The Debate Hall Social Thread

[Holder of the Heel]

Well, I suppose I understand what you mean. In that sense infinities don't have to be "created" equal, but in being infinity, it is the same in "value" as all other "infinities". But wouldn't there be a distinction between something finite with infinite growth rate and infinity itself, because one "never ends" and the other is "endless". I'm perhaps just getting confused, I hate math, and the more conceptual it gets the less I can grasp it. I don't really expect it to be intuitive, to me that was the entire point of discrediting it as simply an idea, and nothing to actually implement in math.

As for what I intended by legal ethics, I don't have anything concrete as of yet, but I'm interested in bringing it up at some point when I've looked into it more because it could be relevant to me in the future, and I know we haven't discussed it too much, or at least not as much as other topics.

 

[Nicholas1024]

Ok, I have a question to settle. I am talking to someone that is saying that infinities are counter-intuitive so I want to find what other peoples opinions are on it. Some people may disagree and wish to debate it.

Specifically, do you think that all infinities are 'created' equal, or do you think that certain infinities are bigger than other infinities? Suppose that some infinite sets could be bigger than other infinite sets, would you find this counter-intuitive?

If you have trouble think about infinities, think of a set of numbers such as A=[1,2,3,4,...] or B=[2,3,4,5,...] Are these two sets the same size?

As a mathematician, there is a definitive answer to this question. The standard definition is that we consider two infinities A,B to be "the same size" (or more precisely, have equal cardinality) if there exists a 1-1 correspondence between the sets. That is to say, if for every element a in A, there exists a unique element f(a) in B such that f(A) = B, and f(a) = f(a') if and only if a = a'.

Then, the sets A=[1,2,3,4,...] and B=[2,3,4,5,...] have a 1-1 correspondence (send 1 to 2, 2 to 3, etc.), and so have the same size.

However, it does NOT follow that all infinite sets have the same size. The classical example of this is the natural numbers (1,2,3,4,...) and the real numbers. There's an elegant proof of this, but I'm too lazy to write it out here, so I'll just give you guys a link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_diagonal_argument

In fact, the power set of any infinite set (that is to say, the set of all subsets of the set, so if A = {0,1}, then its power set would be P(A) = {{}, {0},{1}, {0,1}}) will always have greater cardinality than the original set, which means there are in fact infinitely many infinities.

 

[rvkevin]

Nicholas,

I'm far less interested in the nitty gritty and more interested in your first impressions. If you so wish, you could change B to [1,3,4,5,...] I presume that you aren't a mathematician and that you had to Google this question. Before you found the answer, did you think that the addition or subtraction of infinite sets leads to contradictions as WLC claims so in his debates? The examples he gives is that the set of whole numbers minus the set of even/odd numbers results in an infinite set, simplified infinity minus infinity equals infinity. He then says the the set of whole numbers minus the integers greater than three leads to 3, simplified infinity minus infinity equals 3. He thinks that this is a contradiction because you subtracted identical values from an identical value and reached different conclusions. He even says that addition and subtraction of infinite sets is prohibited because infinity minus infinity can result in any value. Is this in line with your intuition?

Also, do you find it counter-intuitive that there are an infinite amount of points on a line segment?

 

[Nicholas1024]

Actually... I am indeed a mathematician, I didn't need google at all. Thus I'm a bad person to ask for "first impressions" regarding this issue, as I'm already well familiar with how infinity works. Adding or subtracting the cardinalities of infinite sets is indeed, meaningless. If one infinity has a different cardinality than the other, it will always dominate the sum, while if the two infinities have the same cardinality, you can manipulate things to come out to anything, whether a finite number or any infinity of lesser cardinality.

As far as whether the notion of infinities is counter-intuitive... there are definitely properties of infinity that you wouldn't suspect (For instance, the cardinality of the set of all the points in the plane is the same as the cardinality of the points of an arbitrarily small line segment), but I feel on the whole that once you realize the basic facts about infinity, most things are simple enough.

