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molesgallus

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Sep 24, 2008
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Your intuition is terrible. I thought I'd get that out of the way. Now for my point. There is an intuitive paradox to existence that doesn't seem to go away even when dismissed as simply beyond our newtonian brains. It seems even mathematics is not a refuge in the case of this problem. And that, of course entirely novel and as yet not thought, problem is existence. And it's relation to finity, and it's more 'in' variety.

It occurs to me that there is a fundamental flaw with the concept of infinity; I can't understand it. And, of course, god has endowed me with an understanding of everything that exists, therefore infinity musn't exist. But, there in itself is a problem. the non-existence of infinity, would in itself, be infinity. That is to say, 'nothing' is 'infinity'. I realise that sentence is likely so dazzilingly clear, concise and brilliant, that you may have been blinded by it's glare, and dismissed it as trite. And you'd likely be right to do that, especially if you are a mathematician. If you are, please explain why 'infinity' and 'nothing' are not synonms. And don't read on, because the rest of my argument relies on that fact ebing accepted.

And that argument is, at the edge of 'existence' lies either 'nothingness' or more 'existence'. Either way infinity exists. Has to exist. And yet it, in itself is nothing. And it doesn't make sense. Even throwing our silly 4d-limited brains out of the equation. Infinity means everything repeats. Infinity means we are all immortal, all billionares, all mass-murderers. I'm going to stop here, before i reveal any more unbelievably inteligent, thoroughly novel, and certainly not inane, meaningless, awful trite theories.

Simply put, there is more in heaven and earth than there will ever be in my philosophy. Another original though from me, there. And, well, this makes me want to make a sick joke that would likely get me banned from these god-fearing, conservative forums. It is depressing, however, to realise, whatever you and you're contempories discover during the next century will literally be nothing; since 'existence' is infite. Also, if I were 'studying' 'philosophy' i would 'kill' myself. And i'd stringly recommend the same to anyone in that position. If science is never going to discover the 'big picture', you aren't. Also, as I have just noted, theres more to heaven and earth...

p.s I have been using 'existence' as a byword for 'infinity', in that I mean 'the totality of all things'. I'd argue that could make my post illegible, and redundant. But I don't think it needed much help.
 
Jun 24, 2009
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Not to be rude, but that was like every nonsense Matrix speech chopped up and mixed together.* I have no idea what you mean.

*I'm not saying all the speeches in the Matrix movies are nonsense, just a lot of them are.
 

Phlakes

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Mar 25, 2010
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No, nothing isn't infinity, it's just infinite. And infinity itself is just an idea.
 

BrailleOperatic

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Jul 7, 2010
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Long story short: Nothing need not be infinite. You can have nothing between point A and point B. On the flip side, infinity need not be nothing. You can have infinite number sets (which can actual have cardinalities of infinity--google Aleph Numbers for more info. The two are inter-related concepts that are also in fact independent of one another.
 

Loop Stricken

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Jun 17, 2009
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I think what he's trying to explain is because infinity is such a vast concept that humans can't understand, then it should be synonymous with 'nothing'.

It's bollocks of course. And at some point he seems to have confused infinity with some sort of multiverse theory.
 

DarthFennec

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May 27, 2010
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molesgallus said:
If you are, please explain why 'infinity' and 'nothing' are not synonyms.
Because `nothing' doesn't contain any information. If you have an `infinte expanse of nothing' it's not really useful for anything is it? Nothing and infinity don't exist, they're just concepts that we use to understand our world, so they're similar in that way, but they're nowhere near the same thing.

In any case, this whole thing is complete nonsense. If you're interested in this stuff I suggest you go learn some higher mathematics, sciences, and so on, so you could understand the reality of it better.
 

BGH122

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Jun 11, 2008
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Loop Stricken said:
I think what he's trying to explain is because infinity is such a vast concept that humans can't understand, then it should be synonymous with 'nothing'.

It's bollocks of course. And at some point he seems to have confused infinity with some sort of multiverse theory.
I think he's trying to say that zero and infinity are both defined by their absence of a fixed integer. Zero is the absence of an integer to indicate that there simply isn't an integer, and infinity is the absence of an integer to indicate that the concept being relayed cannot be made precise.

His separate point about infinity meaning that we're all possessing contradictory properties (I'm rich poor, fat slim etc) is valid insofar as directly applied infinity to an individual would result in all possible traits being present and hence individuals being in possession of contradictory traits. However, this rationale doesn't actually explain why one would apply infinity to the characteristics of an individual or how this ties into the previous argument.
 

theheroofaction

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Jan 20, 2011
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ok what started out as a simple counterpoint became a three page thesis so I put it in a spoiler tag so people who don't want to read it can just go on to the next posts

molesgallus said:
It occurs to me that there is a fundamental flaw with the concept of infinity; I can't understand it. And, of course, god has endowed me with an understanding of everything that exists, therefore infinity musn't exist.
Okay, first find where in ANY religious text that it is said that everyone can undersatand everything.

