4 ms·

Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. neither electric charge, nor information, nor energy, or mass, nor money. Y

Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. neither electric charge, nor information, nor energy, or mass, nor money. Yeah I'm being a bit nitpicky I guess.

prewett 10y ago
Well, since I'm good at contrarian nitpickiness, I'm going to argue that it can. Mass can increase forever in a black hole, and if you keep accelerating, you get heavier and heavier so that you can never actually reach the speed of light. I guess you could argue that black holes will eventually run out of matter, and you would run out of accelerant, though. Conductivity is infinite in super-conductors (i.e. resistance=0). I don't see any reason why energy has any limit to how much it can be concentrated. I think people have argued that irrational numbers like Pi contain all possible strings (that is, of the characters [0-9]), although you may have to look pretty far out. So that would mean that the digits of Pi have infinite information. Writing this makes me think the world is a stranger place than I thought. I would have said that a physical quantity cannot go up forever, but I've talked myself out of that.
- fallingfrog 10y ago
  ok, so there are certain functions that keep rising forever but are still bounded above. So what I mean is that physical extensive quantities are all bounded above. Black holes will run out of matter, and there is only so much accelerant in the universe. Like you said. Conductivity is not an extensive physical quantity like mass or energy.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. Money isn't a physical quantity, though it can be represented by physical tokens; and, yes, a measure of a physical quantity can go up forever if the physical quantity is continuously (rather than quantum) valued. It may even be able to go up without bound whether it is quantized or not (which is different than going up forever), depending on the exact measure used. In any case, nominal rents absolutely can go up both forever and without bound, and real (inflation-adjusted) rents probably can, too. And rent in any particular city can go up forever and without boubd much more easily than overall rents.
- fallingfrog 10y ago
  I think you need to look up "forever" in the dictionary! I'm not saying a long time, I'm saying forever, which is different. I mean the reducto ad absurdium would be, the sun is going to burn out, the universe is going to suffer heat death. The question is, given that rents will stop rising at some point, what will the constraint be that actually stops the rise?
fallingfrog 10y ago
You know, I didn't realize that saying that the universe is finite was such a controversial statement. According to current science, it is. And since the total value of all the money that exists can't exceed the purchase price of the universe, the total value of all money is finite. So therefore rent is finite. If you can't agree on that- then you're using magical thinking!

Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. neither electric charge, nor information, nor energy, or mass, nor money. Yeah I'm being a bit nitpicky I guess.

prewett 10y ago

Well, since I'm good at contrarian nitpickiness, I'm going to argue that it can. Mass can increase forever in a black hole, and if you keep accelerating, you get heavier and heavier so that you can never actually reach the speed of light. I guess you could argue that black holes will eventually run out of matter, and you would run out of accelerant, though. Conductivity is infinite in super-conductors (i.e. resistance=0). I don't see any reason why energy has any limit to how much it can be concentrated. I think people have argued that irrational numbers like Pi contain all possible strings (that is, of the characters [0-9]), although you may have to look pretty far out. So that would mean that the digits of Pi have infinite information. Writing this makes me think the world is a stranger place than I thought. I would have said that a physical quantity cannot go up forever, but I've talked myself out of that.

fallingfrog 10y ago
ok, so there are certain functions that keep rising forever but are still bounded above. So what I mean is that physical extensive quantities are all bounded above. Black holes will run out of matter, and there is only so much accelerant in the universe. Like you said. Conductivity is not an extensive physical quantity like mass or energy.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> Well, of course, no number that represents a physical quantity can go up forever.. Money isn't a physical quantity, though it can be represented by physical tokens; and, yes, a measure of a physical quantity can go up forever if the physical quantity is continuously (rather than quantum) valued. It may even be able to go up without bound whether it is quantized or not (which is different than going up forever), depending on the exact measure used. In any case, nominal rents absolutely can go up both forever and without bound, and real (inflation-adjusted) rents probably can, too. And rent in any particular city can go up forever and without boubd much more easily than overall rents.

fallingfrog 10y ago
I think you need to look up "forever" in the dictionary! I'm not saying a long time, I'm saying forever, which is different. I mean the reducto ad absurdium would be, the sun is going to burn out, the universe is going to suffer heat death. The question is, given that rents will stop rising at some point, what will the constraint be that actually stops the rise?

fallingfrog 10y ago

You know, I didn't realize that saying that the universe is finite was such a controversial statement. According to current science, it is. And since the total value of all the money that exists can't exceed the purchase price of the universe, the total value of all money is finite. So therefore rent is finite. If you can't agree on that- then you're using magical thinking!