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by dcminter
1756 days ago
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I didn't remember quite correctly - here it is, from the section "A Different Box of Tools" in "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman". He doesn't state it explicitly, but I think it's clear they must have been talking about Banach-Tarski: --- ...It often went like this: They would explain to me, "You've got an orange, OK? Now you cut the orange into a finite number of pieces, put it back together, and it's as big as the sun. True or false?" "No holes?" "No holes." "Impossible! There ain't no such thing." "Ha! We got him! Everybody gather around! It's So-and-so's theorem of immeasurable measure!" Just when they think they've got me, I remind them, "But you said an orange! You can't cut the orange peel any thinner than the atoms." "But we have the condition of continuity: We can keep on cutting!" "No, you said an orange, so I assumed that you meant a real orange." |
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