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I'd do it out of scientific curiosity.
(thelemmy.club)
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this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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You're assuming the collatz conjecture holds, which is unknown.
But even if it does hold, you do understand the second problem, right? 1 can not possibly be the outcome, because whenever there is a 1 in that infinite loop, it is followed by a 4. And if 1 is the outcome, then it wasn't done infinitely, because otherwise there must have been a 4 afterwards. The same argument holds for 4 and 2 as well. So we're stuck in the reality that it would have to be one of those numbers, but it also can't really be one of those numbers. It's paradoxical.
This is just the "Achilles and the turtle" paradox again, isn't it? You won't trick me into inventing calculus a second time!