Infinity

[Steven Gerrard]

I watched this documentary on Fox today called "To infinity and beyond"'. It was a bunch of scientists and professors talking about exactly that, the concept of infinity.

It got me thinking, I don't think we as humans truely appreciate the magnitude of the concept of 'never ending' or 'forever'.

For instance, the documentary showed a monkey typing away on an old type writer, there he was just punching away at the keys. They made the point that assuming that a monkey, which cannot read or write, could live forever, and assuming he just randomly typed on a typewriter that never runs out of ink, forever, eventually, the monkey would type all the words of a Shakespeare novel in sequence, without any errors and without any commas, fullstops or other characters being omitted. The point being that the monkey in an infinite period of time would type that many permutations of letters and characters that eventually it would type shakespeare's literature, verbatum. And not even be aware of it.

And not only that, the monkey would type out the words to that novel an infinite number of times and type out every publication to ever hit any form of media, and do that an infinite number of times.

Another point made is that infinity + 1 = infinity + infinity.

This particular German professor scoffed at infinity. He said infinity does not exist, there is an end point to the number line. He said that there is a peak number you reach and then the next number starts at zero again. He said he's not sure what the maximum number is but it is so large we as humans could not decipher it. He also made the point that infinity has not been disproven because there has never been a computer powerful enough to compute all the numbers in the number line, but he was adamant infinity does not exist.

Some other bloke also made the point that the universe is infinite and that somewhere out there, in the infinite universe which is itself but one of an infinite number of universes, there is a planet which looks and feels identical to earth and which has humans identical to you, everyone else and I, who look like us, talk like us, act like us, have our names, follow the same AFL teams we do, etc. Again, the point references the sheer number of permutations that exist in the universe(s). This analogy I didn't buy but I guess the monkey analogy is possible assuming the monkey typed away forever.

Feel free to add your 2 cents..

 

[radiojake]

A girl in my year 2 class was adamant that numbers stopped at 100 -

whenever a number that was higher than 100 was mentioned, she would lose the plot -
"THERE IS NO BIGGER NUMBER THAN 100"

She was a special case - I left the school a year later so don't know how nuts she ended up being - I wonder what this documentary would have done to her

 

[Steven Gerrard]

A girl in my year 2 class was adamant that numbers stopped at 100 -

whenever a number that was higher than 100 was mentioned, she would lose the plot -
"THERE IS NO BIGGER NUMBER THAN 100"

She was a special case - I left the school a year later so don't know how nuts she ended up being - I wonder what this documentary would have done to her

Was she German? Seriosly though, did anyone point out to her 101?

 

[GOAUS!]

A girl in my year 2 class was adamant that numbers stopped at 100 -

whenever a number that was higher than 100 was mentioned, she would lose the plot -
"THERE IS NO BIGGER NUMBER THAN 100"

She was a special case - I left the school a year later so don't know how nuts she ended up being - I wonder what this documentary would have done to her

Clearly she never watched 101 Dalmations.

 

[radiojake]

like I said.. she was a special case...

I don't really remember too much with it being so long ago, but I definately remember the teacher trying to tell her otherwise, and I do remember one time a bunch of kids purposefully counting out aloud from 90 or something within ear shot of her and going past 100 and waiting for her reaction.... which she duly delivered -

Ha.. 101 Dalmations.. wish I thought of that one back then -

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Some other bloke also made the point that the universe is infinite and that somewhere out there, in the infinite universe which is itself but one of an infinite number of universes, there is a planet which looks and feels identical to earth and which has humans identical to you, everyone else and I, who look like us, talk like us, act like us, have our names, follow the same AFL teams we do, etc. Again, the point references the sheer number of permutations that exist in the universe(s). This analogy I didn't buy but I guess the monkey analogy is possible assuming the monkey typed away forever.

Superposition

 

[dales.girl38]

The concept of some infinities being bigger than other infinities confused me a little when I was reading The Fault in Our Stars, it's interesting to think about though.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Infinty is never-ending and thus we will never find it, thats what I take out of this kinda thing.

Those theories are brilliant however

 

[Wright Away]

Infinty is never-ending and thus we will never find it, thats what I take out of this kinda thing.

Those theories are brilliant however

 

[Poseidon]

 

[Marlowe]

How about instead one monkey, it's four monkeys. And instead of a typewriter, an electric guitar, a bass guitar, piano and drumkit. Would these monkeys eventually play "Let it Be"?

 

[Bluelegs]

Infinity.

 

[Tex_21]

Bounded.

Or the old set theory - the set of integers is all whole numbers, the set of ratonal numbers is all numbers that when divided give something non-confusing (e.g. 1/3), the set of irrational numbers are the converse, and the set of real includes all three.

All sets are the same size though.

