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Manfred comments on Open thread, Mar. 23 - Mar. 31, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: MrMind 23 March 2015 08:38AM

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Comment author: is4junk 23 March 2015 03:25:53PM *  0 points [-]

Question on infinities

If the universe is finite then I am stuck with some arbitrary number of elementary particles. I don't like the arbitrariness of it. So I think - if the universe was infinite it doesn't have this problem. But then I remember there are countable and uncountable infinities. If I remember correctly you can take the power set of an infinite set and get a set with larger cardinality. So will I be stuck in some arbitrary cardinality? Are the number of cardinality countable? If so could an infinite universe of countably infinite cardinality solve my arbitrary problem?

edit: carnality -> cardinality (thanks g_peppers people searching for "infinite carnality" would be disappointed with this post)

Comment author: Manfred 23 March 2015 04:28:00PM 1 point [-]

Since elementary particles can come and go, what's really conserved is some arbitrary energy. Infinities won't save you from arbitrariness here, because energy is locally conserved too, and our energy density is (thank goodness) definitely not infinite.