Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by tsimionescu 719 days ago
Honestly, it's not that surprising if you learned the properties of infinity before, especially of uncountable infinity. If 2*Inf == Inf, and if a sphere has an infinity of points, it's not that surprising that you can make two spheres from those same points. The construction itself is of course much more impressive, I'm not downplaying it, but I don't think it's less intuitive than other properties of infinity.

My personal reckoning with this was learning that there are as many numbers in the [0,1] interval of the real line as on the whole real line.
2 comments
bubblyworld 719 days ago
The BT paradox includes the requirement that the pieces are separated and put back together using isometries of R3, which is _way_ more restrictive than isomorphism of sets (what you're talking about). So it's quite surprising from that point of view!
link
petters 719 days ago
Really? I think this is on a completely different level of intuition. There are five pieces here that are only rotated and translated.
link