Ignoring arithmatic and mathmatics for the moment, consider an absence of something. Conceptually, the opposite of it should be an infinite amount of that something. Therefore, zero is the conceptual opposite of infinity.
Therefore:
- infinity = (0)
Therefore, when something goes towards zero, it is the same as approaching negative infinity.
Its probalby totally wrong, but i was tired and just thiught i might post this here for discussion
first of all...you mention the term "conceptual opposite" and then you plase an equality sign (=) between infinity and 0.
how is "opposite" a sinonim with "=" ?
now ...when you place the '-' to infinity, you screw it all up propperly.
you CAN say that you have no "something". you CAN say that you have an infinit amount of "something". but you CAN'T say you have a -infinit amoutn of "something".
so....simplified to the extremes. you can consider 0 the conceptual opposite to infinity in quantity terms. but -infinity is the opposite to infinity on a mathematical axis. on both sides of 0, to be exact
no..it is not. because minus infinity does not express quantity.
something may have a minus infinity value.....but that something is NOT an amount of something
I'm not going to get into the mathmatical and theoretical areas of this argument.........because both are based on conjecture. But I must agree with Dexx.
Practically and physically........there is no such thing as infinite...much less -infinite. Infinity is an idea......a way of expressing x+1+1+1+1 in a never ending cycle........it's just an expression.
-infinity is not equal to nothing... just as -1 is not equal to nothing.... all negative numbers are "unreal" and refer to having less than nothing... the easiest way to explain this is the idea of debt... if you have no dollars, and owe me ten dollars, then you have minus ten dollars... you can't hold them in your hand, but the concept is there... however, you are correct about abscence and opposition being different things... for instance, darkness is the absence of light, not its opposite... the opposite of light would be a negative-photon or anti-photon, a particle that travelled in exactly the opposite way to light... possibly bacwards in time as we would comprehend it... for such a particle decelleration below the speed of light would be impossible, and at present we would be unable to detect it...
What's the opposite of not having five dollars? I would say it is not having an infinite number of dollars; the opposite of not having five dollars is having five dollars. The opposite of not having a car is having a car. I'm not sure why you think infinity enters into this.
__________________ "Men curse the Communist Party, but eventually it may release them. If hell were endless, then God would be worse than our Secret Police."--Pastor Valentin
Infinity needs an extreme to be supported with either positive or negative; as infinty does not have a maximum point of span therfore it may not have a negative point. both need eachother to co-exist.
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there is no such thing as infinity in reality, it is just an imaginary concept created by humans, so i dont see why it cant be defined as the opposite of zero
At least partially because zero isn't an imagined concept, it's a real number that can be represented by the absence of everything. The opposite of one is negative one... The opposite of x is -x... The opposite of infinity is negative infinity. Zero (the number zero, not so much the concept of nothing) has no opposite.
Just to summarise our progress, 0-infinity=-infinity. -Infinity is impossible. Infinity is impossible. Debt is an example of negativity, as are anti-particles, or dark matter.
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Dec 26th, 2004 10:53 PM
