• Batman@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      the cardinality of a set is the number of things in it.

      some sets have infinite items in them such as the counting numbers (there’s always a bigger fish dot jpeg). but not all infinities are equal some are larger.

      equality: if we can map a 1:1 rule between items in two sets with infinite items they are said to be equal infinities.

      greater: but if we can map all in one set to another and note that there are still items left over, the first set has more things in it so if the other set has infinity items in it, this collection must have an even larger set of items in it, a greater tier of infinite.

      a common example in math classes is mapping items in the real number between 0 and 1 to the counting numbers (1,2,3,…) using the rule 1>1/1, 2>1/2, 3>1/3,… we can see (0 to 1) has a 1:1 mapping but there are still more items (for instance 1/1.5). this shows there are more items in the real number line from 0 to 1 than there is items in the counting numbers. though both are infinite one infinity is larger.

      so the meme. it’s asking you to imagine a collection items that has greater number than the counting number infinity, but less than the next tier of infinity, those in the real number line. something which is hard to imagine because if it were easy we would have plugged that infinity tier into our tiering system.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      8 hours ago

      Olo is a good example. It’s due to a quirk of human perception and the structure of our eyes. They basically designed a machine to try and stimulate the green detecting cones without stimulating the red detecting cones. Normally if something pure green hits your eyes, it stimulates those red cones too. So this is something our bodies are capable of perceiving but not something that we can ever perceive under normal circumstances.

      Is it a “new color”? Not exactly. Did it take a good bit of imagination to conceive trying to get our brains to see it? Yes.

  • rmuk@feddit.uk
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    10 hours ago

    Maybe I would if my spare brain capacity wasn’t being used to rotate cows.

  • The limit is trying to be 100% unique and novel.

    Like, try to imagine a creature that has 0 inspiration from everything you know about real life. Even Lovecraft never came up with things that were entitely alien to the human mind, despite that kinda being the whole point (other than the racism).

    • wagesj45@fedia.io
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      1 day ago

      Sounds like you’re asking the human brain to fire in a pattern it’s not even wired for. Random noise in the web, or even definitionally impossible as “totally alien” might imply a configuration of neurons opposite of what we have. I feel like I’m having a hard time describing my thought here.

  • BarbedDentalFloss@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    There are more rational numbers than natural numbers.
    Prove this by noting that every natural number is rational but not every rational number is natural.

    There are more real numbers than rational numbers. Prove this by noting that every rational number is real but not every real number is rational.

    Checkmate meme.

    • borokov@lemmy.world
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      9 hours ago

      That’s not how cardinality works when dealing with infinite. For ex, there are the same number of prime number than number of integer. Yes, there are many non prime inter between 2 prime integer, but as long as you can “count” them, they have the same cardinality, which is called “aleph 0”.

      But you cannot “count” real number. There are actually more real between 0 and 1 than there are interger. This value is called “aleph 1”.

      Yes, there is also aleph 2, aleph 3,… There is not a single “infinite”, but there are several one that don’t have the same size.

      Have a look to Hilbert’s hotel paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert’s_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel

    • procrastitron@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The problem is that rational numbers can be mapped (1 to 1) to the integers (e.g. just encode each rational number as an integer), so there are not more rational numbers than integers.

      • BarbedDentalFloss@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        No that’s not true. There are rational numbers in between the integers and all integers are rational. Therefore the mapping from integers to rational numbers is injective and thus there are more rational numbers than integers.

        • berber@feddit.org
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          1 day ago

          “the” mapping? there is no “the” mapping.

          you are talking about the canonical inclusion mapping 1 in N to 1 in Z (restriction of the canonical inclusion of rings of integers Z into any other ring, Z is an initial object), which can be seen as a non-generic canonical mapping of semigroups.

          but as sets, there is no inherent structure, there are injection, surjections, and of course bijections in both directions.

          the only way one can call one set “bigger” is in the very strict sense of sets, N being a true subset of Q. however, this assumes N to be an actual subset of Q, which is a matter of definition and construction. so we say there is some embedding included, which is the same as (re)defining N as that embedded subset, so we are at your canonical inclusion of semigroups again. if you view this as inherent to N and Q, then there are “more” elements in Q as in N, but not in terms of cardinality.

    • 𒉀TheGuyTM3𒉁@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      Well, there are more integers than naturals, yet both share the same cardinality. Also, I thing hilbert’s hotel problem shows that rationals and naturals also share the same cartinality, somehow. You could arrange every rational in a line like the naturals and the integers.

      But well tried, outstanding move.