4 ms·
> Let’s assume there is a first person in the line, so it’s not infinite in both directions; you have infinitely many people in front of you, but only finitely
by antonzabirko 5y ago
> Let’s assume there is a first person in the line, so it’s not infinite in both directions; you have infinitely many people in front of you, but only finitely many behind
Is this even possible? One of the premises in the article. Won't it be infinity backwards for the nth person?
- magneticnorth 5y agoThey're just describing a set of people you could consider ordered by positive integers. The first person has no one behind them, the nth person has n-1 people behind them
- antonzabirko 5y agoBut how can that hold when you're approaching infinity? It would only apply to sets finite in both directions.
- magneticnorth 5y agoThe natural numbers (positive integers) are the numbers 1, 2, 3 , 4, 5, .... The "..." signifies that there are infinitely many such numbers, so there is no largest natural number but there is a smallest (1 is smallest). In that sense it is infinite in only one direction - written here it is infinite to the right but has an end at the left. Nothing special happens as you "approach infinity" and in fact that's not a thing you can do. No matter how high you count, you have only have counted finitely many numbers and there are an infinite set more that you have not counted.
- antonzabirko 5y agook thanks