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Discussion with an ultrafinitist: -Do you believe in 1? -Yes. -Do you believe in 2? -Yes. -Do you believe in 4? -[slight pause] Yes. -Do you believe in 8
by edflsafoiewq 3y ago
Discussion with an ultrafinitist:
-Do you believe in 1?
-Yes.
-Do you believe in 2?
-Yes.
-Do you believe in 4?
-[slight pause] Yes.
-Do you believe in 8?
-[slightly longer pause] Yes.
Eventually you realize each question takes him twice as long to answer as the last.
- woopsn 3y agoThat's funny. There is in fact a quasi-finitist number scheme called the counting numbers, closed under +1 and addition/multiplication generally but not exponentiation, so unbounded but not too "problematic" as they have limited ability to represent propositions (or machine states, etc) arithmetically.
- auntienomen 3y agoI suppose a log-finitist takes O(1/n) to answer for 2*n? :-)