𧔠Are Negative Numbers "Real"?
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:33:58 UTC No. 16091069
At least a day ago, someone told me about people who don't believe that number goes up forever and that infinity isn't "real".
The thinking is that number is an abstraction, so the biggest number we can construct is the biggest one that exists and that that is bounded by the amount of material in the universe which can be used to represent the number.
What about the other direction, when number gets smaller?
Abstractly, if you have a maid and I have no maids and I take your maid, now you have no maids and I have a maid. If I take your maid again, you have a negative maid and I have two maids?
Except in reality this can't happen. There is only one maid to be had in this scenario. I can't take your maid if you have no maid for me to take. I do not pull a maid from the void and somehow simultaneously create a negative maid now attached to you.
Yes, we can create a physical representation of negative numbers, using tricks like Two's Complement, but this is just a mental abstraction mapped to something a machine can represent. To represent it, you do not have a negative amount of bits. You have a positive amount of bits and have decided some arrangements of them represent negative numbers.
In this case, negative number is a symbolic abstraction, not something which actually exists in reality because in reality you can't have less than zero of something.
>tl;dr: How do finitists explain negative numbers? If infinity doesn't exist because we can't physically construct it, do negative numbers also not exist for the same reason?
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:37:49 UTC No. 16091072
>finitists
>Infinitists
>Two sides of the argument
>Both wrong
>Schools teach this is what the choices are and some agnostic group
Learn what infinity actually is.
1. It has two bounds.
2. It is a set that contains sets.
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:42:22 UTC No. 16091078
>>16091069
finitist's only like the naturals, but just barely, and even then they feel iffy when talking bout it, im my experience no good as ever arise from finitism, and the mere fact that they purposefully ascribe to themselves the achievements of others that did not subscribe to to their ideology should telly you the type of people finitist are
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:47:34 UTC No. 16091087
>>16091078
Wrong. Finitists like naturals, but they also like rationals, complex numbers, number fields, finite fields and transfinite numbers.
You don't seem to understand what finitism is.
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:48:57 UTC No. 16091089
>>16091069
When you understand that infinity is the lowest such bound for the number and is describable in one symbol. â
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 14:50:17 UTC No. 16091090
>>16091072
My thought is that infinity is a number you cannot count to, because for example, no matter which finite integer you have, there is a next integer which is also finite and you can get this next integer forever with Successor Function, so counting doesn't stop.
>>16091078
I also only really like Natural Numbers and Whole Numbers. I don't like it when numbers can get negative or have fractions or decimal places or imaginary parts, so I don't think about these things very often.
I just got curious about how it would work in a framework where you have to construct something, because you can't physically construct concrete negative numbers. It will always require some level of symbolic abstraction to work.
So are negative numbers not "real" by the same criteria in that infinity is not "real"?
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 16:51:42 UTC No. 16091251
>>16091069
I think they do exist, at least as a representation. For example in finance, on a balance sheet you might have
>Revenue $100
>Debt -$50. Sometimes written as ($50)
So although you do have the $100 and don't have the $50, you still need to track that $50 as something you owe, so the representation exists
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 17:32:39 UTC No. 16091285
>>16091251
>you still need to track that $50 as something you owe
Note the distinct absence of negative numbers.
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 18:05:02 UTC No. 16091323
[eqn] \exists _{a \in \mathbb{N}} : a + b = 0 [/eqn]
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 18:25:08 UTC No. 16091354
>>16091090
>you can't physically construct concrete negative numbers
number of times a string is wrapped counterclockwise around a pole
electric charge, baryon number, and lepton number
changes in a quantity and relative measurements such as distance above sea level
You can't have negative maids because different types of numbers apply to different things. The number of current queens regnant of the United Kingdom cannot be two. Does that mean we can't physically construct two?
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 21:10:13 UTC No. 16091626
jesus, he's killed two threads now because you retards keep feeding him. he's not here to "discuss" any of this shit with you, he's here to argue imaginary semantics until you relent and tell him that he's right and there is an AGI hidden between "muh marvel multiverses" that will arrive into our reality and force-trans everyone. not even joking, this is his belief.
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 22:14:34 UTC No. 16091760
>>16091626
>he's killed two threads now because you retards keep feeding him.
