October 8, 2009
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Richard Carrier and "Can One Infinity Be 'Bigger' Than Another?"
Intro:
Greetings readers. I'd really like some help on this from the math gurus out there on xanga and/or Planet Atheism. Below is my latest response to atheist historian, Richard Carrier on his blog post, "Are We Doomed?" It's a bit of a tangent from the original post, but it relates to issues dealing with William Lane Craig's Kalam argument. But it's even a tangent from that, too.
I think I'm following along in concept just fine, but at some level Rick is appealing to his math proofs (which can be found in his latest comments in that link above) to show I'm breaking some rules and I'm not entirely sure what's going on there other than what I can infer from the things I'm pretty sure I do understand. My position is that infinity is infinity is infinity, and Rick's position is that one infinity can be a larger quantity than another and so relative proportions actually add up somehow in the ultimate sense depending on the thought experiment.
Some help from an outside party would be appreciated. Granted we've been over this before (link), but it never hurts to triple check.
Rick,Thanks for responding. To recap, you had said:
But to give you an example of a counter-argument, if you are falling toward an infinite platform, and one out of every ten planks on that platform is missing, and the odds of hitting any one plank (missing or not) across that whole infinite expanse is equal, then it doesn't seem plausible to argue there is a 50% chance you will fall through the platform. Surely the odds are 1 in 10.
You said "surely" to appeal to my common sense, but common sense doesn't deal with the actuality, only the appearances. To make the sensibility "work" I had to assume you meant this:
If someone is falling from a finite height, there's only so much surface area of an infinite plane you are actually dealing with. And the density (and consistency) of the plank ratio matters. [...] You can put all the planks to one side of the infinite plane or do whatever, and it shouldn't effect the probability in any way shape or form. [...] As I see it, it is straight 50/50 and the idea that one infinite can be "more" than another is incoherent.
But, you had something more creative in mind:Actually, you can just change the laws of physics any way you want to make the stipulated conditions hold, e.g. have it so people don't fall in a fixed direction but any direction at random that is below the parallel. [...] The point is not the incidentals of physics, but what happens to probabilities when you change ratios in an infinite series.
If we allow for this omni-fall, which is fine, my point is reinstated. There are two infinites on the infinite plane beneath you no matter how they are arranged and you can hit *any* plank space *anywhere* on it. Your chances on balance, since that's actually what we have to deal with despite appearances, is still 50/50.
One of the few things that has been proven (deductively, formally proven) for transfinites is that there are infinities that are objectively bigger than others. Cantor demonstrated this, and thus originated the concept of cardinality.
Cardinality may be the proper way to describe the 9/10 *arrangement* but cardinality does not magically make one infinity more or less than another infinity. Mathematicians suck at communication and "bigger" in this sense is not the bigger you need to mean anything relevant here.
However, producing a one-to-one correspondence is not by definition the same operation as producing a ratio, thus it is a conflation fallacy to convert the one into the other.
A 1:1 correspondence is a freaking ratio, by definition. How exactly is the "law of identity" a "fallacy of conflation"?
If in N for every x(f) there are ten ~x(f)'s, and you extract one item from N and it is a ~x(f), you can pull one x(f) out of N to pair with it. If you repeat the operation indefinitely, you will exhaust all the x(f)'s by the time you've exhausted only a tenth of the ~x(f)'s, but you cannot do the reverse, i.e. even after infinite operations, there will still be ~x(f)'s left over, but no x(f)'s.
So you think you can prove that you can somehow "run out" of an infinite quantity, one by one? I'm completely baffled.
It works the same for transfinites, as long as you use proper definitions and rules, which actually forbid tricks using "one-to-one" correspondence as a device to dink the quantities.
Okay, so there's some magical rule in math that says I'm "not allowed" to take 10 Easter eggs from each of an infinite number of Easter egg baskets and spread the eggs out so that there is only one egg in each basket? I'm not going to have nine eggs left over per basket because I'm going to have completely spread them out...to infinity. I could set 9 eggs beside every basket if I wanted to, but I don't have to because the arrangement of infinities is meaningless (though we may feel the need to articulate the specific arrangements). The end quantities are all that matter and none of the rearrangement stuff changes them. One infinity equals another infinity. What you call "dinking" (and "cheating") I call "demonstrating you are wrong."
Outro:But who knows. Maybe I'm the one that is wrong. Rick has put a lot of effort into his response that is several comments long and unfortunately I absolutely disagree with him as much as he does me. I've gone back and forth with him on other issues in the past in ways we sharply disagree to no avail and I guess we're both quite stubborn. So I was hoping that someone out there might be able to shed some light on things and take us in a different direction. Or at least just show me how I'm wrong in a different way than Rick is attempting to.
Rick takes forever to respond to comments so there's plenty of time between cycles for me to reevaluate my response here.
Ben
Comments (24)
Yes, one infinity can be bigger than another. I cannot explain why precisely enough in order to try here but it is proven mathematically that this is true and it was explained to me by a philosopher of math.
@Camels With Hammers - Thanks, but that's just an assertion. If everyone is against me on this, that's fine, but I'm still going to have no idea why I'm wrong if someone can't explain it to me. Math philosophers in their explanations always seem to be confusing cardinality with quantity when they talk about one infinity being "bigger" than another. In a sense, if you add an infinity of baseballs to an infinity of golf balls you have a "bigger" something, but it's not quantity. And quantity is what I'm talking about. You have to be able to say you have two sets of specific things rather than one, but infinity is still infinity in the end.
Ben
Your question does have a definite mathematical answer. It comes down to the definition of magnitude, and the result was first obtained by Georg Cantor sometime around 1900 or so as I recall. (Until then, the orthodox answer was "infinity is infinity, and we shouldn't try to think about it".)
Cantor's approach was to ask "what does it mean for two numbers to be the same"? Of course, being a mathematician, he was concerned with sets, not with numbers per se. So he first asked "what does it mean for two sets to have the same cardinality?" Once he had an answer to that question — in brief, the two sets have equal cardinality if there exist a pair of one-to-one functions which map back and forth between the elements of the two sets — he asked the question "are there infinite sets with different cardinalities?"
