this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] ivanafterall@kbin.social 76 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nope, you fell for the classic sibling blunder:

What about INFINITY PLUS ONE!?

[–] Yondoza@sh.itjust.works 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

It's Infinity! Infinity -1? also infinity! Well what about infinity times infinity? Believe it or not, infinity! ♾️

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Infinity gangsta when aleph null walks in

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[–] ApexHunter@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What about infinity times zero?

[–] rockerface@lemm.ee 11 points 2 years ago

For that one we're going to call my good friend L'Hôpital. That guy rules!

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[–] CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 73 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Last time I saw this kind of challenge it was on reddit and I just replied with ℝ, but people brought up that this leaves out complex numbers. I'll now contend, however, that any number not included in that isn't real.

[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 years ago (4 children)
[–] eestileib@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 years ago

Quaternions hello?

[–] hernanca@beehaw.org 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What about quaternions and octonions and ...

[–] yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago

{x | x is a number}

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[–] fossilesque@mander.xyz 20 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] zzx@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

This image goes so hard

[–] BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 years ago

Just like birds, complex numbers aren't real!

Screw you sqrt(-1), you aren't even a real number, you poser!

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[–] 768@sh.itjust.works 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)
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[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 25 points 2 years ago (10 children)

Aren't there numbers past (plus/minus) infinity? Last I hear there's some omega stuff (for denoting numbers "past infinity") and it's not even the usual alpha-beta-omega flavour.

Come to think of it, is there even a notation for "the last possible number" in math? aka something that you just can't tack "+1" at the end of to make a new number?

[–] drbluefall@toast.ooo 26 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What you're probably thinking of is Ordinal numbers.

As for your second question, I don't think any "last number" could exist unless we explicitly declared one. And even then... I'm not sure what utility there would be in declaring a "last number".

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[–] humanplayer2@lemmy.ml 24 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Which of the infinities? There are many, many :D

The smallest infinity is the size of the natural numbers. That infinty, Aleph zero, is smaller than the infinity of the real numbers, Aleph one. "etc."

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_number

[–] veniasilente@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Which of the infinities? There are many, many :D

Oh no! Please don't tell me there are infinity infinities!

[–] weker01@feddit.de 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Unfortunately yes there are and it's a very big infinity of infinties....

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[–] DoomBot5@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Wait, they ran out of greek letters and started using Hebrew ones now? When did that happen?

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[–] kerrigan778@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (3 children)

There is nothing "past" infinity, infinity is more a concept than a number, there are however many different kinds of infinity. And for the record, infinity + 1 = infinity, those are completely equal. Infinity + infinity = infinity x 2 = still the same kind of infinity. Infinity times infinity is debatably a different kind of infinity but there are fairly simple ways of showing it can be counted the same.

[–] Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Hi, I'm a mathematician. My specialty is Algebra, and my research includes work with transfinites. While it's commonly said that infinity "isn't a number" I tend to disagree with this, since it often limits how people think about it. Furthermore, I always find it odd when people offer up alternatives to what infinity is; are numbers never concepts?

Regardless, here's the thing you're actually concretely wrong about: there are provably things bigger than infinity, and they are all bigger infinities. Furthermore, there are multiple kinds of transfinite algebra. Cardinal algebra behaves mostly like how you described, except every transfinite cardinal has a successor (e.g. There are countably many natural numbers and uncountably many complex numbers). Ordinal algebra, on the other hand, works very differently: if ω is the ordinal that corresponds to countable infinity, then ω+1>ω.

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[–] CJOtheReal@ani.social 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] Godort@lemm.ee 37 points 2 years ago (1 children)

i isn't a real number, you imagined it

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

From gatekeeping to gaslighting in 2 comments. Not bad!

[–] Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social 6 points 2 years ago

What a girlboss

[–] callyral@pawb.social 5 points 2 years ago

not a real number

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh you like math? Name all the sets of sets that don’t include themselves.

[–] zzx@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Russell is that you? Please stop breaking my formal systems

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[–] Stupidmanager@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago (2 children)
[–] morrowind@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (6 children)

[0-9]*\.?[0-9]*

edit: ok no empty strings [0-9]+\.?[0-9]*

[–] amoistgrandpa@lemm.ee 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

That regex implies “” is a number

[–] dalekcaan@lemm.ee 21 points 2 years ago

If I had a nickel for every time that happened I'd have "" nickels.

[–] dsemy@lemm.ee 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

I didn't realize '.' is a number.

\([0-9]+\.[0-9]\)?[0-9]* is more accurate I think.

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[–] Ofosho@hexbear.net 12 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I thought it was 'R', for the set of all real numbers.

Oh, so complex numbers are not numbers now?!

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)
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[–] Bizarroland@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago

You also have to remember to put the +C at the end

[–] Zerush@lemmy.ml 9 points 2 years ago
[–] callyral@pawb.social 7 points 2 years ago
[–] waigl@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago (4 children)
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Fred.

(∀x:Number(x)=T)(Name(x)="Fred")

I name every number Fred.

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