Nothing

Scott Duckworth · Post by **Scott Duckworth** » 15 May 2015 2:59 am

I'm at a loss with nothing to say...

Larry Carlson · Post by **Larry Carlson** » 15 May 2015 7:18 am

Ray Minich · Post by **Ray Minich** » 23 May 2015 11:38 am

The Singularity is coming!

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 24 May 2015 10:32 am

You cannot divide zero by zero. The idea of zero divided by zero being mathematically indeterminate (and therefore of no meaning) has been taken by non-mathematicians to mean something that it does not.
You have to go back to what the shorthand of mathematics means. To divide is to separate into parts, so ten divided by two means taking ten items and separating them into two equal parts. Zero divided by zero means that you are taking nothing and dividing it no times, which, in effect, means that you are doing no calculation.
In drawing graphs, we see that as you divide by smaller and smaller numbers you get larger and larger amounts, and the graph quickly starts pointing towards infinity. But it never quite gets there, because infinity does not exist as a number, although you would think that anything divided by zero would be infinite, but it's not the case. The moment you actually reach zero as a divisor the calculation stops, because dividing by zero has no meaning. It means that the division process is not occuring.

Sorry, but you're not going to create a black hole by dividing by zero. Dividing by zero doesn't occur anywhere, even in a black hole.

Rick Collins · Post by **Rick Collins** » 25 May 2015 8:20 am

Alan Brookes wrote:You cannot divide zero by zero.

0/0=0
Or, did you mean it must be true?

Larry Carlson · Post by **Larry Carlson** » 25 May 2015 8:53 am

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 25 May 2015 9:28 am

Rick Collins wrote:
Alan Brookes wrote:You cannot divide zero by zero.
0/0=0
Or, did you mean it must be true?

0/0=0 is not true. You cannot divide by zero. Dividing by zero means that you are not dividing.

It's the same problem as you get when referring to "nothing" as though it were a thing. The word "nothing" is just the lack of thing, so you cannot give the lack of something properties in itself. This is where all those anomalies of speech which have kept this thread going for several years originates, and I've pointed it out before, many times.
"I have nothing" does not mean that I have a thing called "nothing"; it means that I have no "thing". It merely denotes the absence of it, so when someone follows up a statement such as "I have nothing" with "I don't have a nothing, sell me yours," they are treating the word "nothing" as if it were a thing, and not just a word describing the lack of thing.

We used up all the legitimate discussion about "nothing", "zero", "nil", etc. in the first few pages. The remaining 130 or so have just been plays on words. You'll notice that Bob Knight, who originated this thread eight years ago as a joke, stopped posting in it many years ago.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 25 May 2015 10:46 am

I think that 0/0=1 because there's one 0 in 0. Any number divided by itself equals 1.

Bob Knight had nothing to say again on 20 Feb 2014.

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 25 May 2015 12:08 pm

If 0/0 = 1, then multiply both sides of the equation by five and you get 5/0 = 1.
On the other hand, if you multiply the equation by seven you get 7/0 = 1.
If 5/0 = 1 = 7/0 then does 5 = 7 ?:\

Think of this anomaly. If you let x = 1 then
xÂ²-1 = xÂ²-x
Factorizing both sizes gives you...
x(x-1)= (x+1)(x-1)
Dividing both sides by (x-1) gives you...
x = x+1
If you deduct x from both sides you get...
0 = 1

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 25 May 2015 12:12 pm

Are you 1 ?
Then I'm 1 2.

Scott Duckworth · Post by **Scott Duckworth** » 25 May 2015 2:09 pm

I'm tired of doing NOTHING, and I never thought I would look forward to a HEART CATH...

Ray Jenkins · Post by **Ray Jenkins** » 26 May 2015 8:04 am

What happened to just plain old "Nothing plus Nothing equals Nothing"???

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 26 May 2015 11:19 am

Ray Jenkins wrote:What happened to just plain old "Nothing plus Nothing equals Nothing"???

Nothing plus nothing does equal nothing.
Nothing minus nothing is nothing.
Nothing multiplied by nothing equals nothing.
Nothing divided by nothing is impossible.
Anything divided by nothing is impossible.

If you divide by no thing you are not dividing.

