this post was submitted on 18 May 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Whoa slow down there buddy. Proposing numbers before numbers like they are a given.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

as far as we can tell, mathematically, they are a given, and they never stop.

I'll wait for you to find the end of pi.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying the numbers stop. But there are numbers where concepts like "closer to zero" or "number before [another number]" don't apply.

For example There is no sensible way to define a less-than for the complex numbers and thus they can't be ordered.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

i would argue that you can probably independently define an ordering mechanism. And then apply it.

You can just pretend that 100 is 0. I see no reason this shouldn't apply to everything else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

What do you mean by independent? There is no more general and independent notion of ordering than a less-than operator. The article above oulines a mathematical proof that no such definition exists in a consistent way for the complex numbers.