 

[Dre89]

Rv- I'm not a mathematician so this going to sound very layman, but it's impossible to subtract one infinite from another. A-B does not equal 1 if you give the numbers numerical value.

To demonstrate what I mean, the number 123456789-23456789 does not equal 1. It does equal one if every digit simply represents a unit of equal value (eg. a cause and effect sequence).

So if you have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

and subtract the units from the bottom line, then yes the answer will be one unit left over.

But in an infinite sequence, you could simply have-

1 2 3 4 5....
2 3 4 5 6.... and you see that when you subtract the bottom units this way, you end up with zero. You could also move the the bottom line so that the 2 is under the 4 and subtract from there, and you would be left with 1-2-3. It also works the other way around, place the top 1 above the bottom 3, and subtract all the top units and you end up with a 2.

The fact that two infinite sets can subtract each other and get different results depending on the nature of the equation shows that they're not actually genuine subtractions.

If that was uneducated and wrong then I apologise.

 

[_Keno_]

Also, do you find it counter-intuitive that there are an infinite amount of points on a line segment?

The majority of physics and mathematics is counter-intuitive; I don't see why that matters much though. But yes, I found much of it counter-intuitive at first.

However, it does NOT follow that all infinite sets have the same size.

Size is entirely irrelevant when it comes to infinite sets. Infinite is infinite. Yes, I know there are "semi-infinite" groups such as the natural numbers, but that is just a word made in order to separate the notions of all-inclusion and partial infinite inclusion.


Also, adding and subtracting infinities is non-sensical. However dividing and multiplying them is perfectly fine.

 

[rvkevin]

Dre,

I don't think you understand how to addition and subtraction works with sets. Its not like adding and subtracting with numbers. If you have sets A = [1 , 2] and B = [2]; A - B = [1], not [1 , 0] or 10. Think of it like this, you have a box with an apple and an oranges in it, Box = [apple , orange], I then ask you to remove the orange (please remove [orange] from Box). You are now left with a box with an apple in it. So [apple , orange] - [orange] = [apple]. So when you have A = [1 , 2 , 3, ...] and B = [2 , 3 , 4 , ...], I am asking you to remove the elements that are in B from A. Since you are removing every element from A except [1], you are left with only [1].

 

[Dre89]

Dre,

I don't think you understand how to addition and subtraction works with sets. Its not like adding and subtracting with numbers. If you have sets A = [1 , 2] and B = [2]; A - B = [1], not [1 , 0] or 10. Think of it like this, you have a box with an apple and an oranges in it, Box = [apple , orange], I then ask you to remove the orange (please remove [orange] from Box). You are now left with a box with an apple in it. So [apple , orange] - [orange] = [apple]. So when you have A = [1 , 2 , 3, ...] and B = [2 , 3 , 4 , ...], I am asking you to remove the elements that are in B from A. Since you are removing every element from A except [1], you are left with only [1].

Yeah I realised my mistake after.

It still seems like a contradiction though. For infinites to be able to perform subtractions, they would need to be operational like any other finite number. It seems like a contradiction because an infinite set is the only thing that can subtract itself and have the answer be 1.

2 sets of 9 (A 1-9, B 2-10) wouldn't produce the same answer, the answer would be 1, but you'd have the 10 from set B left over too.

So in the case of a finite set subtracting another set of the same number (eg. a set of 9- another set of 9) A will never be able to subtract the entire set B if A starts with 1 and B starts with 2, because B will always have a number at the end left over.

What I'm pointing out is that infinites have different properties, so it seems sorta contradictory to treat them as operational numbers like any other finite nubmer.

 

[rvkevin]

The two sets you made up still get you the same answer as shown by the following readout:

Set A : [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]
Set B : [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
Set A after A-B : [1]

import java.util.ArrayList;
public static void main(String[] args) {
ArrayList setA = new ArrayList();
ArrayList setB = new ArrayList();

for (int i = 0; i < 9; i++){
setA.add(i+1);
setB.add(i+2);
}

System.out.println("Set A : " + setA);
System.out.println("Set B : " + setB);

for(int i = 0; i < setB.size() ; i++){
setA.remove(setB.get(i));
}
System.out.println("Set A after A-B : " + setA);
}
}

 

[GwJ]

Don't all these examples become irrelevant when you make them infinite?

