Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal by Zach Weinersmith for October 19, 2016
October 18, 2016
October 20, 2016
Transcript:
So, in the simple case, we can prove by induction that there is no largest number. What?! Ugh, I hate when God comes to class. Induction is an invalid form of proof. There is a largest number. It's called splorch. It just never comes up because it's so big. Then what's splorch plus one?! It's just splorch. It's maxed out. What about splorch minus one? That's called foofercorg All really big numbers have stupid names. Q.E.D. sigh Shouldn't you be hanging out with theology class or something? Those guys are weird.
Ida No about 8 years ago
Yes, God is a prime example of this.
Night-Gaunt49[Bozo is Boffo] about 8 years ago
Infinity works as well if not better and there is no “infinity + 1” since it is already included in its sum.
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What deity are you talking about Three Steps Over Japan ?“God” isn’t a name. Its actual meaning is “to call a deity” so which one?
drnihili about 8 years ago
(Aleph_0 + 1) is still Aleph_0. Adding a finite number to an Aleph doesn’t get you anywhere new. You’ll have to switch to ordinals if you want infinity+1 to be larger than infinity.
markjoseph125 about 8 years ago
Actually, the proof that there is no largest prime number is fairly simple, and does not require induction. For example, Euclid, here: https://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/infinite/euclids.html
markjoseph125 about 8 years ago
Or, better, here’s the proof the way I learned it:Suppose there were a largest prime number. Call it N. Now consider N! + 1. Clearly, N! + 1 does not have any number between 1 and N as a divisor. This means that either a) N! + 1 is prime, or b) N! + 1 has a prime divisor greater than N. In either case, we obtain a contradiction. Thus, there is no largest prime number.
Here: http://everything2.com/title/Proof+that+there+is+no+largest+prime+number