He spent quite a long time thinking about this. The simple infinite sets, as it turns out, all have the same cardinality, which is usually known as ℵ0. (An aleph followed by a zero in subscript, which I was taught to read as "aleph sub naught".) That's the "number" of positive integers.
Obviously, you can double each integer in that set and get the set of even positive integers only, so there must be "the same number" of even positive integers as there are positive integers. And similarly the same number of odd positive integers, since you can subtract one from each even integer to get the set of all odd integers. And if you add or subtract some finite number of new entries, you can just bump everything over and recount, it means k + ℵ0 = ℵ0 for every integer k. (And, since the set of all positive integers is identical to the set of all even integers combined with the set of all odd integers, that means 2ℵ0 = ℵ0. And using some basic arithmetic and identities, kℵ0 = ℵ0 for any positive integer k. Nifty, eh? Unfortunately, for technical reasons subtracting ℵ0 is undefined — you aren't allowed to just subtract cardinalities in set theory, you have to say what you're removing from the set and what order you're doing it in. So ℵ0 - ℵ0 has no defined value.) The set of all integers (both positive and negative) also has cardinality ℵ0 because you can interleave the positives and negatives as though they were odd and even, so the case is analogous to the set of all positive integers.
Cantor was, by his own report, about to give up and decide that all infinite sets had the same cardinality after all, when he discovered a counterexample. Specifically, he found a proof by contradiction that there are "more" real numbers than there are integers. It's not too difficult to follow, either, in modern form:
Suppose that there are the same "number" of positive integers and real numbers between 0 and 1. This means that there is a function f such that for any positive integer X, f(X) is a real number between 0 and 1, and that if we start at X = 1 and work upward, sooner or later we will hit every real number between 0 and 1.
Now, suppose I define a number as follows: a real number whose decimal representation begins "0.", and then digit N after the decimal point is one more than digit N after the decimal point of f(N), unless that digit of f(N) is 9 in which case the digit of the new number is 0. (Strictly speaking, the real version of this proof is more rigorous, but you can think of it this way.) This number is definitely between 0 and 1, but it will be different from every single possible output of the function f by at least one decimal place. Therefore no such function can exist, and so there must be more real numbers between 0 and 1 than there are integers, because there is at least one real number in the range of 0 to 1 which the integers can never map. (And you can define an infinite number of other numbers which are likewise not in "the list" — it's not like there's only one of them!)
(It isn't hard to show that there are the same number of real numbers between 0 and 1 as there are real numbers, using a simple euclidean geometric construction. Draw a line. Now draw a circle — ideally of radius 1/π — whose center further away from the line than the length of the radius. The half of this circle which is between its center and the line has a finite arc length — 1, in fact, if the radius is 1/π — so the semicircle corresponds to the segment between 0 and 1. The line — as usual — corresponds to the real numbers, stretching off infinitely in both directions. But for every point on the line, there is one and only one line which can be drawn through that point and the center of the circle. For each point on the semicircle, there is also one and only one line. This provides a direct mapping between the infinitely long line and the finite semicircle. The real numbers are just weird.)
(Or, if you don't like geometry, the trigonometric tangent function provides a direct, invertable mapping between a limited range of real values and the full range of real numbers. I just like the visual.)
Arrgh! I just saw your reply to Camels with Hammers, saying that you don't "get" the set theory connection, after I went and wrote a bunch about it. Let me try to explain that, then.
Again historically, mathematicians didn't really bother much with questions about the natural numbers — which is to say the counting numbers 1, 2, 3, and so on. They're just obvious, right? And they must go on forever, because if they don't there are some obvious problems which arise at the end point. But sooner or later, somebody thought about it enough to say, "what does it mean for there to be numbers? When we say there are 293 kids at this school, what is the quality of 293-ness which we are denoting? When I have 5 fingers, what does the 5 mean?"
The answer which gained general agreement goes back in history to before people could count. Long long ago, rather than counting and then using the counted numbers to keep track of things, people would use tally objects. Suppose you're a shepherd who can't count, and you want to make sure the same number of sheep come back out of the pasture as went in. You can't guarantee that you'll be able to see all of them all day — if you could, you wouldn't be bothering to think about it. What do you do? You take a bag, and add a stone for each sheep as they enter. When they come back out, you remove a stone for each sheep. If there are stones left in the bag at the end, you're missing a sheep. Simple! You don't have to know how to count to 72, you just have to know whether the bag is empty.
So the natural numbers indicate a one-to-one correspondence between groups of things. When we say "there are 5 fingers on my hand" we really mean "I can group one of the fingers on my hand with each of the items in any group which exhibits the quality of 5-ness". But it doesn't matter what the things are, as long as they are distinct and can be put into a countable order. Stones, trees, lions, hairs on your head (with difficulty), grains of sand (with extreme difficulty), pedophiles in the Catholic church (with disgust), whatever. So if we're going to study this mathematically, we use the generic items known as sets, and the "how many items are in this set" bit is known as the cardinality.
I can understand why this is a bit annoying, but asking a mathematician to provide hard answers to questions about infinity without reference to set theory is like asking a judge to hand down a verdict without hearing any of the evidence or knowing any of the relevant laws. If you want an authoritative answer, you have to allow authority.
@The Vicar - Thanks for your replies.
"Cantor was, by his own report, about to give up and decide that all infinite sets had the same cardinality after all, when he discovered a counterexample."
I guess I should be looking for a counterexample I can actually understand. You say it's easy enough to illustrate, but it might as well be illustrated in a different language.
As it is, it really really really seems like we might as well be looking for a counterexample to the claim there are no circular squares. A counterexample would make the definition of infinity incoherent.
So thanks for the attempt. I guess I'm going to have to assume that I'm wrong like with the Monty Hall problem (which I did finally understand after much headache). But I still just don't get it.
Ben
I agree with you, Ben. One infinity cannot be bigger than another. I remember reading from a mathematician earlier this year that transfinite arithmetic will always be conceptual because it leads to contradictions.