You can't subtract them like that, because there's no definite cutoff point. You can theoretically do that, but you're defining infinity for the purpose of your problem.

 

[Dre89]

Rv- The difference is that the 10 from set 2 is still left over. That may not be what the question asked, but it's a property that infinites don't share.

My point is that infinity isn't a number with quantitative value like other numbers.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Math is probably my weakest subject (odd, as I actually like math and science), and forgive me for sounding extremely uneducated, but wouldn't subtracting from infinity result in infinity, seeing as infinity is infinity?

 

[GoldShadow]

Rv- The difference is that the 10 from set 2 is still left over. That may not be what the question asked, but it's a property that infinites don't share.

My point is that infinity isn't a number with quantitative value like other numbers.

When subtracting one set from another, you consider only those elements that the second set has in common with the first set.

For example, if you had

Set A: {a, b, c, d, e} and
Set B: {a, c, e, f, g}

then Set A - Set B would give you {b, d}. It's a little counterintuitive, but in this example you wouldn't consider f and g at all.

Similarly, Set B - Set A would give {f, g}.

 

[rvkevin]

Rv- The difference is that the 10 from set 2 is still left over. That may not be what the question asked, but it's a property that infinites don't share.

What do you mean by "left over"? The element [10] is subtracted from A, it just doesn't change A. The same could also be done with different infinite sets as well. Just change A to [1,2,3,...,9,11,12,13,...] and B to [2,3,4,...]. A-B would still result in [1], with the element [10] being subtracted from A with no change to A. It would be "left over." This is not to say that having something "left over" has any significance at all.

My point is that infinity isn't a number with quantitative value like other numbers.

I'm not sure how this is relevant. We have been dealing with infinite sets, not a value of infinity.

 

[Sucumbio]

so is anyone else struggling with the decision to eat at chick-fil-a or not?

 

[rvkevin]

so is anyone else struggling with the decision to eat at chick-fil-a or not?

Never eaten there due to other factors (didn't even know there was one near me until I just looked it up), now I won't due to principle.

 

[GwJ]

Never been to one of their restaurants, but I have had their sandwiches and they're pretty good. If I want a chicken sandwich and there's a Chick-fil-a joint near me, I'm going to eat there. I'm immensely pro-LGBT, but it doesn't make sense to boycott just them. There's plenty of other companies I should be boycotting as well if I'm gonna boycott that fast food joint.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

There are plenty of fast food joints, so it really isn't much of a decision.

 

[Claire Diviner]

There isn't one near where I am, but with places like Sonic and Five Guys, I'd rather eat at those establishments than at a restaurant that probably serves only okay sandwiches. Plus, the only two Chick-Fil-A restaurants in Massachusetts are in towns I've never (and probably never will) visited.

 

[Aesir]

It was easy, to avoid bad food.

and out from the shadows comes me again.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Not being in America, I have never encountered a Chick-fil-a. I didn't even know they existed until this whole debacle.

And I'm back. Hopefully fairly regularly.

 

[Sucumbio]

Savon started a pretty good thread in UB

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=326183

The thing is that this debacle as you put it is yet another example of people becoming passionate and enraged over something that they don't fully understand. For many, this issue boils down to:

"If you buy a chick-fil-a sandwich, you're murdering gays in Uganda."

Is that even remotely true? No... What IS true is that your patronage at the restaurant does support in a small way an organization that it opposed to gay marriage, and that in and of itself may or may not be grounds for boycott. I guess it just depends on whether or not you are the type who boycotts things... at all, and if so, how severe a thing has it gotta be, blah blah blah.

At first I was like, who gives a ****, it's not as if we have any real control nor should we, over what a CEO spends his personal money on. But then I learned that company funds were in fact being donated to several groups including the Family Resource Council, Exodus International, so forth and so on.

