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> In my view nonnegative real numbers have good physical representations: amount, size, distance, position

I'm not a physicist, but do we actually know if distance and time can vary continuously or is there a smallest unit of distance or time? A physics equation might tell you a particle moves Pi meters in sqrt(2) seconds but are those even possible physical quantities? I'm not sure if we even know for sure whether the universe's size is infinite or finite?

by Someone4 hours ago|

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> In my view nonnegative real numbers have good physical representations

In my view, that isn’t even true for nonnegative integers. What’s the physical representation of the relatively tiny (compared to ‘most integers’) Graham’s number (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham's_number)?

Back to the reals: in your view, do reals that cannot be computed have good physical representations?

by bmacho4 hours ago|

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Good catch. Some big numbers are way too big to mean anything physical, or exist in any sense. (Up to our everyday experiences at least. Maybe in a few years, after the singularity, AI proves that there are infinite many small discrete structures and proves ultrafinitist mathematics false.)

I think these questions mostly only matter when one tries to understand their own relation to these concepts, as GP asked.