On 17 Dec 2013, at 07:01, meekerdb wrote:
On 12/16/2013 9:49 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 11:45 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]>
wrote:
On 12/16/2013 8:52 PM, LizR wrote:
On 17 December 2013 16:22, Stephen Paul King <[email protected]
> wrote:
Dear LizR,
That is exactly the point that I wanted to make: 'There couldn't
be an observer in such a universe, it's far too simple." There
could not be one wherefore "he could deduce the existence of 17
theoretically, and work out its properties" is impossible:
probability zero.
I can't see the significance of this argument. If we take a large
enough number, say 10^80, that observers can exist, we can then
ask whether such observers could work out the properties of
numbers greater than 10^80.
Can we? Whenever I add 1 to 10^80 I get 10^80 in spite of Peano.
This does not make Peano false. You just work in a context which is
not a model of Peano. You could ay group theory is false, because (N,
+) is not a group.
Use a programming language such as python or Java which supports
big integers. It will let you add 1 to 10^80.
I know. I was just taking 10^80 to mean "a very big number" which
of course depends on context. I generally do applied physics and
engineering and so 10^80+1 = 10^80 for physical variables.
Natural numbers are not supposed to be physical variable, nor real
numbers, nor big number as handled by a small computer, etc.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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