memes

10398 readers

2133 users here now

Community rules

1. Be civil

No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour

2. No politics

This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to [email protected]

3. No recent reposts

Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month

4. No bots

No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins

5. No Spam/Ads

No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live.

Sister communities

[email protected] : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
[email protected] : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
[email protected] : Linux themed memes
[email protected] : for those who love comic stories.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

289

EDIT: I THINK I STAND CORRECTED (lemmy.zip)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

220 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Certain infinities can grow faster than others, though. That's why L'Hôpital's rule works.

For example, the area of a square of infinite size will be a "bigger" infinity than the perimeter of an infinite square (which will in turn be a bigger infinity than the infinity that is the side length). "Bigger" in the sense that as the side length of the square approaches infinity, the perimeter scales like 4*x but the area scales like x^2 (which gets larger faster as x approaches infinity).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Those are all aleph 0 infinities. There's is a mathematical proof that shows the square of infinity is still infinity. The same as "there is the same number of fractions as there is integers" (same size infinities).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It might give use different growth rate but Infinity is infinite, it's like the elementary school playground argument saying "infinity + 1" there is no "infinity + 1", it's just infinity. Infinity is the range of all the numbers ever, you can't increase that set of numbers that is already infinite.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

but in this case we are comparing the growth rate of two functions

oh, you mean like taking the ratio of the derivatives of two functions?

it's like the elementary school playground argument saying "infinity + 1" there is no "infinity + 1", it's just infinity

but that's not the scenario. The question is whether $100x is more valuable than $1x as x goes to infinity. The number of bills is infinite (and you are correct that adding one more bill is still infinity bills), but the value of the money is a larger $infinity if you have $100 bills instead of $1 bills.

Edit: just for clarity, the original comment i replied to said

Lhopital's rule doesn't fucking apply when it comes to infinity. Why are so many people in this thread using lhopital's rule. Yes, it gives us the limit as x approaches infinity but in this case we are comparing the growth rate of two functions that are trying to make infinity go faster, this is not possible. Infinity is infinite, it's like the elementary school playground argument saying "infinity + 1" there is no "infinity + 1", it's just infinity. Infinity is the range of all the numbers ever, you can't increase that set of numbers that is already infinite.