If it was as simple as "if a/b = n, then a = b x n" (and it should be simpler, IMO, for the simple cases) then we could just say a = 6, b = 0, b * n = 0, therefore a/b and a/n both = 0.
This is a good example of how I think these should work. The math nerds can just say "except not really," and "dividing by 0 is undefined in ____ and ____ and ____ situations".
It is not the everyday calculations that are made difficult by the 0. It is the academic ones. And the everyday calculations are constantly doing these extra checks so that they can return a 0 instead of dividing.
And there are fancy schmancy reasons why they come up with Infinity as the answer. Some sort of nonsense involving imaginary what-the-whats.
My claim is that the "problems" are different for different people and in different contexts. The academics rule this issue, even though their uses are very abstract. The academic assertions create lots of extra problems and work for accountants and programmers, where you have to check if a value is 0 before dividing, and in almost all of these situations what you actually then do is just plug in "0" as the answer.
So there are lots of absurdities to go around, but one privileges group, with no real world work involved, simply asserts the answer. And their assertion doesn't really "do" anything; instead of refusing to define an answer, they could just add a special case wherever their problems come up; "unless x is 0 and then the answer is undefined." It is more convenient for them to just attach that special case in the most general place that it comes up, but that actually trips up the most other people who aren't doing weird stuff where a 0 leads to absurdity. For most people a 0 stays a zero.
It is highly illogical to assume that if the laws of physics were different, you wouldn't notice any changes. Perhaps there could be all sorts of different values of PI, especially if quantum interactions were different.
But within the limited scope of your response, the breadth of possible universes where PI would be exactly the same underscores how awful our math is that we can't even figure out the exact value. Math is not clearly not nature.
And yeah, if you defined Universe as Everything, then you can use any terms for it you want; any truth is just the Universe.
It can be defined at any time in any way. You could define it as always equaling 42. Might not be a useful definition, but math is a set of definitions. The idea that definitions can be definitively defined is silly.
You then point to an example of something mathematically defined within a context for the purpose of convenience. You disproved your first statement with your second! With logic like that, perhaps you should consider the possibility that you missed my point. Eh, kiddo?
Now divide a pizza into 0 parts. You have... 0 parts left. This is known. This is obvious. Maybe it is a mystery. Maybe there is an extra step left out of the equation where somebody ate your pizza. That is all very interesting, I'm sure. But you still have 0 parts left.
And the nonsense about "Dividing by zero is bunk anyway you slice it" is totally demonstrably wrong. IEEE defines diving a floating point number by zero as being Infinity. And then in dividing integers by 0, they define it as an error. So it is already defined. As in, not bunk.
I obviously have a different philosophy about what numbers are for, and the purpose of math, than the IEEE. You're welcome to disagree. But good luck debunking.
Fail. I didn't say they aren't computable. Try again!
If you're going to be a pedant, try to understand what I'm saying first.
Also, your comment about "in the physical universe there are no arbitrary precision real numbers, because that would allow you to encode infinite information in a single quantity"... blah blah blah. I didn't say anything about arbitrary precision real numbers. You'd need one, using current math, to represent PI, most likely. Yeah, it doesn't exist. My point was that if the math modeled reality more directly, PI would be a whole number. You wouldn't need a bunch of precision for that, because it is one of nature's basic units.
IEEE defines floating point divide-by-zero to be infinity.
for example: $ ruby -e 'puts 1/0.0' Infinity
It is not a shortcoming of "math," it just illustrates how human math is. We can define these things at any time.
At a human level, divide-by-zero results in zero. Consider:
You start with 5 dollars. You divide it into 0 parts. We don't know where it went, but we know you don't have any money left; 0 parts is pretty clear. 0.
All the math principles that prevent math academics from defining it require are silly, in that, they create a universal special case on dividing by zero, to avoid having to admit a special case for dealing with zero in those other situations; but you still have to check for zero in all the same places. But for simple real-world math like diving a pizza into 0 parts, they force an extra step.
In a simulation you can choose to simulate the noise anyways, or optimize it out. There is no guarantee that useless things are optimized out of the simulation. We were left with Sartre, after all.
You'd need some examples of things that do not have a finite resolution to compare against. Having identified these different things, you could then come up with experiments.
This sort of nonsense is why most hard scientists are logical positivists. These sorts of lines of thinking have no possible resolution, so they are not useful. They cannot increase knowledge.
There is a big gap in your reasoning there. The experiment in question shows that light is not a wave, and not a particle, but is a third type of thing that exhibits behaviors like waves or particles in varying circumstances. There is no magic claimed there, so it does not in any way support ideas of magic, if creationism or simulationism.
division by zero is sometimes undefined, but there is no natural reason for it to give an error. For example, IEEE defines floating point division by zero as infinity, whereas dividing an integer by zero is defined as an error.
Programmers often catch divide by zero errors and define the result as 0.
As for overflow, what are you going to overflow? The total energy in the Universe? But where would you get the extra?
