Re: Thieves Philosophy 101

[olcott <olcott@qwest.net>]

According to conventional wisdom, and at times
this conventional wisdom is useful. Yet useful is
not at all one-and-the-same-thing as true...
According to math the even root of a negative
number can not exist, yet there is a whole branch
of math devoted to the study of the even root
(including square root) of negative numbers..

Kelli Halliburton wrote:

> "olcott" <olcott@qwest.net> wrote in message
> 3A89A36D.6EF8FC2@qwest.net">news:3A89A36D.6EF8FC2@qwest.net...
> >
> >
> > Jeff Blakeney wrote:
> >
> > > On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 16:18:23 -0600, olcott <olcott@qwest.net> wrote:
> > >
> > > >Its just that the semantics are so slippery here...
> > > >
> > > >while(true)    ==   while(true)      ==    Infinity   ==    1/0
> > > >  N++;                    N += 10;
> > > >
> > > >I am impying no such thing, note that these are infinite loops.
> > >
> > > The first two are not equivalent.  They are similar in that they are
> > > both infinite loops but they change at different rates so therefore
> > > they cannot be considered equivalent.
> > >
> >
> > So Infinity + 1 < Infinity + 10 ?
> >
>
> I'm sorry; did you really want to start talking about aleph one and
> comparative infinites?
>
> Infinites have cardinality among themselves based on the terms skipped.
> Aleph one is the infinite number defined as the number of positive integers.
> There are infinites with cardinalities both greater and smaller than aleph
> one. Example: the set of all even positive integers has a cardinality less
> than aleph one. The set of all even integers, both positive and negative,
> has a cardinality of aleph one + 1 (because zero is introduced).
>
> Basically, in advanced mathematics, all infinites are not created equal.