3/27 I was talking to someone who said that they once named their
machine "aleph-null" (sp?) and thought that was amusing. I
laughed along nervously, but I have no clue what this term
means.. -- 22 and clueless
\_ It was a psychological experiment.
\_ the short answer, for a non-mathematician, is "infinity".
the way this is written is as the hebrew letter aleph, which
looks like a styalized capital "N", subscript "0". aleph null
is the infinity that describes how many natural numbers there are,
i.e. {0,1,2,3...}, as opposed to for example the number of real
numbers, which is a larger infitity. if you want to know more,
this stuff is descried in any set theory book. a decent undergrad
set theory book is "elements of set theory" by Enderton. It is
not obvious to me why naming a computer "aleph-null" is funny.
\_ geeks have a lames sense of humor. duh
\_ man, that's funny!
\_ an interesting (and I think open) question is whether there is
a cardinal greater than aleph-null and less than aleph-one.
-- ilyas
\_ How is this question related to the Continuum Hypothesis
(undecidable per Paul Cohen's work)? -- schoen
\_ The continuum hypothesis (undecidable in ZFC per
the work of Cohen and Goedel) is 2^(aleph-null) == aleph-1.
I'm not sure what ilyas is talking about.
\_ What is aleph-one then? -- yuen
\_ Dependes on if you believe the continuum hyp. If yes,
then it is 2^(aleph-null), which is the cardnality of
the real numbers. If not, then... well, it is something.
\_ It's clearly a play on the failed '80s NBC sitcom Alf,
and /dev/null. -ax
\_ HEY!!!!!!!! ALF DIDN"T FAIL!!!!!! Boors like you just failed
to understand and appreciate its subtle humor. |