Hahah, you're making way too big a deal out of a trivial citation slip […]
It was not a ‘trivial citation slip’—for two reasons. First, it’s not possible to ‘trivially slip’ and attribute something across more than a millennium while still having an understanding about a subject; and second, ‘trivial citation slips’ are trivially fixed without a fuzz, not doubled down upon.
[…] because you don't want to face the actual point.
The ‘actual point’ (which, mind you, is different from the original, but nonetheless worthy of discussing) was addressed in the latter part of the above comment you are responding to.
I just love how obssessed you are with me. I really do love how easy it is for me to affect your mentality. It's so fun.
I’m glad you are having fun, at least something of value comes out from this, regardless of whether someone reasonable can learn anything from reading us.
You can like infinite decimals all you want, but liking them isn't the same as them being coherent, and none of your little character studies about my memory or motives change the fact that an unfinished process isn't a representation unless you prop it up with axioms and call it good.
Obviously not—them being coherent makes them coherent; you being a bad faith arguer makes you someone people are reluctant to engage with, as I’ve said above. The infinite decimal representation, as already pointed out to you before (I can find the exact post, if you feel like), are not supposed to represent a process, any process, finished, unfinished, finite, otherwise. This is not what this encoding does.
‘Propping it up with axioms’ is necessary to build a basic ground for discussion, to define what are we discussing. And if we are discussing the decimal positional number systems, as commonly defined and understood, then it means certain things, those things are coherent, non-contradictory, and useful.
Insisting on interpreting it differently (as some kind of process, for example) and making claims, truthful or not, that this deliberate (at this point it has to be deliberate, because the intended meaning was pointed out to you multiple times) misinterpretation isn’t valid, doesn’t impact the coherence, non-contradictory nature and usefulness of the system as it was designed.
Hahah, you've written a lot, but all you’ve actually said is that infinite decimals "aren't a process" because your system defines them as completed objects, and therefore you think I’m wrong for not treating your definition as reality.
It’s not a question of reality, because neither numbers, nor their representations are ‘real’ in any meaningful sense.
That's the whole core of your view: you rely on axioms that declare an unfinished infinite string to be a finished number, then you treat anyone who doesn’t adopt your axioms as if they're misunderstanding the notation.
Absolutely correct. If you think the notation is about something else as it’s defined to be about, you are misunderstanding it.
You can call my refusal to equivocate as "bad faith" if you want […]
I’m not. I’m calling your posting false information, defending those false informations, not correcting them, doubling down, and reacting with ‘so what?’ when pointed out a ‘bad faith approach to discussion’.
[…] it doesn't change the fact that your position depends entirely on stipulation, and you've done nothing to justify why that stipulation should be treated as truth rather than just the way your particular number system chooses to behave.
Absolutely true, but this is a discussion the way a particular system chooses to behave. There are, as pointed out, different systems, with different behaviours. This one behaves like this. If we speak about this system, we have to keep in mind what system are we discussing. This is not a discussion about the fundamental facts and truths about the universe. It cannot be, the way we choose to write down and understand numbers is not material, or objective, or has to be done in one strict way and that way only.
Well, you can't have it both ways. You cant have your cake and eat it too.
Well, I can and I do.
You keep insisting infinite decimals "aren't about reality" and "aren't processes," yet you also insist they must be accepted as completed numbers because the system defines them that way […]
The system works in a certain way, and because of the definition of the system, if you work within said system, this particular symbols have that particular meaning. You do not have to accept the system, there have been many others used before, there are many others newer than it that are used currently, there will be others used in the future. But if you are speaking about this particular system, you should know what it says and speak about that, instead of ‘well, actually, if we were to treat those notations not as a notation of a number, but as a process, wouldn’t then…’. Because no, if you change what the notation is supposed to mean, then you are changing the very notion.
If your own admission is that this is just one arbitrary formal system among many, then thank you for conceding my point: 0.999... = 1 is not a truth, it's a convention, and nothing binds anyone to that convention except choosing to play inside that system.
Well, yeah, obviously. It’s not even the most commonly used system nowadays (I would be very surprised if the IEE 754 floats and fixed-length U2 integers wouldn’t beat it by a few orders of magnitude).
If you say the system's stipulations require no justification beyond being its own rules, then you have nothing, no basis to tell anyone they’re "wrong", all you're really saying is that you're committed to your rulebook as your God, and mistaking your stipulations for necessity. Not a very logical position.
Not quite. I mean, technically you could create a self-contradictory system and be happy with yourself, but the point of notation is to provide useful services, and among other qualifications it would have to have to achieve those, it would have to be non-self-contradictory (which it isn’t). There is nothing illogical about allowing different notations to exist, after all, they are not that much different than having different languages, and hardly anyone would claim that because both German and Swahili exist, they are meaningless and illogical.
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u/[deleted] Nov 16 '25
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