Working with the set of real numbers

Ben Finney ben+python at benfinney.id.au
Tue Mar 4 23:37:44 EST 2014


Roy Smith <roy at panix.com> writes:

> I stopped paying attention to mathematicians when they tried to convince 
> me that the sum of all natural numbers is -1/12.

I stopped paying attention to a particular person when they said “I
stopped paying attention to an entire field of study because one
position expressed by some practicioners was disagreeable to me”.

Would you think “I stopped listening to logicians when some of them
expressed Zeno's paradox of the impossibility of motion” to be a good
justification for ignoring the entire field of logic?

Rather, a more honest response is to say why that position is incorrect,
and not dismiss the entire field of study merely for a disagreement with
that position.

-- 
 \      “Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than |
  `\  it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” —George Bernard Shaw |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney




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