For the next bit, can you even imagine how big the earth is? I'll give you a hint, it's about 12 megameters diameter, can you imagine that, can you even imagine 1 megameter?

or, if you happen to be an airline pilot or some other guy who deals with large areas, can you imagine how far the horizon would be if you stood on the sun? most people can't,
but there's one size that is finite that absolutely nobody can comprehend, go stand on Sagittarius in the center of the galaxy, and tell me where the horizon is there.

or better yet, draw a to scale picture of your house to the size of the moon, I guarantee that the house would be oversized

yeah, just this star system is bigger than most people can imagine, but can we really say that the size of a rock really matter, earth is kinda small by comparison to other worlds, but does it matter what happens in the clouds of venus? no it doesn't, because there's nothing living there.
Meanwhile, can one really say that what happens to the beings on this little spot of the universe filled with water and rocks doesn't matter?

On the flipside, if some sciencey type person tells you that he's found life on one of those rocks that fill the universe, doesn't that make it more important than all the other rocks even though you can't comprehend the beings on it.



Can you comprehend a single tiny atom, the things that the universe is made of? can you count the molecules that make up your body? You probably can't comprehend the number of cells that makes you who you are.

Or, to put the real point in, can you imagine me? a being perfectly in your limited scale of size.

Or say, there are 7 blue plates in front of you, and you are told to pick the one that reflects UV radiation, now, you can't see uv radiation, so you can't comprehend it and thus will pick randomly. but it is still there, there's still a right answer

Yeah, you can't comprehend anything that you can't see or hear for yourself, but does that which does not affect living beings even matter? no it doesn't.

Anyway, I'm gonna spoilerize this since some people won't like scrolling down a a wall of text

Edit: And, the thread died while I was typing my response, typical.
 

Dr Snakeman

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Apr 2, 2010
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...

I think you may be a crazy person. None of that made any goddamned sense. Granted, I didn't pore over the entire thing. Instead, I elected to skim through and try to find places where I could figure out what in the name of sweet, buttery Jesus you were saying. But I couldn't find any.

Congratulations on creating one of the finest, longest bits of complete nonsense I've ever seen on this site. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you're really, really sleep deprived. You should probably take care of that.
 

Dr Snakeman

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Apr 2, 2010
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theheroofaction said:
And, the thread died while I was typing my response, typical.
No, it didn't! I'm not going to let this thread die! Everyone needs a little dose of harmless, inoffensive craziness in their life, and the OP has that in spades. More Escapists need to see this.
 

Lukeje

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Feb 6, 2008
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So the OP starts with a made up word, and then goes downhill from there. If I had to guess I'd say that that post was made with one of those online argument generator things that just sticks together arbitrary controversial opinions.
 

TonyVonTonyus

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Dec 4, 2010
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I don't really think the human mind was made to ceomprehend infinity. It's not that we have bad intuition it's that the subejct is beyond intuition...also you seem to be cracked out of your mind.
 

randomsix

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Apr 20, 2009
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Donnyp said:
Ummm...Infinity doesn't exist because in nature there is no such thing as infinity. Only Balance or imbalance. If the equation if off kilter then it balances itself out. Sorry. Infinity doesn't exist. Cause if it did the equation wouldn't exist :) lol.
The sarcasm of this post is excellent, but I fear that it is a little to subtle to be conveyed to most people who aren't looking for it (or who aren't using a good bit of charity in the philosophical sense).

That said, the OP's argument is based on a logical fallacy; he says that he can't understand infinity, so it can't exist. By the same token, my cat can't understand doorknobs. Does that mean that doorknobs don't exist?

Let's try this another way: the OP uses the existence of God as a premise of the argument. I assume (not surprisingly) that this God is of the Abrahamic variety, and is therefor omnipotent. A being of omnipotent power has the ability to do anything. Such a being would have no limits on what it could do. So the being has an infinite amount of things to do.

Based on what I interpret the OP's premise to be, his argument fails.

Also, not sure if troll, but if so, one which provokes thoughtful discussion.

Recommendation of suicide noted and ignored due to temporary personal relativist philosophy.
 

molesgallus

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Sep 24, 2008
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DarthFennec said:
molesgallus said:
If you are, please explain why 'infinity' and 'nothing' are not synonyms.
Because `nothing' doesn't contain any information. If you have an `infinte expanse of nothing' it's not really useful for anything is it? Nothing and infinity don't exist, they're just concepts that we use to understand our world, so they're similar in that way, but they're nowhere near the same thing.

In any case, this whole thing is complete nonsense. If you're interested in this stuff I suggest you go learn some higher mathematics, sciences, and so on, so you could understand the reality of it better.
What are the dimensions of the nothing between point A and point B? What is the smallest unit of nothing? Apply the same questions to infinity.

Infinity, and nothing in the senses you are using them are approximations used phenomena. I'm just wildly speculating about everything, using my terrible intuitition, and vague, semantically challenged, meangingless ideas. Learning facts could seriously hinder my ability to do that.