dram🎀dramforever@mastodon.social
Jun 16, 2026, 3:30 AMnumbers over something like 2**(2**64) (or maybe "a few" powers of that) aren't real right?
Replies
Jun 16, 2026, 4:11 AM@dramforever but u just wrote one, there's a 2**(2**64) in the room with us rn
typeswitchtypeswitch@gamedev.lgbtJun 16, 2026, 4:31 AM@dramforever what is real? what makes any number real?
the ability to talk about large numbers like 2^(2^64) (or a few powers of that) makes them, in my view, real. it's when you start getting into sizes that are so large that we can't even describe a single number, that i start to struggle. it's hard to imagine but almost all "large numbers" are of that form -- impossible to describe, even to just describe an upper bound.
- typeswitchtypeswitch@gamedev.lgbtJun 16, 2026, 4:36 AM
@dramforever e.g. busy beaver numbers. pretty much by definition it's impossible to give a concrete upper bond after a few terms. this is where you get chaitin's incompleteness theorem, too.