It all depends on what you mean by infinity. In the philosophy of mathematics this notion is generally taken to be of two kind: potential and actual. A potential infinity is sort of like the idea that we "could" have an infinity, but it never really exists an an entity itself. We see this in calculus with limiting processes. The sequence of numbers 1/n becomes zero as n goes to infinity. This is a limiting process, we take the sequence and see 1, 1/2, 1/3, ..., 1/10000, 1/10000000, etc. There is no actual number infinity involved. There is no entity that exists. This is just a process of "keep on going" and often denoted by that "..." we see in sequences that just "keep on going."
In contrast, the whole Cantorian set theory of transfinite numbers deals with how we construct actual infinities. The idea is rather genius, but stems from rather simple intuitions. Vicar already explained much of this, but I will restate it differently. As already said, we need a formal definition of size, and that requires us to develop a way to compare two entities (sets). What does it mean for {1, 2, 3} to be the same size as {a, b, c} or {bob, joe, frank}? A way that did not require anything beyond the existence of those sets themselves was to make a comparison function: a one-one correspondence.
Consider a herder wanting to count his flock but was not schooled in arithmetic. The man could not actually count his sheep, say. He could, however, compare the size of his flock to the size of his jar of stones. If the jar is filled with exactly one stone for each sheep, then all the man needs to do when counting his flock is move one stone from one jar into another as each sheep enters the pen. In this way, he can know precisely if all his sheep are in or not by whether or not any stones remain (or he comes up short).
This same simple intuition is precisely how we define sizes of sets. We need a way to compare the two entities. It simply means we need a way to define a relation between the two entities. In the case of the three element sets above, we can state it that {bob, joe, frank} is equal in size to {1, 2, 3} which is equal in size to {a, b, c}. They are the same size precisely because we can transform any of those sets into the other one by simply renaming the elements, e.g., sending bob to 1, or 1 to a, etc.
We can do this same thing for infinite sets, such as the natural numbers. What is the difference between {0, 1, 2, ...} and {5, 6, 7, ...} and {... -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, ...} and {0, 2, 4, 6, ...} in terms of size? Nothing! We can find ways to rename these elements to look like any of the others, for instance, the first one is we simply add 5 to every element, i.e., we send 0 to 5, 1, to 6, and 2 to 7, etc. In the third one we can send 0 to 0, 1 to -1, 2 to 1, 3 to -2, etc. We simply make all even numbers the positive numbers and all odd numbers the negative numbers. The last one is also simple, we send 0 to 0, 1 to 2, 2, to 4, 3 to 6 and witness we're just doubling every number. We can define functions for all of these precisely and this demonstrates they are all the same size of the natural numbers N = {0, 1, 2, ...}.
This size is known as the countable size (aleph nought), whereas the uncountable is something like the size of the real numbers, as already pointed out. The proof for their difference is a beautiful proof known as diagonalization, and a proof by contradiction. Suppose we have a countable listing of all the real numbers between 0 and 1. Since it is countable, we can list all of these (uncountable sets cannot be listed because "listing" is a method of spelling out all their members, and then we could just assign natural numbers to each one). Say it is something like
0.abcdefg...
0.a'b'c'd'e'f'g'...
0.a*b*c*d*e*f*g*...
...
0.a^b^c^d^e^f^g^...
In this way, every sort of a, b, c, d, e, f, g, ... is a number between 0 and 9 for that decimal spot. This listing goes on forever downward and to the right, say. It may be infinite but we say that we have listed every real number and that each listing is unique. Even thought his is an infinite listing, it is not enough to capture all the real numbers since on the diagonal there exists another real number not in that listing. In particular, the number is
0.ab'c*...x^...
This number is different at some decimal spot from all the other numbers in that listing making it a unique real number between 0 and 1 that was not counted for. Therefore, the countable listing is not big enough. If it were not unique, then there would have to be a double entry of a number in our listing somewhere, violating our original assumption that the countable listing is complete with unique entries. It is quite an elegant proof that shows up in other areas of mathematical foundations.
Therefore, when it comes to mathematical ideas we have a definite example of two different kinds of infinities being used, and we can say precisely that the countable infinity is less than the uncountable infinity. We can go even further, though, and show that there are an uncountable infinity of uncountable infinities! I allude to this in my [ordinal blog]. An ordinal is a number that represents, well, order! Not only can we transform {0, 1, 2} to {a, b, c}, but if we have an ordering such as the natural numbers so 0 is less than 1 is less than 2, then by sending 0 to a, 1 to b and 2 to c, we're saying a is less than b is less than c. If we send 0 to c, 1 to b and 2 to a, then c is less than b is less than a. Obvious, right? Well, it is the same with infinities. I give some examples. We say when we do this that we're ordering a given set by a given order type. So if we order the set of integers to the natural numbers, denoted by ω, then we've order the integers with the ω-th order type. We use the "-th" to indicate a type of order, just like we talk about being on the 5th page of a book, and that the 4th page is less than the 5th. This "-th" specifies order. In that, we can compare their size. This gives us a whole host of sets between sizes because, as I show in that ordinal blog, there are a LOT of ordinal infinities, and they're all countable! That is to say, when we take the set ω as infinite, we can also add one to it, say ω+1. This doesn't mean we're adding the number one to it. It means we're appending the entire set of natural numbers to the natural numbers (i.e., ω+1 is equal to the union of ω with the set containing ω, which in turn means that we have {0, 1, 2, ..., {0, 1, 2, ...}} ). So, ω+2 has "two copies" of ω in it, and so on.
This is called transfinite arithmetic because we're dealing with arithmetic just like with natural numbers, but with infinities! 1+ω is just ω, just like the cardinal arithmetic Vicar showed. We cannot subtract just like you cannot subtract in the natural numbers. The reason is because "+" is not an operation like we're thinking of it. As already said, it is a union of the whole entity back into itself. This comes from the very [construction of the natural numbers].
