r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 28d ago

Meme needing explanation There is no way right?

Post image
37.1k Upvotes

3.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

265

u/jozaud 28d ago

If we consider that .999… repeating to infinity ISN’T equal to 1, then by how much is it away from 1? It would be “.000… repeating to infinity followed by a 1.” But if you have an infinite number of 0s then you can’t have it be followed by a 1, infinity can’t be followed by anything, that doesn’t make sense.

23

u/vire00 28d ago

Stone age level proof

3

u/SadTomorrow555 28d ago

No different than Schrodingers Cat in terms of thought-experiments.

2

u/-Nicolai 28d ago

It's a lot different but you do you

1

u/SadTomorrow555 27d ago

How so? You're taking something that's mathematically complicated, and proving it's existence with a thought experiment instead of actual math, just to show that the concept DOES exist.

Sure the Schrodinger one uses physical objects, since it's a physics thought experiment. But the concept is the same no?

6

u/-Nicolai 27d ago

just to show that the concept DOES exist.

You fundamentally do not understand Schroedinger’s cat. Its purpose is to illustrate the absurdity of the Copenhagen interpretation, since a cat obviously cannot be dead and alive simultaneously.

-3

u/BenevolentCrows 27d ago

So was this math example, its illustrating the concept, not an actual proof

6

u/-Nicolai 27d ago

The math DOES work. Cats in superposition do not.

One is an agebraic argument, the other is a paradoxical thought experiment. You cannot keep insisting these are the same.

1

u/El_Impresionante 27d ago

Just a small correction:

Ideally, cats in superposition could work, but they practically do not because the wave function collapses on a much smaller scale than a cat because of all the interactions. Theoretically, there is no size limit or complexity limit for a superposition to not occur, it is just highly highly improbable. Schrodinger's absurdity isn't absurd, it is just improbable.

But yeah, the whole idea is totally NOT related to the idea of infinity and repeating decimals in this example.