On Sat, Sep 29, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Stephen P. King <stephe...@charter.net>wrote:
> On 9/29/2012 10:11 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > Indeed. I think 17 is intrinsically a prime number in all possible > realities. > > > It is not a reality in a world that only has 16 objects in it. I can > come up with several other counter-examples in terms of finite field, but > that is overly belaboring a point. > > This can clearly be shown to be false. For me to be responding to this post (using a a secure connection to my mail server) requires the use of prime numbers of 153 decimal digits in length. There are on the order of 10^90 particles in the observable universe. This is far smaller than the prime numbers which are larger than 10^152. So would you say these numbers are not prime, merely because we don't have 10^153 things we can point to? If a number P can be prime in a universe with fewer than P objects in it, might P be prime in a universe with 0 objects? Jason -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
