3 ms·
They’re also correct in saying it represents pure, unadulterated nothingness though. The teacher is confusing number theory with reality by limiting them in the
by gizajob 3y ago
They’re also correct in saying it represents pure, unadulterated nothingness though. The teacher is confusing number theory with reality by limiting them in the way she does.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> They’re also correct in saying it represents pure, unadulterated nothingness though. This makes me hesitate. For example, if I ask you how many quiches there currently are in your refrigerator, it does not follow that nothing is currently in your refrigerator. The zero is bound to the unit it measures.
- gizajob 3y agoNot in an empty universe.
- c22 3y agoI agree, I thought a lot of the "before" answers were excellent and insightful. The teacher did these children no favors by foisting such a meaninglessly pedantic distinction on them at this young age. > “When we ask ‘how many,’ the answer is a number. How about a few is a few a number?
- ksaj 3y agoFun way to look at it. In Common Lisp, NULL is not a number. But in Assembly language, it absolutely is. Is "no" a number? As in "I have no apples." It is strange that we can't say "I have yes apples" otherwise.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago> It is strange that we can't say "I have yes apples" otherwise. You do see ungrammatical "yes" applied sometimes when people are stumped as to how to indicate the opposite of a negative sentence. It is not strange in general that certain things are, for no apparent reason, impossible to say. That occurs in every language. English modal auxiliaries, for example, do not have non-finite forms, so in many sentences it is mandatory to replace modal can with lexical to be able [to...]