(no subject)

[prog]

Heh heh, pages upon pages of people going No... NO! Aaaaaagh you're all wrong shut up about the .999... thing. This is worse/more amusing than the time that the Monty Hall problem was AOTD.

I find it interesting that the text of the article actually predicts the belief-path the doubters take... when faced with simple and easily graspable proofs, they change their minds and state that obviously this means that the number system is broken.

Comments

[radtea.livejournal.com]

Numbers and math are all invented by humans to simplify reality into a form that can be more easily manipulated for analysis.

Mathematics is language, and nothing but language. It has the same ontological status as English, which certainly exists.

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

Ooops. Meant to reply to this yesterday. I agree that mathematics is a language and, in so far as English exists math also exists.

But you can lie with language, or simply make stuff up. And in that sense, neither English nor mathematics are real. I mean, there's no larger Truth to language, English or Math. At best, they're a reflection of reality, not reality themselves.

You could make some arguments about the interactivity of language and life, like how learning a language changes the way people think. And in that sense they're real, too. I really only meant exist on a certain level. Loose language. My bad.