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"The number three hundred and sixty-five thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight is one larger than three hundred and sixty-five thousand seven hundred and thirty-seven."There are an infinite number of sentences like this, because you can substitute any other whole number into the sentence, and there are an infinite number of whole numbers.
Did you know that there is a single and very simple idea that can be expressed in an infinite number of ways, but only in infinitely long sentences?
I didn't miss the point - I was answering the OP and simply used a quote from you to lead into an explanation of how the issue of a range of infinite numbers can be avoided, so it wasn't intended as a rejection of anything you had said.
Quote from: damocles on 07/09/2012 23:16:24Did you know that there is a single and very simple idea that can be expressed in an infinite number of ways, but only in infinitely long sentences?Don't think I did, but I've certainly never read such a sentence. Would be interested to hear more.
Consider the sentence "The moons of Mars are Phobos and Deimos" and the sentence "The moons of Mars are Deimos and Phobos". Two different ways of saying the same thing, both legitimate. (And that last "sentence" of mine is not grammatically legitimate, even though it completely expresses an idea! Even standard grammars have artificial aspects.)
Now consider the sentence "The natural numbers are 5 and 7 and 58 and 2 and ...". I will not write the rest of it because it would waste too much of TNS bandwidth [], but you can see where it is going!