this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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I considered deleting the post, but this seems more cowardly than just admitting I was wrong. But TIL something!

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Neither is bigger. Even "∞ x ∞" is not bigger than "∞". Classical mathematics sort of break down in the realm of infinity.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It was probably mentioned in other comments, but some infinities are "larger" than others. But yes, the product of the two with the same cardinal number will have the same

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

Yes, uncountably infinite sets are larger than countably infinite sets.

But these are both a countably infinite number of bills. They're the same infinity.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I think quite some people heard of the concept of different kinds of infinity, but don't know much about how these are defined. That's why this meme should be inverted, as thinking the infinities described here are the same size is the intuitive answer when you either know nothing or quite something about the definition whereas knowing just a little bit can easily lead you to the wrong answer.

As the described in the wikipedia article in the top level comment, the thing that matters is whether you can construct a mapping (or more precisely, a bijection) from one set to the other. If so, the sets/infinities are of the same "size".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Yeah, inverting it is a good idea, truly

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, we can still however analyze the statement f(x)=100x$/1x$ lim(x->inf) and clearly come to the conclusion that as the number of bills x approaches infinity will be equal to 100.

However, limes exists as a tool to avoid infinities and this exact problem when using calculus for practical applications - and as such it doesn't apply here.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Mathematically speaking, they should be converted to lemonade.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Screw that! I'm the man who's gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Depends on if there's any lemon stealing whores around.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

You're the guy in the middle by the way.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So it’s basically just a form of NaN?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I didn’t know there was a special case for that. Neat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

This problem doesn't involve cardinal numbers.