Supertasks

He never removed the final sweater....

Because there WAS NO final sweater!

This may be the best I’ve seen yet. Paradoxical thinking is fascinating 🧐

The problems that involve the final state of an object at the end of a supertask (e.g. the Achilles and flag problem; the Thompson's lamp problem etc.) remind me vaguely of the chicken-and-egg problem. The idea of there not being an "on" state of a lamp not followed by an "off" state, and that of there not being an "off" state" not followed by an "on" state, is similar to the conundrum that no chicken exists that is not produced by an egg, and that there is no egg not produced by a chicken. Just like the first few "supertask" problems are caused by the question of what will be the final "effect", the chicken and egg problem is caused by the question of what will be the first "cause".

The correct answer is that Achilles would lose the race to a tortoise.

Seriously though, wouldn't the answer to the ball question be that it doesn't approach zero, but that it just approaches 90% of infinity? Because numbers never stop, it can never have zero balls after step one.

He’s both right and wrong. I cannot fit all my balls into an urn, but I do have infinite balls.

Your username is how you die. How do you die?

Yellow?

Sometime’s I feel like oh 6 years is a long time! but it’s 2016 💀

"You will never have an infinite number of balls" damn it

Wouldn’t this once have fallen under the confines of philosophy?

The lamp would be off because it would probably burn out the poor lightbulb

Bro has infinite plus 1 sweaters

I think to see what color would be above the cube. We need to be in the 4th dimension. But I don't know, What do you guys think?

Innovation is the key to a better future.

1. Is anyone else frustrated by the way Michael cuts the cake? 2. Did anyone else think that cake looked amazing?

One must imagine Vsauce happy.

If you keep cutting in half continuously, eventually you're gonna reach the size of an atom. And the next layer will need to be... a split atom thick..

I have an answer of which of 2 things happens at infinity...





Z-fighting

Haven't seen this video in so long. That ending hits so much harder now. Chills

People think I'm dumb because of you.

Gege Akutami definitely watched this video to make Gojo

For Achilles, if he raced in staccato fashion, wouldn’t he be unable to finish? Let’s say he stops for 1 second each halfway point. Infinitely many halfway points means infinitely many seconds. He has to move continuously to complete all steps and finish. Though observing if he followed the rules would take forever.

This completely ignores Planck length and time.

Words she thinks will hurt me:
"I'm leaving you, and I'm taking the kids"

Words that really hurt me:
"You will never have an infinite number of balls"

At some point you would just explode because your cutting atoms in hal-💥

I feel like the closest you can get to a super task is death. Think about it, Time is infinite, but when you die you cannot perceive time. So you would get through time in an instant even though its infinite.

Wouldn't infinite surface area of the cake be precluded by the limitation of planck length? Your thinnest piece would be indivisible once it's that thin. In turn, the surface area would be extremely high, but finite, right?

"Gabriel's cake“💀💀

My first interaction with a supertask was paying my house off in Animal Crossing

plank length:wow i never knew something was smaller than me🗿

But what if instead of putting the balls into an urn, rather we put them in a sack?

These supertasks remind me of superposition, you'll never know the state until you check it.

Ding videos on the vsauce channel throw me off guard

This answered questions I’ve had lately about distance. It was keeping me up at night. Thank you!

This is the scariest thing I saw today. And it’s about football🤦‍♂️

One must imagine sisyphus happy

“You will never have an infinite amount of balls, or an urn large enough to hold them.” Great out of context line if anybody wants

I'm maybe very late to the party here but I would like to comment on this.

When we talk about accelerating our speed infinitely, this in real terms would be just like giving extra time to accomplish the task relatively speaking. If we work twice as fast but have half the amount of time then there is no distinction between the two. This means that supertasks are an important theory to conceptualise but have no practical significance.

homie: "sorry bro im doing homework" the homework:

whats half of planck?