0=∅
1={∅}
2={∅,{∅}}
3={∅,{∅},{∅,{∅}}}
4={∅,{∅},{∅,{∅}},{∅,{∅},{∅,{∅}}}}
or more succinctly
0={}
1={0}
2={0,1}
3={0,1,2}
4={0,1,2,3}
Thus, with ω = {0, 1, 2, ...}, then ω+1 = {0, 1, 2, ..., ω} = {0, 1, 2, ... {0, 1, 2, ...}}, and ω+2 = {0, 1, 2, ..., ω, ω+1}, and so on.
We can continue this process to ω+ω = ω2, and continue all over again with ω2+1, ω2+2, ω2+2 = ω3. I show this graphically in the ordinal blog.
We can continue constructing all these infinities out to ω to the power of ω to the power of ω, ω-times! And guess what? ALL of these are still countable! We can, in theory, find a one-one correspondence with these back into ω. We can order ω^(ω^(ω^(...))) (i.e., ω exponentially to ω, ω-times!) to the natural numbers because there is always room in ω to match it to one of the elements in that insanely huge beast of a set. But all of these are still less than the first cardinal.
Now, to really blow your mind, consider the fact that aleph nought is only the first cardinal. There is aleph sub 1, aleph sub 2, as well. These are all uncountable. We can keep on going! There is aleph out to ω! There is ω2 alephs, there is ω to the ω to the ω, ω-times alephs! Guess what? There's aleph sub aleph-nought size! We can just keep on going on this process. Just imagine what kind of set would exist that has that size. You can't! It's not fathomable at this point, and we're still not at the largest sets because there are sets requiring new axioms just to recognize them as entities. These are known as "large cardinals". There are technical reasons why we need new axioms to specify what these entities are, but I wont get into that here. The point is that even on this process we cannot spell out all the infinities, and yet we can still order all of them such that one infinity is less than or greater than another.
This has been an exercise in mathematical thought, but it requires that we have a definite idea of infinity, and ordering. Ordering in this sense has been nothing more than inclusion. 0 is less than 4 because, as shown, 0 is IN the number 4, just like ω is less than ω+1 because we can see that ω is IN ω+1.
Interesting aside, even out to the aleph sub aleph-nought, there is a finite trek "back" to 0 because all the numbers before it are IN that set, and we can see that if we reversed the process, there is a finite end. There is a "cap" and it is 0. For instance, out to ω+2 = {0, 1, 2, ..., ω, ω+1} = {0, 1, 2, ..., {0, 1, 2, ...}, {0, 1, 2, ..., {0, 1, 2, ...}}} we can still "walk" back to zero because we can "jump" over the "..." from any of these infinities onto the "lower" level. If we use that spiral ordinal graphic I used in my ordinal blog, think of it as a staircase. The "jump" is going from one infinity step to the lower, and eventually we will get to the bottom, no matter how high we climb. Crazy.
Anyway, no one has to accept this notion of infinity or that actual infinities even exist in any substantial sense. The "existence" here is mathematical existence. It means that given our mathematical [structure] we can devise a way of constructing the entity. Now, there is a philosophical issue in foundations here, often in terms of the constructivists vs the realists (platonists). The realists want to think the entities exist independent of our knowing them and that we discover the truths with our mathematical "sight". The constructivists, on the other hand, say it just doesn't exist until we construct it, with the extension that all of mathematics is just a "game" of "symbol manipulation." While there is truth in both cases, the fact of the matter is that mathematical existence still requires that we can construct the entity in some important way. Even in set theory there are times when we refer to an entity that hasn't been specified specifically. We refer to it arbitrarily. The constructivist might have a problem with this because we don't know if the entity exists or that our reference is indistinct by not pointing to anything in particular, but still referring to definite properties. Important issues, but there is no "independent existence" of mathematical entities. They are simply logical consequences that we do, in fact, discover because we have limited knowledge of the breadth of any given mathematical system.
In any import sense, talking about ordering infinities is meaningless because it is always contingent on the system by which we construct those ideas. There are set theories that have no infinities because they refuse certain axioms that Cantor accepted. In reality, there may be no infinity. One professor asked "is the real world represented by the real numbers or by rationals?" It is interesting because we use the real number line, but who says there exists in reality an irrational number? Even if it does, is the world represented by the real numbers of hyperreal numbers? (where a hyperreal is an infinitesimal number smaller than any real number) The fact of the matter is that the world is none of these. How the world is represented in the abstract is just that, an abstraction! It is not the real world itself. When I want to represent the world by rational numbers, I do so justifiably to the extent what I am representing is corresponded by rationals. The same goes for reals or hyperreals. So does the world have infinities? Only if we can demonstrate it is justifiably represented by it, but that is an abstraction, not that it actually exists in the world. It is rather common that we take the world to not have ACTUAL infinities. Time is about the only thing we can think of that has an infinite structure, but it is still only a potential infinity in that time just "keeps on going." We thought at one time the universe might be infinite, but modern theories present it as limited, defined and having boundaries. So when we are concerned about whether one infinity can be bigger than another, it has to do with "what do you mean by infinity?" First, to compare them they need to be actual infinities. Then, you'd still have to make a definite idea of that infinity. In terms of potential infinities, there is no comparison. 1/n is equal to 1/2n because in the process of going out to infinity, we're not specifying numbers, we're still working within the domain of where n comes from, and in this case that is a natural number. Domain is everything, because it specifies the structure we are talking about.
I read over some of the comments, though really tired at the moment, on Carrier's blog and I see some issues.
Probability Theory
Carrier recognizes that we talk about transfinite numbers we are talking about actual infinities, as compared with potential infinities. What he fails to recognize is that asymptotic properties does not deal with anything transfinite. When we talk about the probability function of some event, we define it over the whole real line. In particular, the real number line is more than just the set R of real numbers. We often talk about it as R union negative and positive infinity. This gives meaning to intervals like (-inf, inf), or [0, inf). The point to be made is that inf is NOT a number. It has no numeric value or meaning. It is appended to the set R so that we can talk about such intervals, and it is a potential infinity as previously described.