 

[Bunk Moreland]

Not sure how the German bloke can say there’s a final number – why can’t you add one to it?

 

[Hard_to_Beat]

Not sure how the German bloke can say there’s a final number – why can’t you add one to it?

How do you add to something that has no ending?

 

[GOAUS!]

Not sure how the German bloke can say there’s a final number – why can’t you add one to it?

Apparently when you add 1 to the largest number the number line resets itself to zero.

 

[Poseidon]

Numbers are a man made concept we can do whatever the hell we want with them, go to hell German guy!

 

[Jentleman Geff]

Bounded.

Or the old set theory - the set of integers is all whole numbers, the set of ratonal numbers is all numbers that when divided give something non-confusing (e.g. 1/3), the set of irrational numbers are the converse, and the set of real includes all three.

All sets are the same size though.

not true. set of real numbers > set of integers.

 

[SJ]

I watched this documentary on Fox today called "To infinity and beyond"'. It was a bunch of scientists and professors talking about exactly that, the concept of infinity.

It got me thinking, I don't think we as humans truely appreciate the magnitude of the concept of 'never ending' or 'forever'.

For instance, the documentary showed a monkey typing away on an old type writer, there he was just punching away at the keys. They made the point that assuming that a monkey, which cannot read or write, could live forever, and assuming he just randomly typed on a typewriter that never runs out of ink, forever, eventually, the monkey would type all the words of a Shakespeare novel in sequence, without any errors and without any commas, fullstops or other characters being omitted. The point being that the monkey in an infinite period of time would type that many permutations of letters and characters that eventually it would type shakespeare's literature, verbatum. And not even be aware of it.

And not only that, the monkey would type out the words to that novel an infinite number of times and type out every publication to ever hit any form of media, and do that an infinite number of times.

Another point made is that infinity + 1 = infinity + infinity.

This particular German professor scoffed at infinity. He said infinity does not exist, there is an end point to the number line. He said that there is a peak number you reach and then the next number starts at zero again. He said he's not sure what the maximum number is but it is so large we as humans could not decipher it. He also made the point that infinity has not been disproven because there has never been a computer powerful enough to compute all the numbers in the number line, but he was adamant infinity does not exist.

Some other bloke also made the point that the universe is infinite and that somewhere out there, in the infinite universe which is itself but one of an infinite number of universes, there is a planet which looks and feels identical to earth and which has humans identical to you, everyone else and I, who look like us, talk like us, act like us, have our names, follow the same AFL teams we do, etc. Again, the point references the sheer number of permutations that exist in the universe(s). This analogy I didn't buy but I guess the monkey analogy is possible assuming the monkey typed away forever.

Feel free to add your 2 cents..

I watched this, it was on SBS. I had come across all the concepts before though.

Except what they said on occasions isn't necessarily true. Just because an event is possible (ie. p > 0) and the population size infinite doesn't mean it will happen - but it will almost certainly happen.

For example, there is a possibility that I could toss a coin an infinite amount of times and never get a tail.

 

[YAZZ#13]

OP made me think of this:

 

[treefingers]

not true. set of real numbers > set of integers.

But isn't each set infinitely large?

 

[Jentleman Geff]

But isn't each set infinitely large?

The cardinality of the set of real numbers is greater.

 

[Wallaby]

For instance, the documentary showed a monkey typing away on an old type writer, there he was just punching away at the keys. They made the point that assuming that a monkey, which cannot read or write, could live forever, and assuming he just randomly typed on a typewriter that never runs out of ink, forever, eventually, the monkey would type all the words of a Shakespeare novel in sequence, without any errors and without any commas, fullstops or other characters being omitted. The point being that the monkey in an infinite period of time would type that many permutations of letters and characters that eventually it would type shakespeare's literature, verbatum. And not even be aware of it.

Well, now we have the internet, we know this is not true.........................................


And yes, there are different sized infinities. An easy example is:
The set containing all numbers. Infinite in size.
The set containing only even numbers - also infinite in size.
But the first set is twice as large as the second set.

 

[Jentleman Geff]

And yes, there are different sized infinities. An easy example is:
The set containing all numbers. Infinite in size.
The set containing only even numbers - also infinite in size.
But the first set is twice as large as the second set.

The set containing even numbers and all integers have the same cardinality - they are the same size. Basically there are two types of infinite sets. Countable and non-countable. All countably infinite sets are the same size.

 

[Lana]

Well, now we have the internet, we know this is not true.........................................


And yes, there are different sized infinities. An easy example is:
The set containing all numbers. Infinite in size.
The set containing only even numbers - also infinite in size.
But the first set is twice as large as the second set.

They aren't equal to infinity; they approch infinity, can't really equal infinity, that why limits exist