3 ms·
Maths has techniques for dealing with infinite regress - limits as N tends to infinity, fixed points, etc. Intuitively these all seem to rely on a fixed externa
by sideshowb 5y ago
Maths has techniques for dealing with infinite regress - limits as N tends to infinity, fixed points, etc. Intuitively these all seem to rely on a fixed external structure of some sort (e.g. the eigenvectors of M depend on fixed M) but I wonder if there's some formulation of these techniques that doesn't?
- goldenkey 5y agoMaths has the same issue with the primes. Their definition is a recurrence with respect to themselves. If the universe is a "strange loop," like Hofstadter says, then we have very little hope of understanding a snake eating its own tail from our hierarchical models.