From: Abraham Moses Genen (futurist@frontiernet.net)
Date: Tue Nov 18 1997 - 17:59:28 MST
Abraham Moses Genen
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Being dedicated to the future progress of humankind
should be the prime concern of all civilized beings.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Anton Sherwood <dasher@netcom.com>
To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
Date: Monday, November 17, 1997 9:56 PM
Subject: Re: Infinities
>Damien Broderick writes
>: There's a century of mathematics dealing with this topic [orders of
>: infinity]. I'm entranced to find people starting again from scratch.
>: Next we could have a heated debate about whether parallel lines meet. :)
>
>Sure, why not. I hear that Marilyn Vos Savant says the recent proof
>of Fermat's Last Theorem is unsound because it relies on nonEuclidean
>geometry.
>
>Now, which had less of an excuse to distrust hyperbolic geometry:
>Ms Vos Savant, or C.L.Dodgson?
>
>(Dodgson rejected it because of ideal triangles - figures with infinite
>perimeter, zero angles, and finite area - which he called absurd.)
>
>Anton Sherwood *\\* +1 415 267 0685 *\\* DASher@netcom.com
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Dear Fellow Extropians:
As I recall, C.L Dodgson also wrote:
"Said the Walrus to the Carpenter let's talk of other things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of Cabbages and Kings,
Of why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings, etc."
My question is: Can anything be more absurd than the abstractions being discussed in this string???
AMG
>
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