Can math.atan2 return INF?

[Rustom Mody]

On Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 11:33:58 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Jul 2016 01:28 am, Rustom Mody wrote:
> 
> > On Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 1:55:18 PM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> > 
> >> you state that Turing "believes in souls" and that he "wishes to
> >> put the soul into the machine" -- what do his religious beliefs have to
> >> do with his work?
> > 
> > Bizarre question -- becomes more patently ridiculous when put into general
> > form "What does what I do have to do with what I believe?"
> 
> Lots of people do things that go against their beliefs, or their beliefs (at
> least, their professed beliefs) go against what they do. But I'll ask
> again: in what way does Turing's supposed beliefs about souls have anything
> to do with his mathematical work?
> 
> Let's be concrete:
> 
> In what way does the Halting Problem depend on the existence (or
> non-existence) of the soul?

Lets change your question -- ever so slightly, given the Turing-context: 

In what way does the Turing Test depend on the existence (or non-existence) of the soul?

> 
> How was his work on breaking German military codes during World War 2
> reliant on these supposed souls? (In the sense of a separate, non-material
> spirit, not in the figurative sense that all people are "souls".)

When you say "soul" you (seem to?) mean what has been called with justifiable
derision, "dualistic notion of soul"
- something for which Christianity gets bad press though its the invention of Descartes
http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/
- something which caught on because of Descartes huge reputation as a scientist

There are other more reasonable non-religious non-dualistic notions of soul possible:

http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/2002/56-szymborska.html


<snipped stuff on numbers>
You are missing the point -- its not about specific numbers its about 
cardinality not adding up

- Cantor theory points to uncountably many real numbers
- All the sets upto algebraic are countable
- So the uncountable fellas need to be transcendental
- We only know two blessed guys -- π and e

Where are all the others hiding??

And dont try saying that if e is transcendental so is 2e 3e 4e...
And no use trying more such tricks -- they only multiply these two countably infinite times
And you may produce a few more, more esoteric transcendentals --- a very
finite set!

Nor is it much good saying this is not much relevance to our field:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor%27s_diagonal_argument

So our (computer scientists') predicament in short

- our field is opposed to Cantor's non-constructivist *outlook*
- At the foundation of CS are *methods* that.... come from Cantor... OOPS!