Comment on Irrational
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 5 months agoBut you could make that same argument for a lot of fractions. 1/3 doesn’t exist because you cannot divide a quantum in three. 0.333 repeating means that eventually you have to divide an indivisible foundational particle in thirds.
Yes. I would argue 1/3 does not exist in quantum either.
The problem is that something that doesn’t exist in our universe or reality doesn’t disprove anything in mathematics. Mathematics is abstract. It is rules built up on rules. It does not care about reality or anything
You can divide a thing made up of any multiple of 3 number of things into three. Say, divide twelve eggs by three that’s four eggs, rational division is justified by “I could have multiplied some numbers beforehand so now I can divide”, it’s the inverse of multiplication, after all.
But that only applies to rationals: The issue is that there’s no integer you could multiply pi with that would result in an integer… otherwise pi would be a rational number which it isn’t.
rbits@lemm.ee 5 months ago
If you have three particles, 1/3 of that is one particle. No need to divide an indivisible particle.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 5 months ago
But if I don’t have three particles, 1/3 requires division.
rbits@lemm.ee 5 months ago
Right, but you can have exactly a third of some group of particles. You can’t have exactly pi of some group of particles I think is what they were saying