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[Kamak]

Our prof gave each theory a fair shake, but Zeno's paradox (and a couple of others later, namely 20th century stuff) made her go "Alright, so you know that you can arrive at a destination, so this is all bullshit. Don't worry about it, just remember what it's trying to say for the test."

[D-vid]

The part about the distance between two points having an infinite amount of stops in between is correct.
But that is only a problem if you were to visit one after another of those infinite stops. If you take just one step you already traversed an infinite amount of the stops, which makes it possible to finish the way since calculating things like infinity - infinity is under different rules than infinity - 1 which would still be infinity and thus impossible to finish.
I probably now took more time thinking about that than all your philosophy professors combined.

[Syobon]

We got in high school math as an introduction to convergent sequences. Our teacher said it was impossible to mathematically disprove or some shit.

[Exeres]

That's why we ignore it mathematically, and instead watch someone walk over a fucking line to disprove it.

[D-vid]

Not exactly impossible, it's just that one infinity isn't necessarily "as much" as another infinity and has to be looked at case by case.
For one, there's countable infinity and uncountable infinity.
Natural numbers are countable, the real numbers are uncountable.

All natural numbers together are infinite. All even natural numbers are still infinite even though there's obviously only half as many. But all of those are still less than the amount of numbers between 0 and 1 if you use real numbers.
It's weird math shit.

[Syobon]

But the thing is that the distance keeps getting smaller ton infinity right? So what if we start out with the infinitely small part dx? Then we can find that the time it takes for the arrow to reach the turtle as the integral of (1/v)*dx [with v the speed of the arrow and x the distance] while still following zeno's thought process.

[Galaxy Man]

I'm not entirely certain how it doesn't make sense?

It's a paradox, it's an observation that should lead to one conclusion but it doesn't. The observation is that there is an infinite number of points between point A and point B, so you shouldn't be able to traverse that gap as it's fucking infinity. But you can. Thus the bit where it's called a paradox.

There's nothing... wrong about it. There are infinite points between every possible point, and we can cross them or measure them.

I mean I'm not the most knowledgeable about the subject but like it seems sound as a thought experiment, which is all it really is.

[Exeres]

But he made the mistake of wording it the silliest way possible. He claimed that because of those "infinite points" between where you start and finish, it is impossible to complete the trip at all.

[Syobon]

As I demonstrated in my previous post, it is mathematically possible to traverse a distance by advancing one infinitely small point at a time. (unless I made a mistake there). Therefore, Plato's thought experiment is pretty useless, although that is of course fairly subjective. If it opened your mind to something or such it could've been useful to you.

[Exeres]

It was Zeno, but yeah. It's to be taken for what it is, another step in the advancement of Greek philosophy.

[Galaxy Man]

But he made the mistake of wording it the silliest way possible. He claimed that because of those "infinite points" between where you start and finish, it is impossible to complete the trip at all.

Well, yeah. It should be. Infinity goes on forever, and I dunno about you but I've never reached forever.

But it doesn't work like that.

which is why it's a paradox

[Syobon]

I momentarily forgot, and maybe other people did too so that's why I'm making this post, that a paradox is something that is contradictory at first glance. An oxymoron is something that's fundamentally contradictory.

[Exeres]

I know it's a paradox, it's just not that complex or mind-blowing or whatever. To put it in perspective, I thought of something like this when I was ten.

[Mr. Mander]

In other news, What the hell is Emma Jones

[Syobon]

Right, I agree, but it still might be usefull/noteworthy to other people less familiar with the concept of infinitesimality or whatever.