The hottest Infinity Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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The Infinitude of Time (2)

Fake Noûs • 235 implied HN points • 07 Mar 26
đź“– Philosophy Infinity
  1. Paradoxes like Zeno’s and thought experiments like Hilbert’s Hotel don’t show that actual infinities are impossible, since infinite completed processes can be coherent and the strange results are arguably acceptable.
  2. The Big Bang doesn’t force a beginning of time because cyclic or other models allow an infinite past, and positing a timeless origin is unsatisfying and unexplained; appeals to God or other causes fail because causation and action presuppose time.
  3. There’s a symmetry between past and future: it’s odd to deny a possible end of time but accept a beginning, and that intuition plus the lack of any good explanation for a beginning makes an infinite past seem more plausible.

The surreal numbers

Infinitely More • 41 implied HN points • 06 Jan 24
🔬 Science Infinity
  1. The surreal numbers unify various number systems into one comprehensive system.
  2. Surreal numbers are generated through a recursive process of completion and ordering.
  3. The surreal number generation rule involves separating existing numbers into lower and upper sets to create new numbers.

The orders of infinity

Infinitely More • 12 implied HN points • 11 Mar 23
🔬 Science Infinity
  1. Real-valued functions can exhibit various behaviors as they approach infinity.
  2. Different functions can have the same behavior at infinity, based on their rates of growth.
  3. Defining an equivalence relation helps capture the idea of functions having the same behavior at infinity.

Potential versus actual infinity

Infinitely More • 3 HN points • 14 Apr 23
đź“– Philosophy Infinity
  1. Mathematicians and philosophers may disagree on the nature of existence of infinite collections or infinite objects.
  2. According to potentialism, natural numbers are potentially infinite, allowing for more to be added continuously.
  3. Consider exploring potentialism and actualism for different perspectives on the concept of infinity.
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Godel and Chabad

Splattern • 0 implied HN points • 07 Jul 21
đź“– Philosophy Infinity
  1. Chabad believes that God is everywhere and always present. This idea emphasizes that God existed even before the universe began.
  2. Godel's proof suggests that any system can't truly understand itself from the inside. To gain insight, you have to look at a bigger system, but then you're still in the same situation.
  3. Math and religion share thoughts about infinity, but in math, it's a puzzle to solve, while in religion, it's essential for understanding existence. This might be the deeper connection explored in the book G.E.B.