Top all-time · #10619
Joel David Hamkins
Personal blog · infinitelymore.xyzmathphilosophy
Joel David Hamkins writes Infinitely More, a personal blog at infinitelymore.xyz about math and philosophy. Since 2023, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 26 times, most often “What are the real numbers, really? (2024)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (2) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked for posts on surreal numbers, including a proof of Conway's conjecture and an introduction to surreal numbers. Comments discuss the exposition and quote Conway's ONAG on how surreals are generated.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 2 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
The mathematics and philosophy of the infinite.
Most-linked posts?
- What are the real numbers, really? (2024)2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-05-13
- Skolem's Paradox2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-07
What Hacker News says?
LLM didn't write anything in my post; these are all my words and my choices. Conway himself described surreal generation in short like this in ONAG: > We may say that Cantor was only interested in moving ever rightwards, whereas Dedekind stopped to fill in the gaps, so that R was always empty for Cantor, never empty for Dedekind. It is remarkable that by dropping these restrictions we obtain a theory that is both mo…
Comment linking /p/surreal-numbers
on “I vibed a proof of Conway's conjecture”Submitted Structuralism as a Philosophy of Mathematics as a story · 127 points
HN discussionI didn't want to introduce the notion of infinity because there are actual "infinite numbers" on the surreal number line. I've kind of tried to have both the simplicity of set-theoretic definition and the intuition of the number line, and slightly bungled the exposition. I hope the newly added diagram helps. My favorite intro to surreal numbers is https://www.infinitelymore.xyz/p/surreal-numbers , but it is behind a…
Comment linking /p/surreal-numbers
on “I vibed a proof of Conway's conjecture”Submitted What are the real numbers, really? (2024) as a story · 31 points
HN discussionSubsequent posts developing the paradox further into the transfinite ordinals and uncountable ordinals: https://www.infinitelymore.xyz/t/infinite-subway-paradox
Comment linking /t/infinite-subway-paradox
on “The Infinite Subway Paradox”Submitted Mathematicians disagree on the essential structure of the complex numbers as a story · 10 points
HN discussionSubmitted Every game of chess ends prematurely as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Book of Numbers as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Infinite Subway Paradox as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Recursive Chess as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Are the Imaginary Numbers Real? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted Every game of chess ends prematurely as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ordinal definability–how did Gödel do it? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Is Infinity Even or Odd? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Ultrafinitism as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The real real numbers–what are they, really? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Infinite Liar Paradox as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Monkey madness quantifier logic puzzle as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Every game of chess ends prematurely as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fermat's last theorem in the natural ring of ordinals as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Skolem's Paradox as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted The fundamental theorem of finite games as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Take my Infinity final exam as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted We Can Predict the Future as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What are the real numbers, really? (And what should they be?) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Skolem's Paradox as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