What the asymptotic properties tell us is that when you take certain events to infinite trials we will get different properties. For instance, a uniform distribution can be approximated more and more accurately by the normal distribution as the number of trials goes to infinity. The reason, if we look at it graphically, is that the distribution will continue to get closer and closer to looking like the normal approximation by the mean of the uniform distribution tending toward the mean of the normal distribution (see weak law of large numbers and central limit theory), and the variance will get smaller and smaller. In theory, it gets to the point that it approximate the actual mean value exactly; however, in actual limiting to infinity the value actually goes to 0 (the mean of a distribution is the sum of the i.i.d. trials divided by the number of trials, and as n goes to infinity, like 1/n, it goes to 0, but in that approach it approximates the true value).
So in short, the issue of infinity in probability theory has nothing to do with transfinite numbers. Probability theory is an extension of real analysis (i.e., the theory of calculus and real-valued spaces) and measure theory (i.e., how we measure something, say distance, shapes or probability on a space--in this case, on real spaces). Transfinite arithmetic has nothing to do with real analysis. As I talk about in my "extending the natural numbers" series, we can develop from the foundations of set theory to real numbers, or take an entirely different route toward transfinite numbers (e.g., ordinals).
Transfinite Arithmetic
I do not think Carrier fully grasps how transfinite arithmetic works. It is fundamentally different from normal arithmetic, but that is because the entities are actually different. As I already have shown above, the arithmetic is not all that different from dealing with natural numbers. The difference is that we have to deal with the limiting case with transfinite numbers. This requires us to appreciate that the number ω is the limit of the natural numbers, i.e., ω is the limiting process of going from 0 to 1 to 2 to ... As you keep going out, you will never reach the end. But remember what I said a number is. The number 4 is the set of all the numbers before it. This goes for any number, including ω. But for each number we can say precisely what is in it. Precisely, if we think of m as n-1 (i.e., m+1 = n), then n is the set of all numbers up to m. However, ω has no preceding element. This is why it is a limit number. Then ω+1 is not a limit number because ω comes before ω+1. Thus, we can do arithmetic just the same as before and have ω+1, ω+2, ... to ω+ω which is a limit number because it has no preceding element, and write it as ω2. It is not 2ω because 2*ω literally says we take the set containing the union of {2 * x: where x is less than ω}, but this does not get us beyond ω because every x less than the limit number ω is itself in ω. In other words, doubling every number in ω does not get us beyond ω. On the other hand, ω2 is ω+ω which is the set containing the union of {ω+x: where x is less than ω}, which is itself the limit of taking x from 0 to 1 to 2 to ... which eventually is all of ω. In this way, transfinite arithmetic differs from regular arithmetic only in the sense that transfinite arithmetic is not commutative, i.e., x*y does not equal y*x, and x+y does not equal y*x. The reason is precisely for the reasons described here. What we can take away is that the right-hand element determines the limiting value. 2ω is just ω because limiting ω is ω and 2 plays no significant part. As being non-commutative, 2ω is not ω2 because ω2 is limiting on the right-hand term, which is ω (i.e., ω2 = ω+ω). Thus, ω+x as x goes to infinity reaches ω so that ω+x over infinite unions makes ω+ω. Then ωx as x goes to infinity reaches ω so that we have ω squared. The right-hand term dominates the limiting process that is not part of regular arithmetic and makes it non-commutative. This is how they differ.
Therefore, transfinite arithmetic does not differ much from how regular arithmetic works, but it does require that we appreciate the limiting case when we deal with the transfinite number that has no preceding number. Trying to apply transfinite arithmetic to probability theory is new to me because probability theory deals with real arithmetic, not natural numbers (the finite ordinals) or transfinite numbers (the infinite ordinals). When dealing with probabilities we need to be able to define a definite measure of probability. I don't quite get the case you guys were talking about with the whole falling issue, but nothing transfinite seems to apply, and Carrier saying it does due to asymptotic properties in estimation theory is not a case of that since it deals with potential infinity (like inf appended to the real numbers) and not with actual infinities (like the ordinal numbers). While one must always be careful with applying finite properties to infinite quantities, I think you all might be getting involved in issues where it doesn't really apply at all.
@bryangoodrich - We can continue constructing all these
infinities out to ω to the power of ω to the power of ω, ω-times! And
guess what? ALL of these are still countable!
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. Are you saying that all of the numbers can be counted in "w"? (I don't have that html for infinity) If the numbers are infinite, how is that possible?
The "jump" is going from one infinity step
to the lower, and eventually we will get to the bottom, no matter how
high we climb. Crazy.
You can get to the bottom, but you can't get to the top. Correct?
In reality, there may be no infinity.
What would that entail? Would that mean that at one point, absolutely nothing existed?
@musterion99 - If reality had no infinity, it would mean that everything were finite, including time. It wouldn't make sense to say there was a point where nothing existed because that point wouldn't exist. It would mean we'd have a definite bound to the start and end of reality. And yes, you are correct. The natural numbers have no upper bound (a simple proof by contradiction can show this). They do have, however, a lower bound. When we go "backward" it flips around. There is an upper bound (the previous lower bound), but then there is no beginning save for the artificial point that we picked to go "backward."
The w I use is the Greek omega which is often used to denote the natural numbers. The set w does contain all of the natural numbers, but unlike those numbers there is no preceding number immediately before w. Therefore, we cannot say that at some number n+1 = w because n+1 will always be less than (inside) w. Thus, w = {0, 1, 2, ...}. We go to the limit of that "..." and reach w. Then we have w+1, w+2, ... so there is no number immediately before w+w so w+w is a limit number, and we can do this over and over. The reason we need new axioms for very large cardinals is because we reach a point when we do not know if something is a limit number or not or something like that.
@bryangoodrich - It wouldn't make sense to say there was a
point where nothing existed because that point wouldn't exist. It would
mean we'd have a definite bound to the start and end of reality.
Well, doesn't that mean that before the definite bound to the start of reality, that absolutely nothing existed?
@musterion99 - "before" doesn't make sense in that sentence. It's like drawing a line across a piece of paper from one end to the other, and then asking where the line goes afterward. Well, it doesn't go anywhere. Talking about the line, its properties or its relations to things off that paper is nonsensical. Everything that can be said about it has no meaning off the paper. Asking what is off the paper when our world in this analogy is the paper requires that we can reference the properties of what is off the paper. Suppose there is something off the paper. We have no way of identifying it, and therefore cannot say anything about it. Suppose there is nothing off the paper, then we are in precisely the same position as if there were something off the paper. We cannot say there is nothing, because to negate all things is itself supposing we can differentiate things. We can only state the position that we have no statements about what is off the paper.
