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calef comments on Approaching Infinity - Less Wrong Discussion

-1 Post author: Psychohistorian 01 February 2011 08:11AM

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Comment author: calef 01 February 2011 06:07:38PM *  1 point [-]

Oh actually you're right. I didn't interpret the op correctly. I thought it was just some weird extension of Knuth's up arrow notation but now I see what's going on.

In that sense, (2) isn't a real number, as infinity isn't a real number, it's an extended real number.

And I think you're right again, ((2)) isn't well defined I don't think.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 01 February 2011 08:05:24PM *  0 points [-]

Count me wrong. You understood correctly the first time. See Vladimir's comment; the notation is confusing, but it is a finite process.