Now it seems that these groups are all wishy-washing their way out of coming out and actually say "yeah, we want all the gays in the world to die" but it's politics. Public Relations... they don't want the illegitimacy of a group such as the KKK surrounding their offices, so they are being as polite as possible about their bigotry. And chick-fil-a sends them quite a bit of operating funds.

SO... yeah. Alas, I like their food, but I don't think it's appropriate for the company to sponsor registered hate groups.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

I'm considering making a thread about the benefits of what we do here and why it's important.

I'm also considering including in it how it's not more important to convince someone that they're wrong, but to make them think about the issue.

Would anyone be interested in discussing these ideas?

 

[rvkevin]

"If you buy a chick-fil-a sandwich, you're murdering gays in Uganda."

Is that even remotely true? No... What IS true is that your patronage at the restaurant does support in a small way an organization that it opposed to gay marriage, and that in and of itself may or may not be grounds for boycott. I guess it just depends on whether or not you are the type who boycotts things... at all, and if so, how severe a thing has it gotta be, blah blah blah.

It's a little more severe than just being opposed to gay marriage. If the media reported it correctly and they were responsible for contributing the notorious anti-homosexuality bill in 2009, they tried to introduce the death penalty for certain cases of homosexuality (homosexuality is already illegal and punishable up to 14 years imprisonment). Also, due to international pressure, they modified the bill to change the death penalty to life in prison. While it is a little stretch to say that they are killing gays since the bill hasn't passed and has been revised, they certainly are threatening their freedoms. At most you could say that if they had their way, they would have all homosexuals killed, which is fairly extreme and probably why they are classified as a hate group. This isn't just 'an organization that is opposed to gay marriage.'

 

[GwJ]

It's true that if you buy you're food, a percentage of your money is going towards the anti-gay agenda that business invests in. Question is, is the amount of money contributed by "you" enough to warrant not going there? My answer: No.

However, when everyone thinks like that, that's where the big bucks come in. If they're gonna be boycotted, it'd need to be en masse. A group of people being angry doesn't do anything.

 

[Claire Diviner]

Well, I've never eaten, nor have I ever planned to eat at a Chick-fil-a. Knowing that they're funding hate groups, however, solidifies my decision to never step foot into a Chick-fil-a. The real question is how many people are aware that the money Chick-fil-a receives goes to these pro-hate groups?

 

[Sucumbio]

At this point, I'd say quite a few.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-l-windmeyer/5-simple-facts-about-chick-fil-a_b_1751404.html

http://www.campuspride.org/chickfila.asp

5 things you should know:

Chick-fil-A profits fund documented hate groups that aggressively work against LGBT people, advocating for their criminalization, psychological abuse, or death.

Chick-fil-A profits support the radical-right-wing group Eagle Forum, which supports LGBT people being considered criminals.

Chick-fil-A profits support Exodus International, which claims to "cure homosexuality" through psychological coercion of LGBT people. It says LGBT people are "perverse."

Chick-fil-A profits support Focus on the Family (FOF) and its off-shoot group, the Family Research Council (FRC), which has been designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. FOF aggressively defames LGBT people as a threat to children, and FRC spent $25,000 to stop the U.S. Congress from condemning Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill, which calls for the execution of gay people in some cases.

Chick-fil-A profits come from you. When you choose Chick-fil-A, you help fund hate groups.

We used to ***** because they'd be closed on Sundays and it wasn't that they were closed so much as it was they went out of their way to make a point of saying "we're closed BECAUSE God said to be" kinda thing and we're like, wtf ever I'll just go somewhere else then. But now we're like, yeah, this company sucks, I have no problem with companies donating and even lobbying but it definitely should not be hate groups that get supported, and any business that does deserves to have their license to practice revoked.

 

[Dre89]

I'm a bit unclear on what constitutes a 'hate group'. What if an organisation aggressively attempted to shut down these anti-LGBT groups, would they be considered hate-groups too? It's basically hating a hate-group.

