Dear Yuri,

maybe being a bit more friendly and respecting would help this discussion.


Am 25.11.10 16:02, schrieb Yuri Tzara:
> Phillip Gawlowski wrote in post #963815:
>> The IEEE standard, however, does *not* define how mathematics work.
>> Mathematics does that. In math, x_0/0 is *undefined*. It is not
>> infinity...
>
> What psychological anomaly causes creationists keep saying that there
> are no transitional fossils even after having been shown transitional
> fossils? We might pass it off as mere cult indoctrination or
> brainwashing, but the problem is a more general one.
>
> We also see it happening here in Mr. Gawlowski who, after being given
> mathematical facts about infinity, simply repeats his uninformed
> opinion.
>
> "The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which an unskilled
> person makes poor decisions and reaches erroneous conclusions, but
> their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to realize
> their mistakes." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect)
>
> Here is my initial response to Mr. Gawlowski. Let's see if he ignores
> it again (as a creationist ignores transitional fossils).
>
>> It is perfectly reasonable, mathematically, to assign infinity to
>> 1/0.  To geometers and topologists, infinity is just another
>> point. Look up the one-point compactification of R^n. If we join
>> infinity to the real line, we get a circle, topologically. Joining
>> infinity to the real plane gives a sphere, called the Riemann
>> sphere. These are rigorous definitions with useful results.
>>
>> I'm glad that IEEE floating point has infinity included, otherwise I
>> would run into needless error handling. It's not an error to reach
>> one pole of a sphere (the other pole being zero).
>>
>> Infinity is there for good reason; its presence was well-considered
>> by the quite knowledgeable IEEE designers.
>