Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Some infinities don't exist more than other infinities (an ultrafinitist point of view)

Attention! This was an April Fools' post, so it says the exact opposit of what I think. Still, it's food for thought, and I answer to this in this post.

Hahaha. Infinity.

What a joke.

Only fools would really believe that such a thing exists. Don't you see it? It's just a ruse to make you question the reality you are seeing with your own eyes! Wake up sheeple!

Infinity is just an illusion. God is dead, so why we don't do the same to infinity, huh? Time to get ride of it. Well, we are already doing it. We thought the universe was infinite, well, not so much. We thought the speed of light was infinite, not even close. We thought that between two points there were infinite points, or that between two instants there were infinite moments of time, wrong again and again. Everything around us is finite. You don't go to the pet shop and buy infinite kittens. That would be too cuteness for anybody.

Spoiler alert: this is not possible.

Then love is infinite? Sorry lovey-dovey couples, at the very least one of you will die, so you can just start to delete that tattoo right away. But then death is infinite? No, it's not: everybody is always dead for a finite amount of time. Julius Caesar has been dead for 2059 years and 17 days, Marvin Gaye for exactly 31 years. Give it up, infinitists!

So what about the numbers? Are they infinite? Of course not. Just pick the number of particles in the universe, its time and calculate all the possible combinations of them. It will be a finite number, the biggest on. What do you say? What about that number +1? Pfft, that does not exist. Just because you can imagine a number, it doesn't mean it exists. I can imagine a unicorn, but still not receiving it for Christmas. Because it does not exist.

Ok, so you're saying that one can imagine infinite numbers. Come on, try it. Start: 10, 100, 1000... At a certain point you cannot go on anymore. Some numbers are so huge, that we cannot conceive them, But then, where do they exist, if not in nature or in anybody's mind? Answer: they don't.

So you like tortoises and Achilleses, right? If you think about it, the solution is easy: the world is like a Monopoly table. There will be a moment when Achille and the Tortoise will be one step close. Then the tortoise should do half a step, but it cannot, so it stays, and Achille does one step and reaches the tortoise. Easy peasy!

Enough with this infinite foolishness, then! Eat your vegetables, and embrace the world as it is! (Vegetables are delicious, too! Especially the Brussels Sprouts.)