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Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

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381–390 of 398 posts

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It follows from the way addition is defined on top of set theory. "a + b" is implemented as "increment a (the set that represents a) b times". A number is represented in set theory as a set that contains all of the numbers before it. 0, 1, 2 is {}, {{}}, {{} {{}}}... SO! If you start with a finite "a" and increment it infinite times, you still have infinity; you haven't broken out. But if you start with Infinity, the…

I majored in math and my biggest problem with this is that you don't get to "do" anything infinitely many times in the math that I'm used to. In discrete contexts where infinity is used, you instead can "do" something an unbounded but finite number of times. In a continuous setting you are allowed to pick an arbitrarily large (finite) number. In that context the first quantity that you refer to above is nonsensical b…

Sorry, of course you're right on "Secondly". The right construction is ω, ω∪{ω}, ω∪{ω}∪{ω∪{ω}}...

For the first point, I went through the book long enough ago that I can't rebuild the proof here, but iirc the more rigorous idea is that you can construct a bijection between 1+ω and ω given the recipe I had above for how to represent numbers as sets, but you can't do it for ω+1, which is bijective with ω∪{ω}. The axiom of infinity declares that ω itself is a set, opening the door for transfinite numbers.

Better?

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is in this sense that there are infinities of different sizes. They aren’t actually different sizes, though. All this proves is that under specific set theoretic assumptions , a contradiction arises if you define “size” as “cardinality” and assume that a particular bijective relation exists between your two infinite sets. It doesn’t actually mean the sets have different sizes, it just means they differ under a s…

> They aren’t actually different sizes, though. What's your precise definition of size that allows someone to actually make a rigorous argument comparing the size of any two sets?

I don’t have one that doesn’t admit a contradiction here … which I’d argue is because comparing the size of an infinite set is nonsensical, even if the properties used to do so are otherwise useful.

Similarly, I can also work around Russel’s paradox by introducing infinite universes, but that doesn’t actually resolve the paradox, it just provides a set (ha ha) of rules that may be leveraged to formalize the Set category and otherwise prove useful things.

Just because your formalization admits a proof by contradiction doesn’t actually prove two infinite sets have different sizes, it just proves that a contradiction exists under your assumptions.

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#383
post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like an excellent thing to somebody who actually said "you won't always have a calculator at hand". Maybe you should find someone like that.

Are we in the same thread?

Yes, but I was not the person who said the thing you are objecting to.

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ω+1 = ω+1 , i.e. "the next thing after infinity" I find this concept perplexing. To me this implies that "infinity" has a value. How can you add 1 to a thing that by definition has no value?

Symbols in math are overloaded, like in C++. Imagine the + in C++ when you have to add two complex numbers. They are just a struct with x and y, and some magic to make all operations work as intended. The use of the + in this example is more like the concatenation of strings, like "Hello " + "World!" is "Hello World!". But in this case, the content of the string doesn't matter so "Hello " == "World!" and there are so…

Thanks for the explanation, that was helpful.

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#386
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought that most of us learn at an early age, as a result of this kind of exchange, that "infinity" is not "the biggest number" or even a number at all, as far as the ordinary notion of "number" goes.

My child mind conflated infinity and God. Or maybe I was correct, I have no idea now.

You're not alone! Georg Cantor was deeply concerned about the theological implications of his work on transfinite numbers, to the point that he wrote letters to Pope Leo XIII to explain why the new infinities were consistent with a God of an even higher order of infinity.

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They aren’t actually different sizes, though. What's your precise definition of size that allows someone to actually make a rigorous argument comparing the size of any two sets?

I don’t have one that doesn’t admit a contradiction here … which I’d argue is because comparing the size of an infinite set is nonsensical, even if the properties used to do so are otherwise useful. Similarly, I can also work around Russel’s paradox by introducing infinite universes, but that doesn’t actually resolve the paradox, it just provides a set (ha ha) of rules that may be leveraged to formalize the Set categ…

If you aren't allowed to operate in a logical system with a concrete definition of "size", then you can't say things like "doesn't actually prove two infinite sets have different sizes". So the whole debate is moot.

