• driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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    2 months ago

    That’s not how it’s works. Being “infinite” is not enough, the number 1.110100100010000… is “infinite”, without repeating patterns and dosen’t have other digits that 1 or 0.

    • HatchetHaro
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      2 months ago

      to be fair, though, 1 and 0 are just binary representations of values, same as decimal and hexadecimal. within your example, we’d absolutely find the entire works of shakespeare encoded in ascii, unicode, and lcd pixel format with each letter arranged in 3x5 grids.

        • leverage@lemdro.id
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          2 months ago

          You can encode base 2 as base 10, I don’t think anyone is saying it exists in binary form.

          • Turun@feddit.de
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            2 months ago

            No, because you can’t mathematically guarantee that pi contains long strings of predetermined patterns.

            The 1.101001000100001… example by the other user was just that - an example. Their number is infinite, but never contains a 2. Pi is also infinite, but does it contain the number e to 100 digits of precision? Maybe. Maybe not. The point is, we don’t know and we can’t prove it either way (except finding it by accident).

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        2 months ago

        Actually, there’d only be single pixels past digit 225 in the last example, if I understand you correctly.

        If we can choose encoding, we can “cheat” by effectively embedding whatever we want to find in the encoding. The existence of every substring in a one of a set of ordinary encodings might not even be a weaker property than a fixed encoding, though, because infinities can be like that.

    • Fubber Nuckin'@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If it’s infinite without repeating patterns then it just contain all patterns, no? Eh i guess that’s not how that works, is it? Half of all patterns is still infinity.

        • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          However, as the name implies, this is nothing special about pi. Almost all numbers have this property. If anything, it’s the integers that we should be finding weird, like you mean to tell me that every single digit after the decimal point is a zero? No matter how far you go, just zeroes forever?

        • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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          2 months ago

          Yeah, but your number doesn’t fit pi. It may not have a pattern, but it’s predictable and deterministic.

          • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            Pi is predictable and deterministic.

            Computer programs exist that can tell you what the next digit is. That means it’s deterministic, and running the program will give you a prediction for each digit (within the memory constraints of your computer).

            The fact that it’s deterministic is exactly why pi is interesting. If it was random it would typically be much easier to prove properties about it’s digits.

            • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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              2 months ago

              There’s no way to predict what the next unsolved pi digit will be just by looking at what came before it. It’s neither predictable nor deterministic. The very existence of calculations to get the next digit supports that.

              Note: I’m not saying Pi is random. Again, the calculations support the general non-randomness of it. It is possible to be unpredictable, undeterministic, and completely logical.

              Note Note: I don’t know everything. For all I know, we’re in a simulation and we’ll eventually hit the floating point limit of pi and underflow the universe. I just wanted to point out that your example doesn’t quite fit with pi.

              • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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                2 months ago

                π isn’t deterministic? How do you figure that? If two people calculate π they get different answers?

                What π is, is fully determined by it’s definition and the geometry of a circle.

                Also, unpredictable? Difficult to predict, sure. Unpredictable by simple methods, sure. But fully impossible to predict at all?

                • kn0wmad1c@programming.dev
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                  2 months ago

                  As I said, you can’t predict the next number simply based upon the set of numbers that came before. You have to calculate it, and that calculation can be so complex that it takes insane amounts of energy to do it.

                  Also, I think I was thinking of the philisophical definition of “deterministic” when I was using it earlier. That doesn’t really apply to pi… unless we really do live in a simulation.

                  • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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                    2 months ago

                    This might just be my computer-focused life talking, but I’ve never heard of deterministic meaning anything but non-random. At best philosophic determinism is about free will and the existence of true randomness, but that just seems like sacred consciousness.

                    I also don’t know why predictability would be solely based on the numbers that came before. Election predictions are heavily based on polling data, and any good CEO will prepare for coming policy changes, so why ignore context here? If that’s a specific definition in math then fair enough, but that’s not a good argument for or against the existence of arbitrary strings in some numbers. Difficult is a far cry from impossible.

      • driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br
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        2 months ago

        Not, the example I gave have infinite decimals who doesn’t repeat and don’t contain any patterns.

        What people think about when said that pi contain all patters, is in normal numbers. Pi is believed to be normal, but haven’t been proven yet.

        An easy example of a number who contains “all patterns” is 0.12345678910111213…

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      In some encoding scheme, those digits can represent something other than binary digits. If we consider your string of digits to truly be infinite, some substring somewhere will be meaningful.

      • Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        One of the many things I loved about Sagan’s Contact is that, at the end, they found a pattern in pi when put into base 13. He didn’t really go into it as it was the end of the book, but I really wish he’d survived to write a sequel.