@bryangoodrich - I understand that this is not something that can be substantiated or even understood, but I wonder if it's even possible that there could have been nothing. I don't believe so, for how could something come forth from nothing? And QM doesn't answer this either as you and I have discussed before. The vacuum of QM isn't truly a vacuum because something does exist and we don't know if there's some type of undetectable energy that is producing the electrons in the vacuum.
@musterion99 - The whole "something from nothing" dynamic has no meaning in the void. We are in no position to say whether or not something could come from nothing in this case because any appeal to our known science or projected theories tell us only about what is known. The void would be something entirely unknowable and meaningless. I showed in my set theory blog how we can generate all the natural numbers (and by extension all other numbers) from what is technically "nothing" (i.e., the empty set). Maybe reality does stem from nothing in some way that nothing can relate to itself. We wouldn't have either the language or conceptual faculties to conceive it, but the intuition that I am pointing at suggests it is not impossible, and especially not so because of the things we know in our world.
@bryangoodrich - Right. These are things we can only speculate about.
@bryangoodrich - I made sure to set aside some time to read your lengthy comments carefully and I do appreciate your enthusiasm. My math background is not especially strong and so I have trouble piling up layers and layers of math terms (terms which are often misleading in and of themselves, imo) to a particular conclusion.
To clarify on the main issue,
A. I'm referring to actual infinities and have little to no interest in potential infinities.
B. Whether or not an actual infinity really exists is also irrelevant for the thought experiments in question.
C. I don't need the history of the problem or all the interesting tangents there may be surrounding working with infinities.
D. The subject comes up because people say that if there are 10 simulated worlds in every real world, that we are tens times more likely to be in a simulated world than in a "real" world. And they are right if there is a finite number of real worlds. Ratios actually matter for that probability. I think everyone agrees with that.
E. However, if there are an infinite number of real worlds and 10 simulated worlds in each, there's one school of thought (Carrier) that thinks the ratio still matters: That it means something to say we are ten times more likely to be in a simulated world in those circumstances.
F. I say if both quantities are actually infinite the 10 to 1 ratio is an immediate illusion and there is actually a 50/50 chance of ending up in a simulated world or a real world in those hypothetical circumstances.
G. Admittedly I could be wrong and lots of smart people seem to think I am. I'd like to understand why. All I really need from you is a (relatively) math-jargon-free demonstration that one actual infinity can be quantitatively larger than another actual infinity as far as our mental construction of the hypothetical goes. In that event, Carrier's ratio could be something more meaningful than an arbitrary arrangement of two equal quantities.
If you can do that (G) for me (keeping in mind A-F), Bryan, I would be ecstatic.
Ben
@WAR_ON_ERROR - I'll have to give a more formal analysis when I find time, but right now I suspect that the probability of being in a simulated world would go nearly identically to 1. In short because the probability space needs to sum to one, by definition of being a probability measure. If we think about the cases successively, in each case we have one world to ten simulated worlds. Well, if we continue this over infinite worlds, then the ten simulated worlds to one world will continue to grow at a much larger rate than that of the one real world. In other words, the one real world will converge to zero and the simulated worlds will converge to 1, not half and half. It really depends on how we set up the scenario, what kind of functions we use to represent them, etc. No where in this does transfinite arithmetic or actual infinities matter because this is straight calculus (real-valued functions with a probability measure). It may be the case, if set up a certain way, that each converges to half. It might also converse back to a 1:10 ratio, or it can go to a 0 and 1. I think the most accurate representation would be the 0 and 1 because on infinite trials the addition of one more real world to infinitely more simulated worlds contributes less and less as the observations grow toward infinity. For that reason, the "growing less and less" is what a convergence to zero represents, like the series 1/n converging to zero. There is nothing that appears in the scenario that warrants a lower bound for it to stop at half, nor a property of the gross-more simulated worlds dropping to half. It also doesn't make any sense that we would maintain the same ratio in the limiting process because the growth of the simulated worlds simply dwarfs the real worlds. Thus, that kind of behavior elicits, to me, that the probability of the real worlds will go to 0 and the simulated worlds will grow to one. How to represent that formally will take a bit of work and getting the ideas ironed out precisely, but it has to be that it all sums to one.
@bryangoodrich - I must say your answer is even more baffling than Carrier's. Perhaps I don't understand what "sums to 0" means, but it sounds like when we add up an infinite quantity somehow you manage to get rid of it entirely in the final result as though no one could ever hope to be in a real world? I must really be missing something. Does "zero" mean something to you that it doesn't mean to me?
thanks anyway,
Ben
@WAR_ON_ERROR - I have to change course and say Carrier might be correct that the proportion of real worlds to simulated worlds won't change as we go to infinity because there's nothing to alter the behavior of these probabilities. Our chance of ending up in one world versus another remains the same because the proportion of real worlds to simulated worlds remains the same in terms of likelihood. Think of it this way, just because America has ten times the population of Canada doesn't mean our life expectancy should be ten times worse, as Bill O'Reilly tried to have us believe (link). The reason he was wrong is that he thinks the measure of life expectancy is impacted by population size. It isn't. It's a rate. That means it involves the relative size of the countries. Likewise, the probability measure involves the relative sizes of the samples, even as they go toward infinity. While we might say that if we do deal with actual infinities, we'd have a different issue, but that would mean we'd need to talk about a transfinite measure and a transfinite probability, both of which are beside the issue and rather different topics altogether. The potential infinity characterized by the limiting process of taking a probability over a metric space to infinity deals with real numbers, just infinitely many of them. Thus, the probability wont change.
I like numerical examples, and you could try to download R and get an idea about this stuff.
