Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (38000)	5/11/1999 1:38:00 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

"Every posiiton is assailable" But it is not profitable to assail every position all the time. When we create the system of the positive integers (i.e. 1,2,3 ...) we also create the system of arithmetic, at least addition (i.e. 1+1 = 2). The same "names" work in both systems all the time. Counting never fails to produce an answer in the set. Adding ditto. It is a great discovery that multiplication also works. Inventing subtraction is very hard, because it does not always work in the positive integers. We have to invent negative integers -- easily named by joining 0 and -1, -2, etc. to our positive integer set. This works great, but then the attempt at division produces another set of answers that aren't part of our number system -- so we must invent and name common fractions and have the whole system of rational numbers (esily and consistently named where a/b is a member and a and b are integers (with the convention that -\|a\|/-\|b\| = a/b. When we invent polynomials (a +bx) they are members of our set, but their roots don't always fit so we coin the algebraic numbers to (almost) make the real numbers and the imaginary numbers to create complex numbers. Add a few infinities of transcendental numbers (e.g. nonrepeating infinite fractions such as pi and e and their products with the rationals and the algebraics) and then we've got everything necessary (and more) for a complete (closed) number system under the operations of arithmetic plus rooting plus exponention and logarithming. Enough to satisfy the college engineering freshman (not complete enough for relativity, superstrings, chemistry and psychology). More numbers being invented every day. Numbers everywhere. Crammed in between each other in the small. Spread across the universe. Infinities. Googols. Googolplexes. Far more than any man will ever need to count anything that needs counting. There was a time when Buddhist monks looked for big numbers. Chang would say "138576" -- and Eng would say -- "Ah, a big one, but it is not even plime. But wha about 157999 ...." They grew old, but not enlightened and were reborn no doubt as number theorists. And poor Aristotle never got that far. Never solved an algebraic equation. Never integrated anything. Never understood. Damn we're smart today. And getting better all the time.