• Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    19 days ago

    “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

    He will struggle to ask the infinite staff of the infinite hotel to move infinite occupants into another set of infinite rooms. After all:

    It is also possible to accommodate a countably infinite number of new guests: just move the person occupying room 1 to room 2, the guest occupying room 2 to room 4, and, in general, the guest occupying room n to room 2n (2 times n), and all the odd-numbered rooms (which are countably infinite) will be free for the new guests.

    Even if Sisyphus is infinite and the boulder is infinite, they can be accommodated within an infinite space.

    Hilbert’s paradox is a veridical paradox: it leads to a counter-intuitive result that is provably true. The statements “there is a guest to every room” and “no more guests can be accommodated” are not equivalent when there are infinitely many rooms.

    • Codex@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Sadly, the Hilbert Hotel is slated for demolition which is why it’s on Sisyphus’ path. After that whole “everyone moves to double their room number” debacle, Hilbert had to process a fraction of the infinite guests’ refunds because they didn’t feel like changing rooms to one several million hallways down. And a percentage of infinite guests refunds is still infinite, so Hilbert is in infinite debt now.

      Theseus, meanwhile, has been trying to justify buying a new ship for ages but his crew is adamant about right to repair, so he’s looking for an easy exit.

      • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        19 days ago

        Infinite guest = infinite money, infinite refunds would be fine, and infinite money would still be left over.

    • Malgas@beehaw.org
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      19 days ago

      Even if Sisyphus is infinite and the boulder is infinite, they can be accommodated within an infinite space.

      But not if they’re uncountably infinite.