 

[Aesir]

You're all making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. Then again this could just be my Nihilism talking.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Okay then let's not shut down any anti-LGBT groups then because blocking their unjustifiable hate from negatively controlling the way other people live constitutes as hate.

 

[Aesir]

give it 10 more years, and they'll be ostracized like the KKK and Neo-nazis are.

 

[Dre89]

You're all making this a bigger issue than it needs to be. Then again this could just be my Nihilism talking.

Even though I don't agree with the capmaigns they fund, I would still eat there if I enjoyed the food because one person not eating there isn't going to suddenly send them under.

Holder- If we remove the right to practice beliefs we don't like, then we're just like them. That type of thinking is what oppressed minorities all that time.

Also, in a hundred years time people will probably call us biggots for the way we treat animals.

 

[Aesir]

Still dre I thought the idea is if everyone thought that way it wouldn't send any message at all. Be the change you want to see in the world ect...blah blah blah.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

Even though I don't agree with the capmaigns they fund, I would still eat there if I enjoyed the food because one person not eating there isn't going to suddenly send them under.

Well, you can deny them your money. Which is probably less than $0.05 per burger. However, it's $0.05 that's not going to hate groups. So you're still making the right decision by not eating there.

Also, in a hundred years time people will probably call us biggots for the way we treat animals.

In a hundred years, there will probably synthetic meat synthesised and farms will no longer necessary. They'll probably think we're a bunch of foolish, obsolete, idiots who are remarkably outdated.

 

[Dre89]

Well, you can deny them your money. Which is probably less than $0.05 per burger. However, it's $0.05 that's not going to hate groups. So you're still making the right decision by not eating there.

I find it rather self-absorbed to be honest to think that it's really important whether I eat there or not. I think it's trivial to inflate personal principles that much.

If there was a campaign to get people to stop eating there to send their organisation under or to get them to stop funding bad causes, then maybe I would not eat there, because then me not eating would actually make some form of contribution.

However, a person refusing to give their couple of dollars to an organisation that funds bad causes isn't actually achieveing anything other than inflating their self-inportance and tending to their moral conscience.

In a hundred years, there will probably synthetic meat synthesised and farms will no longer necessary. They'll probably think we're a bunch of foolish, obsolete, idiots who are remarkably outdated.

Or people will just realise meat isn't good for us and the way we treat animals is terrible.

 

[Claire Diviner]

If there was a campaign to get people to stop eating there to send their organisation under or to get them to stop funding bad causes, then maybe I would not eat there, because then me not eating would actually make some form of contribution.

However, a person refusing to give their couple of dollars to an organisation that funds bad causes isn't actually achieveing anything other than inflating their self-inportance and tending to their moral conscience.

Pretty much this. As it currently stands, their loss in money over people refusing to eat there is no more significant than people who prefer McDonald's over Burger King.

Or people will just realise meat isn't good for us and the way we treat animals is terrible.

I don't know; thousands of years of evolution that involves the consumption of meat since time immemorial (the caveman days, in this case), it would be quite the stretch for mankind, even in the most bustling of civilizations to suddenly forgo meat. That, however, is for a different topic.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Holder- That type of thinking is what oppressed minorities all that time.

I think minorities can be oppressed if they blatantly try to oppress others without any justification (sadly our government doesn't realize this, our government and education is bad blah blah blah), in fact, it is impossible not to oppress minorities like this, by law or for the law, we have to do this, have done it, and are presently doing this. Don't see where the problem lies.

 

[SuperBowser]

Or people will just realise meat isn't good for us and the way we treat animals is terrible.

hey something we agree on.

i genuinely believe people centuries from today will be disgusted with the way we treated animals and the way people flippantly treated the issue.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

I wonder if there will be a day where humans will find stepping on insects and the like disgusting. It is an interesting philosophical problem, how mankind only puts value in lives with anything that gather any sympathy from us, and do not find it detestable to slay living things outside of that ring.

 

[Dre89]

And that's cultural too. Most people in the west don't like seeing dogs die, yet they're consumed in other cultures. We also consume animals on similar levels of conciousness to dogs as well.