A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
EDIT: I rolled a critical fail in reading comprehension and I thought the other track was N per integer instead of 1 per real number in the previous version of this comment.
The people in the real number track are already dead by the time the trolley arrives due to the forces involved in cramming them so tightly together. I.e. they are basically just a gore pile the moment after the people are somehow arranged like that.
I pick the real number track so that no one new has to die.
Infinity people always die. Even if you don't make a decision.
I have a tangential question I have been wanted an explanation for:
If there are infinite universes, would there be infinite earth's?
I remember (an) answer is infinite universes doesn't necessarily mean infinite earth's. A cool analogy of a CD rack was used when I read it, but I can't find it. Does anyone else have an explanation and/or analogy for this?
infinite Earths*
The existence of the bottom track would imply an infinite density of people, which would create a black hole and kill everyone involved, regardless of the trolley's presence
If the tracks are scaled to the same unit (presumably one where one human width equals an infinitely small number), everyone in the top track would die of exposure before the trolley even reaches its first victim due to there being infinite distance between integer milestones, whereas everyone in the bottom track would be killed instantly due to any distance traveled having an infinite number of infinitesimals*. So I choose the bottom track to be merciful.
If the tracks don't share the same scale then we don't have enough information to make a judgment.
* Even though we already established the one human width rule. Could someone check my logic here? Infinities break my brain.
Is every real number the smallest infinity? Would the infinity of every even number be smaller than the infinity of every integer? Or are they both aleph-null?
They're both countable, which makes them both the same size. When you say two infinities are the same size, what you're saying is that there exists a 1:1 mapping to go from one to the other.
In your proposed case every integer maps directly onto the even number twice its size.
Probably pull the leaver cuz then I can jump in front of the train.
Slip the switch, like always
I actually would like to choose the track where the number of people increases by one (so 1, 2, 3, 4...) and then the train will kill -1/12 people
PS Yes, I know this sum result is problematic, it's only a joke
Since there's an infinite number of people to kill in either case I can just do nothing, and thus by inaction most of those infinite people will have more than enough time for someone else to rescue them. Maybe the State, that's what they're there for.
I would take a sledgehammer and smash the trolley to bits, thus solving the problem and saving infinite number of lives. There's always another option available.
Is it possible to get this thing to skid on both rails? You'll only be killing an infinite number of people anyway.
Multi-track drifting. Also while some infinities are smaller if you're just counting out an infinite number of individual humans then I'm pretty sure they're the same size infinities one is just social distancing. Smaller infinities are ones like those in between each part of the bigger infinities. To represent a smaller infinity you'd maybe have to have an infinite number of smaller humans crammed into a spot the size of one of the spaces between the humans on the other track, or something along those lines. The real number track does contain smaller infinities between each integer via infinite decimal points but I don't think one track would technically be smaller than the other in this case since they run parallel to each other but neither are technically limited in the "length" of their infinity so to speak. But I could be misremembering how they classify smaller infinities.
@tedu @science_memes @fossilesque Can we space them out so the frequency is the same? 😂
Was this an honest question? Because the answer is 'no'. You can't space them out or else the set of people on the lower track would be countable which is a smaller infinity than the ones of the real numbers.
To space them, you would have to take people of the track. Infinitely many. To be precise not all of them but as many as there are on the track.
Yes. Right under trolley. Will derail it.