Indeed. He doesn't notice that math is a set of abstractions that humans use to model their environment. It would be a pretty awful model if he didn't look out and see those patterns.
It is like a glass maker looking in a mirror and deciding that glass has humans inside. No, really, you should know this stuff.
And if he sees so many patterns, he should probably look at all the warts, too. "Natural" numbers are natural to humans, but those aren't the numbers/proportions nature uses. If math was really modeling the universe well, we would have whole numbers for constants: e, c, k, pi. Math is very useful, and at human scale we mostly don't notice the lack of symmetry. The different things in the universe that we model with math are often symmetrical to each other. But the math is not perfectly symmetrical to the individual components in nature.
I've been here since the 90s, what makes you think I'm going to let Mr. Coward tell me how to mod?
Next you'll suggest I read articles! lol
As to the summary, which I skimmed, I already know about the freenode blog that it links, because I'm a freenode user. And the blog doesn't talk about the big bad gubermint DDoSing freenode. Actually it talks about cooperating with law enforcement in handling DDoS attacks, but that there aren't enough resources to track down the command and control servers so nothing is likely to get done on that front.
It is actually some insidious FUD, trying to imply that FOSS == Anonymous, which is totally absurd. Freenode is a white hat IRC network.
If only they made Faraday cages. Good luck learning computer security!
Derp! It is almost as if you didn't know what a sound card is.
BTW, I'm a sysadmin. You're being very foolish. If you think a computer is secure, that is guaranteed to be a false sense of security. Read the things I actually wrote.
Also, a thought experiment... how do you enter a Faraday cage to do maintenance? I'll give you the answer, you don't. It is no longer a Faraday cage. And picture the absurdity of having your motherboards manufactured... and shipped to you... inside a cage.;)
Slashdot Mirror
You didn't "debunk" anything. So no. If you presented your opinion as your opinion, I might care and I might have addressed it.
If you think "0 parts" makes no sense, how can you even define 0 in the first place?
People died trying to convince others that zero exists. It is no small leap. zero parts of a pizza is no weirder than a pizza zero times.
If it was as simple as "if a/b = n, then a = b x n" (and it should be simpler, IMO, for the simple cases)
then we could just say a = 6, b = 0, b * n = 0, therefore a/b and a/n both = 0.
This is a good example of how I think these should work. The math nerds can just say "except not really," and "dividing by 0 is undefined in ____ and ____ and ____ situations".
It is not the everyday calculations that are made difficult by the 0. It is the academic ones. And the everyday calculations are constantly doing these extra checks so that they can return a 0 instead of dividing.
And there are fancy schmancy reasons why they come up with Infinity as the answer. Some sort of nonsense involving imaginary what-the-whats.
According to IEEE, on floating points 0.0/0.0 is NaN (Not a Number).
So it is undefined by some. And defined by others. ;)
My claim is that the "problems" are different for different people and in different contexts. The academics rule this issue, even though their uses are very abstract. The academic assertions create lots of extra problems and work for accountants and programmers, where you have to check if a value is 0 before dividing, and in almost all of these situations what you actually then do is just plug in "0" as the answer.
So there are lots of absurdities to go around, but one privileges group, with no real world work involved, simply asserts the answer. And their assertion doesn't really "do" anything; instead of refusing to define an answer, they could just add a special case wherever their problems come up; "unless x is 0 and then the answer is undefined." It is more convenient for them to just attach that special case in the most general place that it comes up, but that actually trips up the most other people who aren't doing weird stuff where a 0 leads to absurdity. For most people a 0 stays a zero.
An example that doesn't cover the case I used.
I used that case for a reason. Values other than 0 will not speak to it in any way. I did NOT make any claim about a generalized principle.
It is highly illogical to assume that if the laws of physics were different, you wouldn't notice any changes. Perhaps there could be all sorts of different values of PI, especially if quantum interactions were different.
But within the limited scope of your response, the breadth of possible universes where PI would be exactly the same underscores how awful our math is that we can't even figure out the exact value. Math is not clearly not nature.
And yeah, if you defined Universe as Everything, then you can use any terms for it you want; any truth is just the Universe.
It can be defined at any time in any way. You could define it as always equaling 42. Might not be a useful definition, but math is a set of definitions. The idea that definitions can be definitively defined is silly.
You then point to an example of something mathematically defined within a context for the purpose of convenience. You disproved your first statement with your second! With logic like that, perhaps you should consider the possibility that you missed my point. Eh, kiddo?
Obviously 0.5 does not equal 0.
Now divide a pizza into 0 parts. You have... 0 parts left. This is known. This is obvious. Maybe it is a mystery. Maybe there is an extra step left out of the equation where somebody ate your pizza. That is all very interesting, I'm sure. But you still have 0 parts left.
And the nonsense about "Dividing by zero is bunk anyway you slice it" is totally demonstrably wrong. IEEE defines diving a floating point number by zero as being Infinity. And then in dividing integers by 0, they define it as an error. So it is already defined. As in, not bunk.
