The Universe of Discourse

I vent my rage at dumbass Math SE comments

[ Content warning: ranting ]

An article I've had in progress for a while is an essay about the dogmatic slogan that “infinity is not a number”. As research for that article I got Math Stack Exchange to disgorge all the comments that used that phrase. There were several dozen.

Most of them were just inane, or ill-considered; some contained genuine technical errors. But this one was so annoying that I have paused to complain about it individually:

One thing many laypeople do not understand or realize is that infinity is not a number, it's not equal to any number, and that two infinities can be different (or the same) in size from one another."

That is not “one thing”. It is three things.

A person who is unclear on the distinction between !!1!! and !!3!! should withhold their opinions about the nature of infinity.

[ Addendum 20220301: I did not clearly communicate which side of the “infinity is not a number” issue I am on. Here's my preliminary statement on the matter: The facile and prevalent claim that “infinity is not a number”, to the extent that it isn't inane, is false. I hope this is sufficiently clear. ]

[Other articles in category /math/se] permanent link