Zeno, a famous philosopher back in the days, had a theory that movement was actually impossible for us humans to achieve. For example, you getting up from your chair and going to the door is impossible.

His claim was this:

Before being able to reach the door (our goal), we must be able to stand up and reach our halfway point - correct?

Well before we can reach our halfway point, we're going to have to be able to get 1/4 of the way to the door (or halfway between our starting point and our halfway point).

Yet again, before reaching our 1/4 mark, we'll have to reach our 1/8 point. However, this goes on forever BECAUSE numbers are infinite (right?). So without being able to tell when numbers stop we are unable to begin the actual process of movement.

Anyone have any ideas on how to rebute this? After hearing it myself and going over it a few times, in a philosophical way I believe it.

Before trying to really thoroughly comprehend movement, we should simply accept that it's measurement is relative to the scale we choose.

It's a strange claim by the way, because everytime we reach the door we have proven to be able to cover all these infinite halfway points all the way up to the door, regardless of the scale you choose before you start.

The actual movement is still happening, the trouble Zeno seems to have had with it, was accepting 1 scale-size on which you base your measurements of distance and movement. Infinity doesn't matter when it comes to reaching the destination, it does matter for comprehending distance covered,

Cheers

Huh, are 1/2 and 1/4 and such infinite? I think they are finite, unlike pi for example.

Besides, if you have an infinite amount of numbers in between two (finite or infinite) numbers, then wouldn't adding them all together result in an infinite number as well? edit: answer to this would be "yes they would be infinite", but with this paradox each new number is half the amount of the last one.

Cheers

Do you mean the number of addendum in the sum ?
Yes the number is infinite but the sum is finite
This is the solution of the Zeno's paradx
Not mine , of course some one smarter than me

Aah, I see, with the Zeno problem in mind I do understand it, because you have a finite distance to cover, yet an infinite amount of smaller distances in between ... the more you count in between the smaller they get individually, hence the fact that they can never 'outgrow' the finite total distance when you add them all together.

Cheers

exactlty
An other version of Zeno's paradox is the following
To cover 1/2 way, you need a finite time
The same to cover 1/4 way, you need a shorter time but still finite and so on
The mistake is to assume that the sum of infinite small time intervals must be infinite but it is not

Actually, if each next number is half of the last one and this goes on forever, ultimately it will never be a finite number, but still infinite. It will get EXTREMELY VERY CLOSE to a finite number, but will never reach it, right?

Cheers

no ,you will reach it the combination of Infinite (bigger than you can imagine) and infinitesim (smaller than you can imagine ) being finite

i know the solution!!

out brain has a INT instruction build in, so it cuts of the decimals and thus we reached our goal

regards,