Oh no! Do you think anyone will ever post another race and IQ or Covid vaccine thread again? They're so precious and rare.
>force-trans everyone
I have never seen that claimed in any of the maid threads. Do you have any examples of this?
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 22:24:21 UTC No. 16091783
>>16091069
They don't exist in reality like positive quantities do. It's just a human cultural abstraction to represent certain happenings in nature.
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 22:51:08 UTC No. 16091822
>>16091069
>I do not pull a maid from the void and somehow simultaneously create a negative maid now attached to you.
This literally happens with virtual particles
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 23:11:14 UTC No. 16091856
>>16091822
Virtual particles aren't real. It's yet again a math abstraction to calculate van der waals forces. If they were real and annihilated each other, you should be able to measure photons appearing from nothing in vacuum. It would also mean that the vacuum creates energy from nothing constantly, which we can't see.
Anonymous at Fri, 22 Mar 2024 23:27:33 UTC No. 16091881
>>16091822
>>16091856
And even if they were real, how is an anti-particle a negative quantity? It's one particle, my god...
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 00:28:59 UTC No. 16091953
>>16091069
positive and negative are just directions. they are necessary in order to reference some discrepancies from A to B. no, you cannot just go from B to A in these circumstances.
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 02:30:27 UTC No. 16092065
>>16091072
>It is a set that contains sets.
All numbers are sets that contain sets.
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 02:31:05 UTC No. 16092067
>>16091069
Negative numbers absolutely and indebatably exist in physical nature. This is not something like complex numbers, where philosophical debates can be has. Please explain to me a way how opposite electromagnetic charges otherwise could be represented. Without negative numbers, there is no way to model a cancelling action.
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 03:48:09 UTC No. 16092122
>>16091069
Are ghosts real? No/yes depending on who you ask. Infinity makes sense. Negative numbers? Does 'negative anything exist in our world?
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 05:21:42 UTC No. 16092180
What would you say to a maid who is a finitist and a constructivist? She believes in things that she can represent on a maid computer, and all maid computers she has ever seen are finite. She is fine with "infinity" as a symbolic abstraction, but she doesn't believe in infinite sets. She is fine with the naturals, but she views them as an open-ended datatype to be used on maid computers rather than as a collection of things which actually exist in a Platonic maid library. She believes in even numbers in the sense that she can write a program to tell whether a number is even or odd. She thinks it is important to distinguish this kind of so-called "set" from other kinds of things that classical maids call sets, such as programs which give "yes" answers about some numbers but are not ever guaranteed to terminate if the answer is "no," or questions for which we know what would constitute a proof of "yes" or "no" but don't necessarily know how to find the answer. She sometimes tries to explain these distinctions to classical maids, but they groan and say they don't care whether they can compute something, only whether it exists in the infinite maid library.
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 18:14:12 UTC No. 16092875
>>16092180
I don't know enough about these ideas to have a strong opinion. I guess I would ask how these conclusions were reached?
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 18:23:29 UTC No. 16092888
>>16092067
The different charges are physical phenomena in positive quantities. They interact in a certain way based on the mechanics of our universe, the fact that we say an electron has a negative charge is a function of human language and culture surrounding the subject. There is no ânegativityâ present in an electron.
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 18:30:23 UTC No. 16092899
>>16091069
Nice try lil fag but your debts are real. Now get in four legs, ass up, and get ready to get your guts reorganized non stop for an hour.
Anonymous at Sat, 23 Mar 2024 19:35:14 UTC No. 16092997
>>16091953
this
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 03:16:21 UTC No. 16093621
>>16091069
they are real in >our hearts
>>16091090
>he can't into infinite maidworks
scrub, also you could just make an i.o.u of "this number of mains are owed to such and such" and then mak ethe fucker pay his maid debts, you autist
also inform yourself on infinty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s86
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrU
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 03:20:57 UTC No. 16093626
>>16092180
that i don't pay her to spout nonsense to me, i pay her to clean my toilets(plural)
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 03:22:38 UTC No. 16093628
>>16091069
>Can't physically construct 10^81 since it exceeds the fundamental particles in the universe
Damn, it was a nice run.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 04:10:03 UTC No. 16093686
>>16092888
You didnât even process my post. Again, you dumb wordthinker cunt, explain to me how opposite charges that cancel each other out can be modeled without negative numbers.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 05:41:11 UTC No. 16093749
>>16091069
Math is ultimately a pragmatic science and the ârealnessâ of the concepts are only relevant insofar as they are useful. Negative numbers are useful. Actual infinities are not.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 06:41:43 UTC No. 16093794
>>16091069
Ask yourself, is debt real?
