On 10/6/2012 1:02 AM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Stephen P. King
<[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
On 9/29/2012 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
Indeed. I think 17 is intrinsically a prime number in all
possible realities.
It is not a reality in a world that only has 16 objects in it.
I can come up with several other counter-examples in terms of
finite field, but that is overly belaboring a point.
This can clearly be shown to be false. For me to be responding to
this post (using a a secure connection to my mail server) requires the
use of prime numbers of 153 decimal digits in length.
There are on the order of 10^90 particles in the observable universe.
This is far smaller than the prime numbers which are larger than
10^152. So would you say these numbers are not prime, merely because
we don't have 10^153 things we can point to?
If a number P can be prime in a universe with fewer than P objects in
it, might P be prime in a universe with 0 objects?
Jason
LOL Jason,
Did you completely miss the point of "reality"? When is it even
possible to have a "universe with 0 objects"? Nice oxymoron!
--
Onward!
Stephen
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