We must separate "nothing" from "zero". "Nothing" is a word, the only function of which is to describe the absence of "thing": "Zero" is a mathematical term to describe the number which occurs beckwards in the sequence 4 3 2 1 0, and takes arithmetical care of the 2 distinction between 1 and -1. The ancients had no figure 0, and survived for hundreds of thousands of years very well without it. In logical terms, negative numbers do not exist. A negative number represents the dearth of that many. For instance, you can say that a grocer has 50 potatoes, but to say that a grocery has -50 potatoes makes no sense, moreover it is ambiguous. Does it mean that the grocer has orders for 50 more potatoes than he has in stock, which means that he had to order another 50? He might chose not to do so.

Rick Collins · Post by **Rick Collins** » 27 Jun 2015 10:04 am

News Flash!
Attention: NOTHING has just been, for the time, located.
NOTHING cannot coexist with anything in our universe; hence, NOTHING exist only beyond the edges of our universe.

You're welcome!

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 27 Jun 2015 11:14 am

When people talk about an expanding universe, they're not talking about the creation of a new three dimensional area. Since the definition of the universe is the extent to which everything in our universe has expanded, that does not mean that there is not nothing outside that.

It's rather like the spreading of people. Imagine a time when all the people of the Earth were in a small group in one small location. Their habitat is just that small area. Now, over the centuries those people multiply and spread out, and, as they do, their habitat increases in size. It doesn't mean that there was nothing outside their habitat.

Imagine the universe as our habitat. As particles expand ever further and further out our universe gets bigger, but it always was, and always will be, of infinite dimensions. It's just that before the universe expanded into it, there was nothing there.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 27 Jun 2015 3:30 pm

Most of everything is nothing.

Larry Carlson · Post by **Larry Carlson** » 27 Jun 2015 4:20 pm

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 28 Jun 2015 1:57 am

b0b wrote:I think that 0/0=1 because there's one 0 in 0. Any number divided by itself equals 1.

A true statement mathematically and philosophically.

Bob Knight's posts have reached the apex of unity.

admin · Post by **b0b** » 28 Jun 2015 8:14 am

As with all things, a singularity is not nothing.

Roy Heap · Post by **Roy Heap** » 28 Jun 2015 9:49 am

This is amazing 141 pages of NOTHING. At the end of the day is there NOTHING worth saying? $:\$

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 28 Jun 2015 10:00 am

Yes, there's plenty worth saying, but it's all been said.

But this topic will continue indefinitely, because the same things, such as the picture of "nothing ahead", will keep being posted, and most of the discussion will continue around the play on the word "nothing", which is not an entity in itself, but merely the description of the absence of thing.

Rick Collins · Post by **Rick Collins** » 28 Jun 2015 10:05 am

b0b wrote:As with all things, a singularity is not nothing.

Yes, and one thing it is __ DARK!
...come to think of it, this thread does not let much light escape either.

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 28 Jun 2015 10:05 am

"I have nothing to say and I'm saying it."--John Cage

For some reason, I'm reminded of this, a picture of taoist math, where one begat two,
two begat three (and of course, three begat the ten thousand things).

Zero is space (one, a point in terms of a singularity); the two parts it creates makes three, including the original one,
which is zero--one dimension, from which all things arise. Clearly, the singularity isn't nothing.
There really isn't a zero when you look into it. Taoist math is deep, yet shallow, not ambiguous, but dual.

(Thank you. It was nothing, really.)

Alan Brookes · Post by **Alan Brookes** » 28 Jun 2015 2:30 pm

Slicky Dicky Collins wrote:
Bobby Lee wrote:As with all things, a singularity is not nothing.
Yes, and one thing it is __ DARK!
...come to think of it, this thread does not let much light escape either.

Only a singularity in a Black Hole is dark.
The singularity that created the Big Bang was far from dark. It put out an ENORMOUS amount of light. You wouldn't have wanted to be there at the time.

On the other hand, I guess we were ALL there at the time, since every particle of matter in the universe was created from that singularity.

Bugs Bunny wrote: Nothing. He didn't write anything at all.

Charlie McDonald · Post by **Charlie McDonald** » 29 Jun 2015 2:09 am

In the beginning, there wasn't nothing. There was a lump of coal

, the gift of Santa Clause, I suppose,
waiting for energy to be applied to it in a singularity that may have occurred over and over--who knows.
But that's not important right now as that great sage Leslie Neilsen said.

The symbol is also a model of the binary world, a zero, a place-holder, unity, a reflection of the universe.
In the beginning there was unity, destroyed in creation of the ten thousand things.
'The parts have enough names. One must know when to stop.'