They’re still infinities, with no end. Just of different absolute sizes. Fun stuff to rabbithole down into if you want to melt your brain on a lazy afternoon.

[–] EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 4 points 1 year ago

My nephew refuses to talk to me because of this.

He said I smelled like farts, then I said he did times 10, he replied times a hundred, I pulled out the infinity card, then he replied with times infinity plus one, activating my trap card. I sat him down and for 90 minutes, starting with binary finger counting and Cantor’s diagonalisation argument, I rigorously walked him through infinities and Aleph numbers (only the first 2 in detail, I’m not a monster).

Now he knows the proper retort (not infinity plus one, use Aleph 1). Unfortunately now he’s not sure if numbers are “real” or not because I taught him that natural numbers are the cardinal numbers.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Even more fun: nobody can agree on how many there are (some people say none!), and mathematics is self-consistent regardless of if you assume certain ones definitely do or definitely don't exist.