4 ms·

> Basically I think you're just rounding something down to zero which isn't quite zero. It's too small to express, but it's not zero Why not? I'm entirely comf

by zyxley 12y ago

> Basically I think you're just rounding something down to zero which isn't quite zero. It's too small to express, but it's not zero Why not? I'm entirely comfortable saying that the lasting lifetime impact of a single speck of dust in someone's eye is zero, given that it has no lasting physiological consequences and in short order will be forgotten about completely.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
One reason is that you'd need to prove that the lastic impact is in fact zero. 3^^^3 dust specks is enough for one of them to rub something in a wrong way that rubs something else in the wrong way that gives a person cancer.
- zyxley 12y ago
  Having a speck of dust in one's eye will change the course of life in a tiny way for any given person, true, but unless we're postulating an even more absurd edge case like "everyone blinking at exactly the same time makes a blip in the physics experiment machine go unnoticed and a week later the universe explodes", it's a change that's going to be effectively random and indistinguishable from the general minor messiness of human life.
  - jtheory 12y ago
    You're not making a serious effort to guess at what difference it might make, though. Example (this is actually true!) -- I have a life-long inflammation in both eyes that started in one eye when I was about 5, and eventually spread to the other. The specialists weren't able to figure out the original cause; their best guess was basically a speck of dust -- just the wrong speck of dust (maybe with a microorganism in it?), in the wrong place, that my immune system attacked and then just kept on attacking even after the original speck had been gone for years. Medication plus a series of unpleasant surgeries have managed to keep my eyes relatively functional, so far, but others with the same condition certainly do lose all vision. Obviously this isn't a common result; but given enough specks of dust.... Well, you have to start doing some math.

by zyxley 12y ago

TeMPOraL 12y ago

One reason is that you'd need to prove that the lastic impact is in fact zero. 3^^^3 dust specks is enough for one of them to rub something in a wrong way that rubs something else in the wrong way that gives a person cancer.

zyxley 12y ago
Having a speck of dust in one's eye will change the course of life in a tiny way for any given person, true, but unless we're postulating an even more absurd edge case like "everyone blinking at exactly the same time makes a blip in the physics experiment machine go unnoticed and a week later the universe explodes", it's a change that's going to be effectively random and indistinguishable from the general minor messiness of human life.
- jtheory 12y ago
  You're not making a serious effort to guess at what difference it might make, though. Example (this is actually true!) -- I have a life-long inflammation in both eyes that started in one eye when I was about 5, and eventually spread to the other. The specialists weren't able to figure out the original cause; their best guess was basically a speck of dust -- just the wrong speck of dust (maybe with a microorganism in it?), in the wrong place, that my immune system attacked and then just kept on attacking even after the original speck had been gone for years. Medication plus a series of unpleasant surgeries have managed to keep my eyes relatively functional, so far, but others with the same condition certainly do lose all vision. Obviously this isn't a common result; but given enough specks of dust.... Well, you have to start doing some math.