%t Infinity
%s It's really confusing.
%a Mark Anthony Young  (marky@caen.engin.umich.edu)
%n 2S1
%d 19911201
%i Really Big
%x Light
rem * %x Party
rem * %x Chimpanzee
%e
It's not surprising that people in this forum are confused about infinity.

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy gives this definition of infinity:

  Infinite:  Bigger than the biggest thing ever and then some.  Much
  bigger than that in fact, really amazingly immense, a totally stunning
  size, really 'wow, that's big', time.  Infinity is just so big that by
  comparison, bigness itself looks really titchy.  Gigantic multiplied
  by colossal multiplied by staggeringly huge is the sort of concept
  we're trying to get across here.

On the other hand, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has the following:

  The car shot forward into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur had
  a fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

  It wasn't infinity in fact.  Infinity itself looks flat and
  uninteresting.  Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity
  - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.  The chamber
  into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just
  very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far
  better than infinity itself.

It's hard to reconcile "flat and uninteresting" with "wow, that's big",
so most of us don't even try.  We just marvel for a while, then wander
off find a party so we don't have to think about it.  After a few PGGBs
the incipient panic goes away, and we really start to enjoy ourselves.

Unfortunately, the problem of understanding infinity gets left to people
with absolutely no social skills, so even if they did show up at the
party (unlikely, since who'd invite them?) and even if they did try to
explain it (likely, since, as I said, they have absolutely no social
skills and are completely oblivious to the fact that you're really
trying to be alone with that fabulous being in the kitchen and don't give
a pair of fetid dingo's kidneys what they have to say) you wouldn't learn
anything because that fabulous being would start talking to someone else
and you'd turn on your tormenter and say "Yeah, we figured that out last
week and it's going to be published in a really keen journal so eat your
heart out" and stomp off to the bar without having heard a word they said.

So have some sympathy for these poor benighted people who don't understand
infinity.  They've got terrible hangovers and didn't get laid.