30 ms·

It can be proven that it equals 1 using basic algebra.

• gpm 3y ago
  Sure, but if your "basic algebra" includes the popular inconsistent axiom that "numbers have a unique decimal representation (up to leading and trailing zeros)" you can equally well just disprove any of the rules of algebra that you used to reach the conclusion. When people have (accidentally) been taught that, and then they're presented with a case where it's false, it's perfectly reasonable that they wonder whether it's that thing that they were taught, or something else that they were taught, that is wrong. You don't have to look very far to find cases where it was the other laws of algebra that they believed were wrong, for example the popular proof that 1 + 2 + 3 + ... = -1/12. Even a mathematically sophisticated alien who comes from a culture that somehow never used the rationals or reals the way we do might at first think that this is a fact that leads to a proof that no object that obeys your rules of algebra exists, rather than a proof that 0.999... = 1. Most people, even most university students, don't have the benefit of a formal mathematical education that actually clarifies these kinds of riddles.