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Article 2478 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: seebs@asgaard.acc.stolaf.edu (The Laughing Prophet)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic,comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Grasping concepts... is it polite?
Message-ID: <1992Jan2.131048.18412@news.stolaf.edu>
Date: 2 Jan 92 13:10:48 GMT
References: <1991Dec23.112144.6884@husc3.harvard.edu> <1991Dec30.172852.3305@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
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In article <1991Dec30.172852.3305@csc.canterbury.ac.nz> chisnall@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz writes:
>But "10^10^10" is an exceedingly compact representation for the number
>it denotes.  It is a mere 8 ascii characters, and the function "^" can
>be defined fairly succintly.  Can your mind grasp, say, the base 10
>representation of "10^10^10"? 

I seriously doubt it. But, if you can, try this one:

Can you *really* understand 10^10^10 *of* something? I.e., can you genuinely
understand what 10^10^10 pennies are, relative to a single penny? How about
just how much space they'd take up?

I'm inclined to say that that's a native hardware limitation. No, we *can't*
really understand those. We can have intellectual understandings of them, but
those are concepts that are too damn big to understand the way we understand
"what it is to fall". (And, on the other hand, most computers are quite comfy
with 10^10^10, but have no *idea* what it would be to be falling.)

>Name: Michael Chisnall		email: chisnall@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz

-s
ps: i'm just passing through since our newsfeed is dead, but I may occasionally
visit when I have excess time.
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