Consider the code
foo <- sample(c(0,1), 1000000, replace=TRUE, prob=c(0.1, 0.9))
length(foo[foo==0])/length(foo[foo==1])
What this does is grab a 1 million sized sample from our space of 0s and 1s with the given probabilities, and then looks at the proportion of 0s to 1s, which represent real and simulated worlds, respectively. Clearly it should be something similar to 0.1 as specified in the probability assignments (i.e., the concatenated vector c(0.1, 0.9) ). You can then run the code
size <- 10000
bob <- NULL
for(i in 1:size) {
foo <- sample(c(0,1), i, replace=TRUE, prob=c(0.1, 0.9))
bob[i] <- length(foo[foo==0])/length(foo[foo==1])
} ## end loop
plot(bob)
to see the convergence, though it might take some time to run with larger size values. What the extra baggage around the original code does is define a storage variable (named bob), the limit value you want to get to, and then it takes samples of the ith size and looks at the proportions as that size goes toward the given limit. It then plots those values out of the storage variable bob.
What I got was a graphic that shows everything clustering largely around 0.1 out toward 10,000 trials, but with some scatter, especially toward the beginning, which should be expected for small sample sizes at that point (i.e., larger error or confidence intervals). It also shows that it doesn't take that much to get that convergence since the "spread" quickly drops away (like, within the first couple hundred!). I recommend trying a size of 2,000 though. It really shows the variance in the beginning and how everything converges toward the probability. If we continue this process taking size to infinity, then we'd get the same result, but probably even less variance as we get out to the tip. In fact, the limiting process would have it converge exactly back to its probability.
We can think of it this way, if the probability of a real world is p and the probability of a simulated world is p', then with our space being of only real worlds (0) and simulated worlds (1), we have it necessary that P(real world OR simulated world) = 1, but we can reasonably assume that the probability of getting in one of these worlds is mutually exclusive and independent. Thus, P(real OR simulated) = P(real) + P(simulated) = p + p' = 1. In the code I used p = 0.1 and p' = 0.9.
@bryangoodrich - I can't say I understand the math examples sufficiently but I am still bothered by some of the things it seems I do understand.
"Likewise, the probability measure involves the relative sizes of the samples, even as they go toward infinity. While we might say that if we do deal with actual infinities, we'd have a different issue, but that would mean we'd need to talk about a transfinite measure and a transfinite probability, both of which are beside the issue and rather different topics altogether."
See, I don't think it's a different topic altogether, because it's the main issue that's tripping me up. If we have two geometric rays going off in the same direction and one of them starts one inch before the other, it seems that you and Carrier are going to call one of them one inch longer than the other. And if I say, "Hey look over there!" and then move one of the rays to start in the same place as the other and then switch them around several times, I highly doubt you're going to be able to tell me which one of those rays is supposedly "longer." I don't see why we need any transfinite math or functions to figure this out. And I'm not just saying that because I don't know how to do the math. haha
"The potential infinity characterized by the limiting process of taking a probability over a metric space to infinity deals with real numbers, just infinitely many of them. Thus, the probability wont change."
Well if it's really the same thing, then I don't see why my top down approach doesn't work equally as well. If it's not the same thing, then I don't understand why we are still working with potential infinities. Carrier claims the rearrange-a-roo is "cheating" and I have no idea what magical force is keeping us from making a new 1:1 correlation out of an apparent 1:10 ratio if we are dealing with two true infinite quantities.
Like I said, all I need is the dumb-est-ed down example possible where one actual infinity can be said to be meaningfully bigger than another. I've been rolling this around in my head off and on, and I'm totally open to being wrong here. Obviously it's a difficult subject and counter-intuitive no matter what the end result happens to be, but I'm still hoping for a breakthrough.
If the secret here really is wrapped up in the math I don't understand, then I apologize ahead of time for being difficult to educate.
Ben
@bryangoodrich - Great O'Reilly clip, btw. hehe
@WAR_ON_ERROR - If the ratio changed just because we took the sample size to infinity, it would be like the gambler's fallacy in that we're expecting the probability to change just because we went sufficiently large (large here being infinitely large). That is not what is happening. Instead, the expected value remains the same. Expectation has a very technical and precise meaning in probability theory. For instance, if we have a random variable X, then E(X), the expected value of that random variable is its mathematical mean. In other words, on the average we expect to get the mean value of our random variable over our metric space (the real numbers). We can think of it as nothing more than the weighted value of the probability over the entire metric space (the real numbers). This is how we get the definition of E(X), where X has a probability defined by some probability density/mass function p(X), as
E(X) = SUM[ X * p(X) ]
Where we sum over the values that X obtains (also known as the support). This definition is for the discrete case. In the continuous case our support is the whole real line, even though such a function would only be defined for a narrow set (say, a continuous distribution that has a uniform value of 1 between 0 and 1, then the function is 0 everywhere negative, and 0 everywhere after 1, and accumulates all the mass in that 1x1 square between 0 and 1). Since you cannot really take sums of a continuum, we instead use an integral (which sums the area under a curve, e.g.). Thus, in the continuous case we simply have
E(X) = INTEGRAL[ X * p(X) ]
Since this is defined for the whole real line, and if our sample comes from the whole continuum in that it has some amount of mass everywhere, then we can still calculate its expected value. If our sample is infinite in that sense, we do not require any talk about actual infinities because the infinite we're talking about is part and parcel with the very definition of the probability measure on its support (the real line). While talk about actual infinities and some idea of transfinite probability might have some application, it need not show up here. The issue of actual infinities is present, as is the case in most mathematics, because the real line itself, for instance, has a transfinite value (see, the continuum hypothesis). This infinite value, though, is immaterial to the numeric value we're trying to assign to probabilities or ratios.
So back to the issue at hand, since we're defining the probability of the real worlds to their simulated worlds to be constant, then that chance does not change simply because we take the number of worlds to infinity. If I flip a unbiased (fair) coin with a 50/50 chance of getting a heads, then just because I say there are an infinite number of tosses does not mean it impacts that probability. It will remain, even with infinite tosses, as a 50/50 chance. In other words, the asymptotic probability did not change. The expected value remains the same. So, suppose on the other hand I have a biased coin that flips heads with an expected value of 1 for every ten tails. Then just because I take the number of tosses to infinity does not mean the biased coin becomes unbiased! It keeps precisely its bias because we defined it that way. Likewise, the real world to simulated world retains its probability in exactly the same way, just change heads to real worlds and tails to simulated worlds. Our "toss" is our sample of worlds, and having an infinite set of worlds is like having an infinite number of tosses. The toss does not change the probability, unless you think that when you gamble, you just need to do it long enough and you'd improve your odds!
