alt Hacker News> No surjective function exists from definitions to real numbers.
I'm not really up on maths so this is possibly a stupid question, but can't any real number be written as an ASCII string, which is basically an integer number, so there is a direct mapping there?
Or is it because the ASCII number wouldn't be in order that makes the difference?
Or is it that you can't write that mapping as a mathematical function perhaps?
Replies
onraglanroad • yesterday at 6:37 PM
Actually, and perhaps sadly, I asked an LLM and I understand now.
But perhaps that's not such a bad thing that I can get answers to my foolish questions!
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It's because most real numbers are uncomputable. That means, most of the time, the only way to check that two numbers (i.e. names) are the same is to spend infinite time looking at all their infinite digits.
An unknowable name isn't a very good name, IMHO.