this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2026
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Math Memes

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If the trolley is traveling at a finite speed, it will end up killing the same number of people either way.

If it's not, I won't have time to flip the switch anyway.

[–] ns1@feddit.uk 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I'll give this a go. The number of people at A is ℵ~2~ and at B is 2^ℵ0^. If the continuum hypothesis is true then there are ℵ~1~ people at B so A has more people, if it is false then either there are more at B or there could be equally many at A and B (if the star axiom is true).

Either way infinitely many people are dying so it's a sad story.

[–] brian@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 days ago (3 children)

yeah but only one of those options gives you a wicked K/D ratio

[–] eah@programming.dev 11 points 3 days ago

Cantor's Die Lemma

Multitrack drifting

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Ackshually the text says that A is at least ℵ_2 so it could be way more

[–] ns1@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I thought that as well for a while so I was waiting for someone to say that! My claim that A is exactly ℵ~2~ is based on it saying "unique", meaning there's only 1 cardinality with the property described, between ℵ~0~ and A (which must be ℵ~1~). But I agree the wording is not very clear. The version without uniqueness is still a dilemma, it just means that it's also possible for A to be larger than B even if CH is false.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah I noticed that and thought I had deleted my comment! Oh well!

[–] eah@programming.dev 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How would you write it? My goal was to write it in a way that would be most understandable to the most people (so, avoid using symbols like ℵ) while still being concise.

[–] ns1@feddit.uk 2 points 2 days ago

Not sure honestly, I can think of alternatives but I don't know if they're better. "Isomorphism of sets" is a fancy way of saying "bijection", and "unique set up to isomorphism" is the same as "unique cardinal" but as you say it's better to use terms that everyone knows. It might just be that "unique" being right at the beginning makes it easy to forget. Decoding the description is a fun part of the problem!

[–] princess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 days ago

I flip a coin and let the initial conditions of the universe decide.