@bryangoodrich - I like your coin toss example. I've been thinking about that off and on since I read this a month ago. However, I think it fails for the same reason Carrier's falling-towards-the-planks analogy fails.
We might imagine someone tossing the biased coin and coming up with 9 heads for every 1 tail. However, even though our sequence of events may include many bunches of heads coming up, given that this goes on eternally, there's no reason we can't pull all the tails events out of sequence and line them up with a heads event. It is infinity for the heads just like the tails and it's not like we're going to run out of tails somehow to fail to make a one to one correlation. I don't see how we can expect to come to some other conclusion if we are dealing with actual infinite quantities.
It seems there can be a relative probability and an absolute one depending on if you are flipping weighted coins along in time or if you are jumping instantly to any possible coin tossing event in the future. So there's some descriptive relevance, but no change of the absolute numerical values or the ratios. Do you think that is feasible? Is that a consistent way for me to talk about it or no?
Thanks for your input.
Ben
@WAR_ON_ERROR - Wow, it's been awhile since I had a thought about this lol. Skimming over what I said before, the idea is if we're going to be rigorous about the probability of this abstract event, then we need to assign meaning to what we are talking about. In particular, we can say our support is the discrete values {0, 1} for our two kinds of events. If we were tossing a fair coin (same support) we can say that P(X=0) = P(X=1) = 0.5 where 0 and 1 are heads or tails. If it were biased, we might have P(X=0) = 0.1 and P(X=1) = 0.9. In this case, say 0 is a heads, then we get heads a tenth of the time. In this case, the expected value is 0*0.1 + 1*0.9 = 0.9. If we changed the meaning of our support so P(X=1) = 0.1, we'd clearly get the expectation of averaging 0.1. This simply depends on how we are defining these terms. At this point, it is all rather abstract and mathematical (and we could always change the content of the support for what it represents). What should be taken away is that no matter how many events X we have, it does not change the expectation. In other words, it does not change the probability. It doesn't matter if I did it a million times and a tenth of that were all 0s followed by the rest being 1s. An unlikely outcome on the whole (because it is now a conditional probability of independent events; i.e., the probability doesn't change, but now we're looking at the outcome of, in a coin toss H or T, of say HH, HT = TH, TT, a support of 3 entities where one is repeated/weighted).
Of course, this is entirely devised in terms of potential infinities and you are concerned with actual infinities. This requires a whole other probability theory I am unfamiliar with, but I do not think it would have a different result. Maybe it does, things can get weird in the transfinite case. The problem is that probability is often defined by frequencies or proportions. Transfinite values do not lend themselves to this sort of arithmetic, just like you cannot divide or subtract all natural numbers. Transfinite infinities are just like natural numbers in a lot of fundamental ways. But they differ considerably in technical ways, including multiplication; e.g., if W is an infinite ordinal number, then 2W does not necessarily equal W2 because often we will get 2W = W (the right most ordinal shapes the final result).
In that case, how do we say with two ordinals W, Z what it means to have a frequency W/Z? That kind of statement doesn't even make sense. Now, I'm sure someone has tried to workout transfinite probability, but as I said, I am unfamiliar with it, and there would have to be a lot of special aspects to its formulation. While regular probability is non-intuitive enough, I think a transfinite probability would be substantially less intuitive. In particular, it doesn't even seem to make sense to say, as above what W/Z would be, but that is essentially what we're faced when we say that we have an outcome of W 0s and Z 1s. We might base it off of cardinal size in which case W and Z may share the same cardinality and so W/Z = 1 in an intuitive sense, but does that capture the probability? Not really, and if we say it does, that use of "probability" has absolutely no necessary connection to our (empirical) understanding of probability. We might as well call it an entirely different name! But this falls back upon what is meant by cardinality. Maybe order matters in which case the different ordinals can be compared. In fact, the trichotomy property holds such that Either W is less than, greater than or equal to Z. In this case, while we may not meaningfully talk about a number of W/Z, save for when they're equal (and then 1), we can certainly talk about the result being less than or greater than 1 based on whether W is greater than or less than Z. This could give us some idea of ratio such that W/Z = 1.5 = 3/2 says we have a 3:2 ratio. Does this capture our intuition about probability as is standard or commonly understood? We have no idea, and might as well say this ratio isn't a ratio at all! That is the problem with inventing entirely new mathematics. It is uncharted and comparisons or common language may be moot.
Therefore, in the realm of regular probability theory, we deal with potential infinities and the results are that the probability will not change in infinite events as it would in one event because the events are independent of each other. I think the way we have described these worlds we are talking more about a limiting process (potential infinity) and it is then no different than the coin toss example (the best intuition and often used example to understand probability). Of course we can change our description and say we are, in fact, dealing with actual infinities, but then we might very well lose all our intuition and apparatus in dealing with probability or likelihood. The very concept may break down and be unrecoverable. In that case, no one can definitively say what is right or wrong because it really depends on how we set it up and define the relations, and even if we had a formal apparatus, we need not accept it as correctly capturing the intuition we want it to. Of course, the same can be said of standard mathematics, but the empirical support and development of the theory itself gives it more than enough qualification.
So in response to your last statement, there is a difference between the probability of an event and, say, the probability of some event in the future after, say, 5 coin tosses. But as I said, the events are independent, so there is no difference in the probability of the 5th or 6th event (the Gambler's fallacy). What IS different is the entire event of 5 coin tosses. We have an entirely different probability for the event P(X1=H & X2=H & X3=H & X4=H & X5=H), i.e., a string of 5 heads in 5 tosses. Luckily, we can just turn to the probability mass function that can characterize this (binomial) and calculate any complicated result depending on our probability assignments to the independent events.
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