Re: [lojban] cipja'o

[pycyn@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/1/2002 9:05:48 AM Central Daylight Time, phma@webjockey.net writes:

I am unclear just what "beyond calculation" means here.  Not
> apparently, "incalculable," since even my pocket calculator gives values
> for both of these -- approximations, of course, but that suggests that real
> values are available (though infinitely long, I suppose).  Somehow
> inadmissible, like division by 0?  But again ... .  Such that the
> distinction between fractions and not does not apply?  Does any of this say
> that the presented proof is not a proof?

I meant "transcendental". What's the right word?

I don't know the proof; I just saw it stated on Wikipedia. Finding out that
the number is irrational does not invalidate the proof.

Thanks; I really was unclear about the point.  As for the right word, since I forget the difference between irrational and transcendantal, I was happy with {nalfrinu} till now.  Now, having three not obviously equivalent definitions of "transcendental" (just in mathematics), I am even less sure.  I suppose what fits here it the old infinite non-repeating decimal expansion  -- which gives a horrible definition-type lujvo (though not as bad as "neither root nor quotient of rationals" or "not definable by an finite number of rationally coefficiented equations")  Time for a good metaphor, which "beyond computing" just may be, though it clearly sets off alarms in many people's belief webs.

jay.kominek
<For what its worth, a transcendental function is one which cannot be
expressed in algebraic terms.>
But this is about transcendental numbers, which, though presumably related, are not quite the same thing: the algebra seems OK here -- unless rational coefficients are required to call it algebra.  We don't, of course, have a word for algebra either (nor hardly any other branch of mathematics -- or anything else).

greg:
<> .i ru'a lo'i namcu poi se skicu do fo zo kajbancu du lo'i namcu poi
na'eka'e
> pixra zbasu .i xu go'i .i .e'u ri selcme zo nalpirzbana'u>

I worry about {pixra zbasu} here, but I suppose the point is "can be pictured" somehow or other.  That doesn't seem quite the point, although it is a bit hard to picture some of them, while others work pretty easily: the root-twoth power of root-two doesn't do a thing for me, but pi (surely transcendental if anything is) is just how much you have to stretch the diameter of a circle to wrap it around.  But maybe it is a less distracting metaphor (trimmed down a bit).