sci.logic
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Re: How big is infinity?

Subject: Re: How big is infinity?
From: Virgil
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:21:01 -0600
Newsgroups: sci.logic, sci.math
In article <0hgcf2t1h9nlsqenale7pecifdntemimat@xxxxxxx>,
 Lester Zick <dontbother@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> >If Zick will explain which "infinity" he is talking about, we might be 
> >in a position to help him with the problem of his ignorance of its size.
> 
> I'm talking about infinity in general. You know the subject of this
> thread?


That's like asking for "Jones" in general.

> What's the difference between "believe" and "simply believe". You
> can't regress your beliefs to "true" and "false". 

I can believe something true without claiming to know it to be true and 
I can believe something false without claiming to know it to be false,
so I do not, as Zick seems to do, equate belief with certainty.
> 
> >> What I had in mind
> >> was "false" as in "true/false test" 
> >
> >Let Zick present us with what he thinks is such a test, if he thinks 
> >there is one.
> 
> What I just said.

And how does Zick apply that test? Does he have a suitable coin to flip?

> >
> >Mathematics is a collection of many  sometimes overlapping areas of 
> >study, and what holds in one such need not hold in all the others.
> 
> The problem is that the overlapping areas you specialize in are called
> "true" and "false".

Since Zick only offers two areas, and set theory and Euclidean geometry, 
being different areas, use up both, where do we put all the rest of 
mathematics?

> >Since mathematics  is made up of and divisible into multiple contexts, 
> >with more appearing every year, "infinity" is allowed to have multiple 
> >meanings there, but no more than one per indivisible context.
> 
> Oh so?And you make up these rather curious rules all by your lonesome?

No, they are facts of mathematical life.
> 
> >It has not been a single context since sometime in the ninteenth century.
> 
> Undoubtedly because there is no universal definition for "true" and
> "false" neomathematics split along the lines of various assumptions.

That sort of remark is the mark of an anti-mathematician who knows 
nothing about mathematics except his own inability to comprehend it.

> >On the contrary, that is about the only place that any certainty IS 
> >possible.
> 
> Well faith based certainty sure. I understand faith is very comforting
> in the absence of truth.

Since Zick has no access to truth, he must be quite familiar with faith.

> ~v~~

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