Re: Does the number of nines increase?

On 6/26/2024 2:49 PM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

On 6/26/2024 7:20 AM, Jim Burns wrote:

Inductive:
for each 9  there is its successor.9
There isn't one 9 fewer.

>
I still wonder why WM thinks
there is one 9 "fewer"... Strange one!

My theory is that
WM thinks an infiniteᵂᴹ number is
very.very.very.large.but.finiteⁿᵒᵗᐧᵂᴹ AKA humongous.
My own experience with physics problems is
part of what leads me to think he thinks that.
Many's the time I've scratched out 'negligible' terms.
Doing that is treating 'teensy' like 'infinitesimal' and
'humongous' like 'infinite'.
Sometimes, doing that works well enough.
Especially in physics, Kingdom of the Well.Behaved Function.
Sometimes, infiniteⁿᵒᵗᐧᵂᴹ is different.
Sometimes, Bob disappears.
Sometimes, a ball is sliced into finitely.many pieces  and
re.assembled as two balls each as large as the one original.
WM's response (with terminology corrected) is
"But that's not what humongous is like!"
To which the answer comes back,
yes, you're right. It's NOT like humongous.

Therefore,
once again,
'humongous' and 'infinite' are different.

>
Indeed! :^)