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 07:48:56 UTC No. 16093854
>>16091069
only positive integers exist and theres only a finite amount of them here.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 07:49:59 UTC No. 16093855
>>16093628
>using particles to count
retard
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 07:56:06 UTC No. 16093860
>>16091069
Zero is just a calibration point. You can pick ANY point in space and call it zero. Instead of thinking in terms of positive or negative, think in terms of left and right.
If negative numbers had just been called "numbers to the left" and zero had just been called "center" nobody would have any doubts.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 08:03:03 UTC No. 16093864
>>16093749
Math isn't pragmatic, it's irrational. Engineering is pragmatic, babbling about quadratics with no context is not.
Cult of Passion at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 08:48:01 UTC No. 16093907
>>16093860
>think in terms of left and right
>not inward/outward
Lmao, Cartesian rekt.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 08:51:40 UTC No. 16093912
>>16093907
Inside and outside also fits spin. I noticed long time ago.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 13:58:08 UTC No. 16094234
>>16091354
>number of times a string is wrapped counterclockwise around a pole
I think in cases like this, you don't have a negative wrap. You have some configurations of positive numbers of wraps that went one direction or the other and you've decided some of the configurations represent negative numbers, some represent positive numbers, and one easy to find one represents zero (no wraps in this case, a lot of zeroes in the case of Two's Complement. Reality doesn't have negative. You're just mapping a symbolic abstraction to some states a system can have for convenience.
Another interesting question is if irrational numbers exist since you wouldn't be able to represent that physically either. If that is the case, then Pi doesn't have an infinite number of digits. It has however many digits we can compute it to.
I am not trying to take a side on this thinking yet. I just think it is interesting discussion topic and also a useful set of assumptions to make because one problem is that ideas frequently don't survive contact with reality without getting adjustments from engineers.
I think this kind of thinking, if justified, could make it easier to form "sturdier" ideas which survive contact with reality better and consequently need less adjustments from engineers hopefully. Maybe have more predictable behavior or clearer path to implementation or better understanding of practical limitations.
If justified, it seems to have a huge amount of benefits for constructing things and making applications of ideas and application is the most useful form of an idea.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 14:22:07 UTC No. 16094271
>>16093686
I donât care about your âmodelâ. Thatâs pure abstraction fantasy, itâs an approximation of nature for engineering purposes and nothing more. Itâs a man made thing and doesnât prove any sort of negative quantity existing in nature.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 17:09:04 UTC No. 16094498
>>16094271
Numbers don't have any independent existence of the physical universe. They all are models. In your drive to somehow defeat platonism, you inadvertently actually espouse platonism because you treat numbers as if they actually independently existed, so allegedly people can make category errors by lumping these supposedly actually-platonically-existing numbers with physical nature.
If you agree with me that the natural numbers are useful to describe individual apples, then you also agree with me that natural numbers can be used to describe individual pulses or packets of opposite charge forces, like the electromagnetic, strong, or weak force. If that is the case, you need to have a way to describe how one packet can cancel out another packet.
Remember, we are using the ring of integers here, and "subtraction" is not an operation used in rings. Only addition with negative numbers is (I can't give you an entire undergrad math lecture why that is).
Cult of Passion at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 17:17:43 UTC No. 16094511
>>16093912
It just clicked, I dont want it to be a "but the math was beautiful" but it kind of was.
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 21:48:53 UTC No. 16094909
So all this maid shit is a raid from somewhere, right? There are four of these useless retarded threads up right now. Where the fuck are the mods anymore?
Anonymous at Sun, 24 Mar 2024 22:46:30 UTC No. 16095032
>>16094909
This is a maidposting board, newmaid.