On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 5:46 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: > On 18 January 2015 at 18:27, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Do you believe that *one and only one* of the following statements is >>>> true? >>>> >>> >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 0 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 1 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 2 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 3 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 4 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 5 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 6 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 7 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 8 >> the 10^(10^(10^100))th decimal digit of pi is 9 >> >> Either you answer yes, or no to that question. If you answer yes, I don't >> see how you can escape mathematical realism. >> >> Nicely put. I may have to quote that whenever someone starts saying maths > is something we made up, it's more convincing that 2+2 somehow. > > Thanks. Go ahead, and let me know if it has any success.
I think the difference is with 2+2=4, they can always argue they can intuit the result and it is true because they can hold the idea in their mind. With the above it is defined in such a way to be impossible for anyone in this universe to know or wrap their mind around. So it shows Pi, in a sense, is bigger than/beyond/transcends the physical universe. If you come across someone who doubts that the above particular digit has a certain value, you can go ahead and ask whether if the digit was say, 2, instead of 7, or vice versa, whether e^(2*Pi*i) still equal 1 in both cases or not. If they say it would, then they've accepted a contradiction and essentially asserted their belief that 1 = 0. Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
