Is Zero Divided by Zero Really Solved After 1200 Years?

[DeadWolfe]

Hmm. At his website he has books where he has solved the mind.body problem.

In the preface he says it's completely mathematical, but with no equations. Instead it has "visions", so that you can see consciousness.

Yeah, he's definitely not a crackpot.

 

[ScaleMaster]

I am by far no math guru, and I am sorry for bringing up a topic that ended almost 2 months ago, but I just recently discovered this whole "nullity" bs,

But wouldn't his idea also indicate that numbers have an "end" ?

Infinity is defined as 1/x as x gets closer and closer to 0

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example

1/1 = 1
1/.1 = 10
1/.00001 = 100000
1/.000000000000000000001 = 1.0 × 10^21
etc, etc
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he is going off the concept that 1/0 is infinity and is using it as, "the final number" when infinity is not a number, it's a concept.

So he is basically saying that numbers have a stopping point.

 

[d_leet]

Infinity is defined as 1/x as x gets closer and closer to 0

It is?

/*extar characters*/

 

[ScaleMaster]

That's the way I was always taught it, it makes sense to me, and it works. It's also what Anderson was using in his video when he said that 1/0 is infinity. and -(1/0) is negative infinity.

 

[d_leet]

That's the way I was always taught it, it makes sense to me, and it works. It's also what Anderson was using in his video when he said that 1/0 is infinity. and -(1/0) is negative infinity.

It makes sense, yes, but I don't think it's the definition of infinity.

 

[ScaleMaster]

well that's the assumption that he is also going by. Which is where he messed up.

 

[Hurkyl]

I am by far no math guru, and I am sorry for bringing up a topic that ended almost 2 months ago, but I just recently discovered this whole "nullity" bs,

The number system he created is perfectly valid. It's his attempts at publicizing it that's junk.

But wouldn't his idea also indicate that numbers have an "end" ?

Kinda sorta. If you take the nonnullity "transreal" numbers, they certainly form a closed interval, [ -\infty, +\infty] with a well-defined first and last element. (Of course, his construction says absolutely nothing about the real numbers)

However, the set of all transreals is not linearly ordered, so I don't think it makes sense to say that has an end.

Infinity is defined as 1/x as x gets closer and closer to 0

Infinity is defined if and only if you are working in a system that defines it, and it is defined exactly how that system defines it. "1/x as x gets closer and closer to 0" is not a well-formed statement, so I should hope that no system defines infinity in that manner.

I imagine what you meant to say is that infinity is defined as
\infty := \lim_{x \rightarrow 0} \frac{1}{x}.
That's not how it's defined in the projective reals, but it's a true statement there. There is no object called "infinity" in the extended reals (though "positive infinity" is often called "infinity" as shorthand). In fact, that limit does not exist in the extended reals: it has both +\infty and -\infty as limit points.

And, of course, this limit doesn't exist in the reals.

he is going off the concept that 1/0 is infinity and is using it as, "the final number" when infinity is not a number, it's a concept.

To reiterate, infinity is exactly what it's defined to be. For example, there are "extended real numbers" named +\infty and -\infty, and there is a "projective real number" named \infty.

 

[Alkatran]

Infinity is defined as 1/x as x gets closer and closer to 0

In general, saying some statement S equals infinity is just a shorthand way of saying for any number you pick, it can be shown S is greater than that number. 1/x as x gets closer to 0 (FROM THE RIGHT) happens to satisfy this.