You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Vladimir_Nesov comments on Approaching Infinity - Less Wrong Discussion

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

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

Article Navigation

Comments (28)

Comments (28)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 February 2011 07:39:21PM 9 points [-]

(2) is a number that cannot be meaningfully expressed, understood, or calculated by any means that exist today.

You just did meaningfully express it, by giving it a definition. From its definition, we can infer some of its properties. For example, it's even!

Also, we have a standard huge number example used on LW: see Knuth's up-arrow notation.

Comment author: Psychohistorian 02 February 2011 03:29:10PM 0 points [-]

I was basically aware of that notation; I did not realize how much more elegant it is, in terms of being easy to explain.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit