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falserum | 1 year ago

Thanks for reply.

When will this reach PI or e or sqrt(2)?

(There are infinitely many numbers that will not be reached by this procedure)

discuss

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ludston|1 year ago

Well, you have to ask yourself what is PI really? You've been taught it is a number with infinite decimal places, however, practically speaking when you use PI you actually round. Practically speaking this doesn't matter because it's not actually possible to have a shape with infinite points in reality so you only need to approximate to whatever fidelity suits you.

How is this? This is because PI is not actually a number. It's a procedure that generates digits for approximating things about circles.

This is the same with sqrt(2). The sqrt procedure emits digits just as the procedure to find all real numbers does.

You can't "reach" PI for the same reason that a natural number can't reach "f(x) => x + 1". That is, natural numbers aren't procedures or functions.

falserum|1 year ago

Fun.

What about 1/3, 1/7, …? Previously outlines recursive procedure doesn’t generate those.

But yeah, if you deny existance of irrational numbers, and redefine Real:=Rational, then you can generate these “real” numbers recursively and it does follow that all infinities have same cardinality here.

Btw. what is the diagonal of a unit square formed by 4 objects at the corners? I assume it is a rational number. Btw2. If you take that answer and multiply by itself, what do you get?