No, infinites don’t exist, apemind. What I think you mean is that “The function representing your jealousy response approaches infinity in the limit as your situation parameters approach the present one.”
Suppose we take a standard unit of jealousy to be the jealousy one gets at seeing someone else have a newer computer than yours. Perhaps it will be the case that Rationality-Boot-Camp jealousy is incomparable to this standard unit: no amount of standard units will equal as much jealousy as SarahC experienced from reading this post. Unlikely, but not a priori impossible.
In that case, it will make sense to assign some sort of infinite number to SarahC’s jealousy (the exact nature of that infinity will depend on the structure that jealous feelings have).
No, infinites don’t exist, apemind. What I think you mean is that “The function representing your jealousy response approaches infinity in the limit as your situation parameters approach the present one.”
Who said jealousy is measured using real numbers?
Suppose we take a standard unit of jealousy to be the jealousy one gets at seeing someone else have a newer computer than yours. Perhaps it will be the case that Rationality-Boot-Camp jealousy is incomparable to this standard unit: no amount of standard units will equal as much jealousy as SarahC experienced from reading this post. Unlikely, but not a priori impossible.
In that case, it will make sense to assign some sort of infinite number to SarahC’s jealousy (the exact nature of that infinity will depend on the structure that jealous feelings have).