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So I have this friend who has a habit of going off on a kick about how physics is "fraudulent" because human beings cannot understand the concept of infinity.
I frankly do not understand why he thinks human beings can't comprehend the concept of infinity. It sure seems simple to me. The thing I never got an intellectual grasp on was the square root of -1, but that at least is a convenient mathematical notion and no one really expects it to have a physical reality.
Is this a common problem? This is not a dumb guy, but he surely is stuck on this subject. He's brought it up in conversation more than once trying to get me to agree with him. I understand the concept of infinity. I do not understand where he is coming from with this.
So I have this friend who has a habit of going off on a kick about how physics is "fraudulent" because human beings cannot understand the concept of infinity.
I frankly do not understand why he thinks human beings can't comprehend the concept of infinity. It sure seems simple to me. The thing I never got an intellectual grasp on was the square root of -1, but that at least is a convenient mathematical notion and no one really expects it to have a physical reality.
Is this a common problem? This is not a dumb guy, but he surely is stuck on this subject. He's brought it up in conversation more than once trying to get me to agree with him. I understand the concept of infinity. I do not understand where he is coming from with this.
He sounds like an incredibly boring person. Put him on ignore.
So I have this friend who has a habit of going off on a kick about how physics is "fraudulent" because human beings cannot understand the concept of infinity.
I frankly do not understand why he thinks human beings can't comprehend the concept of infinity. It sure seems simple to me. The thing I never got an intellectual grasp on was the square root of -1, but that at least is a convenient mathematical notion and no one really expects it to have a physical reality.
Is this a common problem? This is not a dumb guy, but he surely is stuck on this subject. He's brought it up in conversation more than once trying to get me to agree with him. I understand the concept of infinity. I do not understand where he is coming from with this.
He doesn't understand the concept of infinity. He thinks he's smart. Thus he assumes no one can understand the concept of infinity.
Not accepting that others have knowledge and ability beyond your own is a common problem, although it's not always about infinity (usually things like quantum mechanics, general relativity, evolution, and vaccines).
As for sqrt(-1) = i, it's basically the same sort of convenient mathematical notation that 0 - 1 = -1 is. You've probably never seen -1 of any object, but -1 is a useful concept that has a very rigorous definition that you can understand. The same goes with i; you're just make use of it less frequently.
The universe is chock full of stuff we don’t understand. Sciences like physics, chemistry, etc. help us to further our knowledge. It doesn’t make them fraudulent. It just makes them unfinished, incomplete. Is a person fraudulent because he doesn’t understand something? That whole argument sounds absurd to me. I think your acquaintance likes to hear himself talk.
So I have this friend who has a habit of going off on a kick about how physics is "fraudulent" because human beings cannot understand the concept of infinity.
I frankly do not understand why he thinks human beings can't comprehend the concept of infinity. It sure seems simple to me. The thing I never got an intellectual grasp on was the square root of -1, but that at least is a convenient mathematical notion and no one really expects it to have a physical reality.
Is this a common problem? This is not a dumb guy, but he surely is stuck on this subject. He's brought it up in conversation more than once trying to get me to agree with him. I understand the concept of infinity. I do not understand where he is coming from with this.
Explain to him the different magnitudes of infinity (aleph-nought, etc) and watch his head explode.
Honestly, is this a person still in eighth grade? After freshman year in college most of us have worn this kind of thing out.
Wow. I was not expecting people to be so dismissive and rude about this guy. As I said he is not a dumb guy but he does have this strange notion. Even intelligent, well educated people occasionally have some very odd fissures in the foundations of their knowledge. It is precisely BECAUSE he otherwise evinces signs of obvious intelligence that the notion strikes me as so odd. I can't figure out how he became so convinced of this idea given the fact that he is otherwise an intelligent, educated man.
The only thing I can think is that this is something he picked up when very young and which has become firmly embedded in his psyche or world view, and is unlikely to budge at this point. I just wondered how and where he might have picked it up, and if it is a common notion amongst people who are light on a background in the hard sciences.
Actually I am starting to wonder if he somehow got the idea of "infinity" entangled with religious superstitions about mythical infinitely powerful sky wizards, and when he rejected the one he sort of automatically also rejected the other. The whole thing just seems so odd.
Actually now I am starting to wonder if he somehow got the idea of infinity entangled with religious superstitions about mythical infinitely powerful sky wizards, and when he rejected one he also sort of automatically rejected the other. The whole thing just seems so odd.
Actually I am now wondering if he somehow got the idea of "infinity" entangled with deism. He's an atheist and rejects religious superstitions like an infinitely powerful god - maybe he rejected the entire idea that anything could be infinite along with notions of mythical sky wizards. It just seems so odd.
And no, he is NOT "boring". As long as we avoid this particular subject, he has cogent, insightful things to say - but this one idea of his just doesn't add up.
@jayrandom - yeah, that had occurred to me. I hate to think it but you're probably right - for some reason HE doesn't understand infinity and therefore assumes NO ONE can understand it.
I get negative numbers but I have frequently run across people who don't easily grasp that idea either. USUALLY you can explain it to them by drawing a number line with 0 in the middle, and to discuss a negative number as the amount of widgets you NEED or are somehow short of. A good concrete way to describe negative numbers is to use a checking account balance to illustrate the concept. Although I did once run across someone currently teaching math in high school who couldn't even grasp that much. When asked what the balance would be if she had $10 in her checking account and wrote a check for $20, she insisted she would still have $10 - because the bank would bounce the check! (which still wouldn't be true given there are fees imposed for bouncing a check)
Infinity, by contrast, seems like an obvious concept to me. I can't recall anyone ever telling me it was not understandable before.
@LesLucid - I did try to discuss the ongoing nature of scientific discovery with him, which he accepts in general - except as it relates to physics, or perhaps a more targeted term would be "cosmology". He seem fine with Newtonian physics, and accepts that quantum physics has validity - but then this notion of "infinity" as an incomprehensible concept which somehow makes physicists "fraudulent" pops up. I don't see how he can accept any part of quantum physics if he truly believes that infinity is not a thing.
Actually I am starting to wonder if he somehow got the idea of "infinity" entangled with religious superstitions about mythical infinitely powerful sky wizards, and when he rejected the one he sort of automatically also rejected the other. The whole thing just seems so odd.
Last edited by Pyewackette; 09-14-2018 at 09:19 AM..
And have you pointed out that pretty much everything in his life comes from the result of engineering; that engineering pretty much would not exist without the calculus; and that the calculus absolutely would not exist but for the concept of infinity?
Ask him, for X a positive number, what is the result of X/Y as the value of Y approaches 0?
Oh come now. The poor guy's degree is in psychology. Mine was in computer science, two classes short of computer engineering, and my math usage is 35 years in the past. Even *I* can't do math the way I did Back In The Day. I've forgotten calculus and all of the proof stuff as well. What you suggest would only make things WORSE, not better.
Can't diagram a sentence to save my life any more either, though I was hot sh** at it in the 8th grade.
So I'm guessing this is not a common thing from the responses here. I really wonder how he latched on to this.
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