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evenness is a more natural condition, so to speak, in that it has a simple definition and is easy to generalize. Having defined an even number, if an integer isn't even, it's odd. To get a feel for why this is convenient, consider that you can generalize by replacing "multiples of 2" with "multiples of n". Then, instead of splitting everything into two sets (even/odd), we can naturally split the integers into n sets…

I understand what you're saying, so thank you, but I still find myself disagreeing. There are just as many odd numbers as even, so there's nothing more natural about either. They alternate. Yes you can extend to higher multiples, but there's still nothing more natural about multiples of 7 vs. multiples of 7 with remainder 3. And it's just as easy to say that infinity is divisible by 7, as it is to say that infinity i…

It's true that there are just as many odd numbers as even (using most reasonable ways of counting; things always get a bit dicey with infinite sets), and just as many multiples of 7 as "3 more than a multiple of 7" and so on.

Still, there's a good reason to privilege the multiples. With regular addition of the integers, the number zero has a special role, in that n + 0 = 0 + n = n for all n. It's called the "additive identity", and it's the only number that has this property. If we think of inverses of numbers, like "what's the opposite of 19?", then in the world of addition, they are defined in relation to 0. The "opposite" of 19 is -19, because 19 + (-19) = 0.

Many algebraic structures have an identity; in the world of multiplication of fractions, the identity is 1, and the inverse of 19 is now 1/19. A more abstract example would be the operations on a Rubik's Cube, where the identity is "do nothing". That's the least exciting thing to do with a Rubik's Cube, but it has a special role, just like 0 with addition. If we want to talk about inverses of Rubik's operations, then again, they are defined in relation to the identity: the opposite of "rotate the top face a quarter turn clockwise" is "rotate the top face a quarter turn counterclockwise", because the sequence of those two operations gives you "do nothing".

It is in this sense that "multiples of n" are special, because they effectively comprise the identity element under addition modulo n. That is, if we add numbers and only look at the last digit (in other words, the remainder after dividing by 10), we'll find that adding 0, or 10, 20, 30, etc., leaves that digit unchanged. Another way to say this is that if you take two numbers with the same last digit, their difference will be a multiple of 10.

In other words, it isn't merely that there are just as many numbers in one set as another, it's that one of the sets acts as a point of reference. For a real-world metaphor, consider the concept of birthdays (disregarding complications like leap years). If you were born on February 5, then every other February 5 is a birthday, because the difference of those two dates is a multiple of 365. This might highlight the conceptual argument: I would agree that there's nothing fundamentally more special or interesting about February 5 than August 27 or any other day, but it's when we start comparing dates or using them in some frame of reference (like trips around the sun) that the number 365 and its multiples come into focus.

Or, for a real-world example related to evenness vs. oddness, go and flick a light switch an even number of times. If the light was off to begin with, it will still be off at the end; if it was on, it will still be on. Now, if you have a fancy lamp with three settings, then turn the switch a multiple of 3 times. Again, this will preserve the state, and this is why multiples are in some sense special.

Finally, as for infinity: I'm with you in that it gets a bit uncomfortable to talk about the evenness or oddness of infinity itself. At that point it really comes down to the choice of definitions, and a perfectly reasonable definition is that infinity isn't a number but an unattainable goal (it's the trip, not the destination), in which case the concepts of evenness and oddness don't apply at all.

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t have one that doesn’t admit a contradiction here … which I’d argue is because comparing the size of an infinite set is nonsensical, even if the properties used to do so are otherwise useful. Similarly, I can also work around Russel’s paradox by introducing infinite universes, but that doesn’t actually resolve the paradox, it just provides a set (ha ha) of rules that may be leveraged to formalize the Set categ…

If you aren't allowed to operate in a logical system with a concrete definition of "size", then you can't say things like "doesn't actually prove two infinite sets have different sizes". So the whole debate is moot.

> So the whole debate is moot.

Well, yes. :)

Re: Is infinity an odd or even number? (2011)

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren't allowed to operate in a logical system with a concrete definition of "size", then you can't say things like "doesn't actually prove two infinite sets have different sizes". So the whole debate is moot.

> So the whole debate is moot. Well, yes. :)

Thanks for wasting my time by avoiding any precision in your language lol.
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