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Re: Problems with Infinity?
Posted:
Feb 26, 2013 2:21 AM
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On Feb 25, 9:05 pm, P. Taine <u...@domaine.invalid> wrote:
> On Sun, 24 Feb 2013 18:48:48 +0000 (UTC),
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> garabik-news-2005...@kassiopeia.juls.savba.sk wrote:
> >In rec.arts.sf.written William Elliot <ma...@panix.com> wrote:
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> >> Cantor did not deal with geometric infinity.
> >> His infinities are the cardinalities of sets.
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> >Or with infinite ordinals, which is not quite the same sort of infinity.
> >Are there any (good) SFnal stories concerning cardinal(ities),
> >transfinite induction, supertasks, actual infinities and other esoteric
> >phenomena?
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> >I am aware of White Light by Rudy Rucker, The Infinite Assassin by Greg
> >Egan and Luminous by the same author. However, they barely touch the
> >cardinality of c.
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> >As Kronecker put it, "God made natural numbers; all else is the work of
> >man", therefore denying the existence of higher cardinals (or even
> >finitism) is a valid philosophical approach - after all, you can get
> >many interesting results by negating the axiom of infinity...
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> This is going to be awfully vague.
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> When I was in high school, which would be 1947-1952, I read a story, probably in
> Startling Stories, which used transfinite numbers for something or other -- I
> think moving though a multi-verse (though that term hadn't been invented yet).
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> It did contain a lump of exposition that sent me off searching for Cantor's
> work. I don't know where I found that, although we had a very good mathematics
> teacher who may have loaned me something or other. (Note, my class was 23
> pupils at graduation, so he was also the ONLY mathematics teacher!)
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> Not much to go on for a YASID, but it is the earliest that I can remember
> reading about transfinites, and in a SF magazine at that.
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> AWG -- I wonder if that was the story with the transporter that looked like a
> hoop on a base, that one stepped through and came out someplace else? Same time
> period, and I think also Startling Stories. (I liked that magazine, along with
> Planet Stories, when I was a teenager!)
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> P. Taine- Hide quoted text -
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> - Show quoted text -
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