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Subject: Everyone nearly said as much

Author:
Damoclese

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Date Posted: 03/14/04 4:01pm
In reply to: Wade A. Tisthammer 's message, "A Tristram Shandy argument proved invalid." on 03/13/04 10:14pm

>
>A(1) == B(2)
>A(2) == B(3)
>A(3) == B(4)
>A(4) == B(5)

This is pretty much what I said before. You are simply starting the B set rather arbitrarily at two. You could just as easily start the B set at one, or zero, or anything you pleased. (it wouldn't matter, because within infinity all the starting places would be equal; that is to say none of them would stand out as logical places to start)

This isn't really that much different than what I saying concerning where one started counting years. Of course, my argument realizes that the paradox isn't necessarily invalid because set B could just as easily be started at one. However, it doesn't HAVE to be started at one. It can be started anywhere so long as the one to one correspondence remains, which would of course, not allow shandy to ever finish.

Infinity when dealing with finite numbers in this particular example could yield a finishing or an infinitely far behind Shandy, which only goes to show that something has gone wrong in the formulation of the problem in the first place. In this particular problem, it ends up being the nature of infinity itself, and our less than accurate ways of dealing with it finitely.

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
I don't think they did.	Wade A. Tisthammer	03/15/04 12:07pm
You're right. -- Damoclese, 03/15/04 4:55pm