long winded fool

I guess I am! I think it's fascinating that there could still be things that can never be defined as existing, nor even presumed as rational premises. There is a whole other world outside the program, infinitely larger and more complex, and the digital people are incapable of perceiving it in any way or even imagining what it could be like with their digital brains. When they "die," their binary sequence disperses in the program. Can there be anything left? Can self-aware consciousness survive without the ones and zeros which define it? Could it leave the confines of the programed rules? Probably not in the analogy. It doesn't seem like it in this universe either, but then again, I'm not the programmer so I am not fully aware of the rules.

Hired Gun

My 5 year old daughter gave an appropriate response to the 'Can an all powerful God make a rock so big that He can't lift it' riddle. She said, "Mom, I can't give you a smart answer to a dumb question."

A genius should be able to successfully pass any test that he is given, even a test that would qualify him as an idiot.

A.S.A. Jones

Jinto

That's nice, but what was her response to the riddle?

You have an odd definition of a genius. Most of us would define a genius as a really smart person - i.e. one who would not be taking a test that qualifies them as an idiot.

Hired Gun

An all powerful God would not do something that would compromise His omnipotence. The question is actually asking, 'if one is the greatest, can one be greater than oneself?' The flaw lies in the question, not the answer. The bit of illogic involved relies on the limits of language and results in ambiguity.

A.S.A. Jones

Jinto

Is not infinity = infinity + 1?

Majody

No, because the latter of the two will always be one more ahead of the first. 100000000 is not equal to 100000000+1

Quantum Ninja

Not really. Subtracting infinity from both sides would mean that 0 = 1. You can't really treat infinity like a quantity or a variable and have it make any mathematical sense.

Jinto

Then how is it that people *couchhiredguncough* treat infinity as a person and expect it to make any sense of any type?

xorbie

Put it this way... lim (x--> inf) x+1 = lim (x--> inf) x

Infinity is not a number, you can't add it or subtract it or mutliply it or anything. You have to deal with limits.

Llyricist

Actually, subtracting infinity from both sides would leave:
-infinity = -infinity+1
in other words, why would subtracting infinity stop at zero?

However:
"You can't really treat infinity like a quantity or a variable and have it make any mathematical sense."

is valid anyway.