cousin_it comments on The Lifespan Dilemma - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 10 September 2009 06:45PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (214)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: cousin_it 10 September 2009 11:44:46PM *  4 points [-]

The common-sense concept of "as many" or "as much" does not have a unique counterpart in mathematics: there are several formalizations for different purposes. In one widely used formalization (cardinality) there are as many primes as there are naturals, and this is indeed obvious for that formalization. If we take some other way of assigning sizes to number sets, like natural density, our two sets won't be equal any longer. And tomorrow you could invent some new formula that would give a third, completely different answer :-) It's ultimately pointless to argue which idea is "more intuitive"; the real test is what works in applications and what yields new interesting theorems.