for the exact value to discuss the problem at hand!

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

what do you do?

I replace the lever with a quantum switch so it can be a superppsition and kill everyone twice be ause they deserve it I mean look at that massive line of people there is no way they didn't know what was going on before egtting added to the tracks no species thos dumb deserves to escape the trolly my god how did they all get there -continues ranting as trolly aproaches-

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Infinity cannot be divided, if it can then it becomes multiple finite objects. Therefore there cannot be multiple Infinities. If infinity has a size, then it is a finite object. If infinity has a boundary of any kind, then it is a finite object.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (11 children)

Infinity cannot be divided, if it can then it becomes multiple finite objects.

It really depends on what you mean by infinity and division here. The ordinals admit some weaker forms of the division algorithm within ordinal arithmetic (in particular note the part about left division in the link). In fact, even the cardinals have a form of trivial division.

Additionally, infinite sets can often be divided into set theoretic unions of infinite sets fairly easily. For example, the integers (an infinite set) is the union of the set of all integers less than 0 with the set of all integers greater than or equal to 0 (both of these sets are of course infinite). Even in the reals you can divide an arbitrary interval (which is an infinite set in the cardinality sense) into two infinite sets. For example [0,1]=[0,1/2]U[1/2,1].

Therefore there cannot be multiple Infinities.

In the cardinality sense this is objectively untrue by Cantor's theorem or by considering Cantor's diagonal argument.

Edit: Realized the other commenter pointed out the diagonal argument to you very nicely also. Sorry for retreading the same stuff here.

Within other areas of math we occasionally deal positive and negative infinities that are distinct in certain extensions of the real numbers also.

If infinity has a size, then it is a finite object.

Again, this is not really true with cardinals as cardinals are in some sense a way to assign sizes to sets.

If you mean in terms of senses of distances between points, in the previous link involving the extended reals, there is a section pointing out that the extended reals are metrizable, informally this means we can define a function (called a metric) that measures distances between points in the extended reals that works roughly as we'd expect (such a function is necessarily well defined if either one or both points are positive or negative infinity).

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not entirely sure I understand your comment, but the fact that there are more real numbers than natural numbers can be readily shown using something called cantor's diagonal argument. It goes something like this:

Suppose the set of real numbers and natural numbers had the same size. Then we could write down an infinite list, where each line represents some real number written in it's decimal representation. So something like

1: 3.14159265
2: 1.41421356
3: 0.24242424
...

This list goes on forever. We will now construct a new real number r as follows: The first number after the decimal point of r shall be different from the first number after the decimal point of the first number in our list, the second shall be different from the second decimal of the second number on the list, and so on (the name diagonal argument comes from this, we consider the entries on the diagonal from top left towards the bottom right).

The key point now is that this constructed real number is different from every single number on the list: After all, we have made sure it differs from each number on the list in at least one place. Therefore, it is impossible to write down the real numbers in such a way that each real number gets its own natural number: There are simply too few natural numbers for this. In particular, there are at least two different "sizes" of infinities.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I have a tangential question I have been wanted an explanation for:

If there are infinite universes, would there be infinite earth's?

I remember (an) answer is infinite universes doesn't necessarily mean infinite earth's. A cool analogy of a CD rack was used when I read it, but I can't find it. Does anyone else have an explanation and/or analogy for this?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Weirdly good timing, here's a Kurzgesagt video on that exact question! Uploaded literally yesterday (or yester-er-day depending on time zones)

https://youtu.be/isdLel273rQ

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

infinite Earths*

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

With infinite universes, every possible eventuality is realized an infinite number of times. There are infinite universes without earth and infinite universes with it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Are there more universes with earth or more without

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

String Theory

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everybody dies, no matter what choice you make. It's just a matter of time.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

There are infinite numbers between 1 and 2, none of which are 3.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Unless the trolley is traveling with infinite velocity or the people have infinitely small mass, it would never make it past its first countable infinity of people. Therefore there is no difference.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

99% hitler vs. 100% hitler

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

US_electoral_politics.jpg

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Pulling the lever will kill people slower, therefore less deaths in the lifetime of the universe.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

So I won't do it

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Gödel posse represent!

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Pull the lever, thus killing -1/12th people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I'm just waiting for the black hole to form just from the mass of the infinite people between 0-1 on the Reals track.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Would suck being the last person on either track. It'd be a long and boring wait while tied up

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