I obviously have a different philosophy about what numbers are for, and the purpose of math, than the IEEE. You're welcome to disagree. But good luck debunking.
$ ruby -e 'puts 1/0.0'
Infinity
0 parts, not 0.5 parts. Where did you get that?
Fail. I didn't say they aren't computable. Try again!
If you're going to be a pedant, try to understand what I'm saying first.
Also, your comment about "in the physical universe there are no arbitrary precision real numbers, because that would allow you to encode infinite information in a single quantity" ... blah blah blah. I didn't say anything about arbitrary precision real numbers. You'd need one, using current math, to represent PI, most likely. Yeah, it doesn't exist. My point was that if the math modeled reality more directly, PI would be a whole number. You wouldn't need a bunch of precision for that, because it is one of nature's basic units.
So save your link, and instead, think.
IEEE defines floating point divide-by-zero to be infinity.
for example:
$ ruby -e 'puts 1/0.0'
Infinity
It is not a shortcoming of "math," it just illustrates how human math is. We can define these things at any time.
At a human level, divide-by-zero results in zero. Consider:
You start with 5 dollars. You divide it into 0 parts. We don't know where it went, but we know you don't have any money left; 0 parts is pretty clear. 0.
All the math principles that prevent math academics from defining it require are silly, in that, they create a universal special case on dividing by zero, to avoid having to admit a special case for dealing with zero in those other situations; but you still have to check for zero in all the same places. But for simple real-world math like diving a pizza into 0 parts, they force an extra step.
In a simulation you can choose to simulate the noise anyways, or optimize it out. There is no guarantee that useless things are optimized out of the simulation. We were left with Sartre, after all.
You'd need some examples of things that do not have a finite resolution to compare against. Having identified these different things, you could then come up with experiments.
This sort of nonsense is why most hard scientists are logical positivists. These sorts of lines of thinking have no possible resolution, so they are not useful. They cannot increase knowledge.
There is a big gap in your reasoning there. The experiment in question shows that light is not a wave, and not a particle, but is a third type of thing that exhibits behaviors like waves or particles in varying circumstances. There is no magic claimed there, so it does not in any way support ideas of magic, if creationism or simulationism.
division by zero is sometimes undefined, but there is no natural reason for it to give an error. For example, IEEE defines floating point division by zero as infinity, whereas dividing an integer by zero is defined as an error.
Programmers often catch divide by zero errors and define the result as 0.
As for overflow, what are you going to overflow? The total energy in the Universe? But where would you get the extra?
Indeed. He doesn't notice that math is a set of abstractions that humans use to model their environment. It would be a pretty awful model if he didn't look out and see those patterns.
It is like a glass maker looking in a mirror and deciding that glass has humans inside. No, really, you should know this stuff.
And if he sees so many patterns, he should probably look at all the warts, too. "Natural" numbers are natural to humans, but those aren't the numbers/proportions nature uses. If math was really modeling the universe well, we would have whole numbers for constants: e, c, k, pi. Math is very useful, and at human scale we mostly don't notice the lack of symmetry. The different things in the universe that we model with math are often symmetrical to each other. But the math is not perfectly symmetrical to the individual components in nature.
I rarely edit the pages anymore either. Instead I just join the conversation on the talk page.
Unfortunately, most experts have jobs. Worse, their jobs are often in the same field they're an expert on!
Anything an expert might say is biased original research.
Wikipedia editing is only for out-of-work journalists, school children, and neckbeards. Nobody else can be trusted.
Rise of the Planet of the Neckbeards!
Well said, thank you.
I've been here since the 90s, what makes you think I'm going to let Mr. Coward tell me how to mod?
Next you'll suggest I read articles! lol
As to the summary, which I skimmed, I already know about the freenode blog that it links, because I'm a freenode user. And the blog doesn't talk about the big bad gubermint DDoSing freenode. Actually it talks about cooperating with law enforcement in handling DDoS attacks, but that there aren't enough resources to track down the command and control servers so nothing is likely to get done on that front.
It is actually some insidious FUD, trying to imply that FOSS == Anonymous, which is totally absurd. Freenode is a white hat IRC network.
I'm just glad I've never seen it.
I already know I'm not interested in a slashdot-replacement, and I don't really care if it has the name "slashdot" on it or not. I won't be there.
If only they made Faraday cages. Good luck learning computer security!
Derp! It is almost as if you didn't know what a sound card is.
BTW, I'm a sysadmin. You're being very foolish. If you think a computer is secure, that is guaranteed to be a false sense of security. Read the things I actually wrote.
Also, a thought experiment... how do you enter a Faraday cage to do maintenance? I'll give you the answer, you don't. It is no longer a Faraday cage. And picture the absurdity of having your motherboards manufactured... and shipped to you... inside a cage. ;)
There goes my next 10 weekends :P