What is Infinite?

 Growing up I had many questions, they grew in difficulty until I needed others' help to answer them. Some were solved on a math sheet, some were solved with a book. Others took time, and still others to this day I find myself unsatisfied with the answer. There are two that come to mind which means that these are the only two that matter to me. Firstly it is, “What is love?” Which I have attempted to answer but again as before I am unsatisfied. The other happens to be the title of this talk and that is:


What is Infinite?

Or the alternate title: 

What is the greatest number you can comprehend?

Beginning with a grand term as Infinite is a great way to lose interest, it loses mine. Infinite what is it? It’s something we can’t count, it has no beginning, and no ending. It is infinity, which brings with it countless quotes, “Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.” 

Theories, ‘Infinite world theories.’

Various art forms and their ideas of what infinite is.

That is why I have decided to begin with a much simpler form of that question. Or a question inspired by infinite.


What is the greatest number you can comprehend?

I stumbled across this question by accident, thinking to myself. And I wasn’t thinking of infinite, I was thinking of a large number and whether I did truly understand it. The number was 10,000 and I wanted to say I could understand it but I argued with the fact that if I saw two pennies and claimed there was only one then I would be wrong. In that same sense would I not be wrong if I claimed there were 10,000 pennies and there were in fact 9,999? You could say, “You were darn close enough! So that's good enough for me.” 

Then that raises a further question, how far must you be off to be, the new form of “Incorrect.” Is guessing 10,100 still close enough to be correct? Or is it within 50? And as the number of pennies grows does the perimeters of being “Close enough.” Grow larger? If there are 100,000 pennies and you guess 101,000 is that, “Close enough?” In my mind we are speaking of pennies and the difference between 100,000 and 101,000 is 10 dollars. Which is not much but in my exact mind it is incorrect. Guessing 1 above or 1 below the actual amount is wrong. 

So again I ask you to think within your head, and based on your own idea of incorrectness, how great of a number can you think of? Is it 1,000? 500? 10,000? Do you work with large numbers all day and it is 1 or 2 million? I have asked this question before and the greatest answer that I answered perfectly with a number and reason. And it wasn’t 1,000 or 500 or 300 or any number larger than that. It set me back to the lowest number that my pride would have allowed me to have. The dialogue went something like this: 

“Well I think it would have to be 80.”

“Why?”

“Because I guessed 80 on one of those, guess how many are in the bottle games.”

“Oh and you got it right?”

“No, I was wrong.”


80. It humbled me, I had thoughts of 1,000s and 10,000s but no it was 80. 


So what?

That is what I would think, if I wasn’t me and in all honesty if you have gotten this far that would be incredible. When numbers come into play my eyes grow heavy and my mind wanders down fantasy roads that I have made within my mind. 

Why would I ever care about the greatest number I can understand? Well because it begins with and ends with What is infinite? And the fact that with our meager little minds we attempt to comprehend 80 or 90 as we make videos counting to 100,000. Thinking we are all high and mighty when in fact we are not. How could we ever measure up to not only knowing the numbers of stars in the sky but naming them by heart.

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