themeatbridge

Let me put it this way, it will do exactly what it is supposed to do.

I know, that’s why I said it’s entirely different.

But also, we don’t know exactly how time dilation works. We know it does, because it makes sense mathematically and we have experienced it in applications, but we don’t really know how it works.

FWIW our current understanding of spacetime includes multi-dimensional time, which is why we experience more or less time when we are traveling at high speed or experiencing strong gravitational fields. It’s sort of like moving diagonally across a room, except entirely different.

I came here to say, that’s basically the subplot of Dr Horrible.

It’s not about making money, it’s about taking money… Destroying the status quo, because the status is not quo. The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

How many holes do you have?

Do vultures do something other than what other birds do? Because most birds regurgitate food for the chicks to eat.

Yeah, we probably won’t even notice, even if we hadn’t been extinct for millions of years.

Donny said a lot of dumb things. His numbers don’t go down. His followers are devoted to him, and we have to beat them because they are horrible people.

Sure, but you’re equivocating two things that aren’t the same. Until you’ve written infinity 9s, you haven’t written the number yet. Once you do, the number you will have written will be exactly the number 1, because they are exactly the same. The difference between all the nines you could write in one thousand lifetimes and 0.999… is like the difference between a cup of sand and all of spacetime.

Or think of it another way. Forget infinity for a moment. Think of 0.999… as all the nines. All of them contained in the number 1. There’s always one more, right? No, there isn’t, because 1 contains all of them. There are no more nines not included in the number 1. That’s why they are identical.

So… we’re doomed?

It is physically equal to 1. Infinity goes on forever, and so there is no physical difference.

It’s not that it makes almost no difference. There is no difference because the values are identical. There is no infinity between the two values.

In a manner of speaking, yes.

See, the church of Scientology cloned Tom years ago, and rolls out a new “stunt double” for each movie to make sure that his productions are done on time. If one Tom falls during a stunt, a new one is released.

Unfortunately, due to a clerical error, the original Tom was mislabelled before being put back in his tank, so it’s unclear which one was the first. This led to several Toms being accidentally left out, allowing this picture to be taken and forcing the church to pretend that they are different people and give them each a fake identity under which to live out their natural lives.

Except it isn’t infinitesimally smaller at all. 0.999… is exactly 1, not at all less than 1. That’s the power of infinity. If you wanted to make a wooden board exactly 0.999… m long, you would need to make a board exactly 1 m long (which presents its own challenges).

No shit.

You’re right, but the reason that hasn’t caught on is that talking to your “smart” house is stupid. You can’t possibly program every possible command or situation, and telling Alexa to dim the lights in your kitchen to 40% is slower than using a dimmer switch. Actual smart homes are automated to the point where you don’t need to talk to your room.

Alexa was never supposed to make money by itself. It was supposed to do two things, collect information and lower the barrier to buying things.

They must have either collected enough data to lower the value of collecting any more, or they have realized that people got over the novelty of asking Alexa to order more dog food.

My guess is the latter, because buying anything from Amazon now requires 15 minutes of research to make sure it’s actually what you want and not at some ridiculous marked up price. I wouldn’t trust Alexa to pick the best result on the first try.

But if I don’t have three particles, 1/3 requires division.

But you could make that same argument for a lot of fractions. 1/3 doesn’t exist because you cannot divide a quantum in three. 0.333 repeating means that eventually you have to divide an indivisible foundational particle in thirds.

I believe you’re mistaken. A Planck length is the minimum length we can extrapolate down before physics gets weird, but that doesn’t mean it is the smallest possible length anything can be.

And an irrational number does exist as a discrete unit, it simply cannot be described as a fraction. Case in point, if you could create a spherical particle that was exactly 1 Planck length across, it would have a circumference of exactly π Planck lengths.

By your logic, such a theoretical particle could not exist because the circumference includes an irrational number in the size of the body.

Right, by my point is that your accuracy and precision are the same whether you are making a 1 meter length object or a π meter length object. Your meter stick is not accurate to the width of a hydrogen atom, either.

But if we accept the precision of our manufacturing capabilities as “close enough,” then it is equally as close to exactly π as it is to exactly 1.

In other words, to say we cannot make an object that is π meters is to say we cannot make an object that is any specific length.