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submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by balderdash9@lemmy.zip to c/memes@lemmy.world

I considered deleting the post, but this seems more cowardly than just admitting I was wrong. But TIL something!

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[-] foyrkopp@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago

Neither is bigger. Even "โˆž x โˆž" is not bigger than "โˆž". Classical mathematics sort of break down in the realm of infinity.

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 12 points 8 months ago

It was probably mentioned in other comments, but some infinities are "larger" than others. But yes, the product of the two with the same cardinal number will have the same

[-] Bender_on_Fire@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago

I think quite some people heard of the concept of different kinds of infinity, but don't know much about how these are defined. That's why this meme should be inverted, as thinking the infinities described here are the same size is the intuitive answer when you either know nothing or quite something about the definition whereas knowing just a little bit can easily lead you to the wrong answer.

As the described in the wikipedia article in the top level comment, the thing that matters is whether you can construct a mapping (or more precisely, a bijection) from one set to the other. If so, the sets/infinities are of the same "size".

[-] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 8 months ago

Yeah, inverting it is a good idea, truly

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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
288 points (86.2% liked)

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