{"id":54171,"date":"2017-04-10T12:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T11:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=54171"},"modified":"2024-03-14T04:55:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T04:55:17","slug":"the-infinite-hotel-paradox-a-brilliant-animated-thought-experiment-to-help-you-grasp-the-mind-bending-concept-of-infinity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/04\/the-infinite-hotel-paradox-a-brilliant-animated-thought-experiment-to-help-you-grasp-the-mind-bending-concept-of-infinity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Infinite Hotel Paradox: A Brilliant Animated Thought Experiment to Help You Grasp the Mind-Bending Concept of Infinity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>What a hospitable night manager can do for our finite human minds.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/onetwothreeinfinity_gamow.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-54172\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/onetwothreeinfinity_gamow-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"onetwothreeinfinity_gamow\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/onetwothreeinfinity_gamow-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/02\/onetwothreeinfinity_gamow.jpg 375w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><\/a><em>\u201cInfinity is a demented concept,\u201d<\/em> astrophysicist Janna Levin, who studies the finitude of the universe, wrote in her spectacular <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2015\/01\/27\/janna-levin-how-the-universe-got-its-spots-infinity\/\" >diary-turned-book about the universe<\/a>. Infinity is also a dementing concept. Most of us find it oddly hard, impossible even, to actually wrap our minds around it and envisage a thing \u2014 for it can\u2019t really be a <em>number<\/em>, can it? \u2014 to which we can\u2019t simply add something else to produce infinity-plus-one, instantly rendering \u201cinfinity\u201d finite.<\/p>\n<p>To help ordinary humans tussle with this extraordinary concept, German mathematician David Hilbert conceived of what is now known as the Infinite Hotel Paradox \u2014 a brilliant and mind-bending specimen of that neat intersection of science and philosophy: the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2011\/10\/19\/open-university-thought-experiments\/\" >thought experiment<\/a>. Hilbert came up with the Infinite Hotel Paradox in 1924, but it was popularized only after his death by Russian-American theoretical physicist George Gamow\u2019s 1947 book <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.es\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0486256642\/braipick03-21\" ><strong><em>One Two Three\u2026 Infinity: Facts and Speculations of Science<\/em><\/strong><\/a> (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/title\/one-two-three-infinity-facts-speculations-of-science\/oclc\/1483850&amp;referer=brief_results\" ><em>public library<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>This illuminating short animation from <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/ed.ted.com\/lessons\/the-infinite-hotel-paradox-jeff-dekofsky\" >TED-Ed<\/a>, written by Jeff Dekofsky, brings the famous thought experiment to life \u2014 fasten your neurons:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Infinite Hotel Paradox - Jeff Dekofsky\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Uj3_KqkI9Zo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>For other stimulating TED-Ed animations, see <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2015\/02\/17\/alexandra-horowitz-dog-animation\/\" >how a dog actually \u201csees\u201d the world through smell<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2015\/01\/29\/music-brain-ted-ed\/\" >why music benefits your brain more than any other activity<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2014\/11\/06\/language-lying-deception\/\" >how to spot liars<\/a>, and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2015\/01\/15\/bees-hexagons\/\" >why bees build perfect hexagons<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>__________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/maria-popova-brain-pickings.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-83590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/maria-popova-brain-pickings-150x117.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"117\" \/><\/a>Brain Pickings<\/em><em> is the brain child of Maria Popova, an interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large obsessed with combinatorial creativity who also writes for <\/em><em>Wired<\/em><em> UK and <\/em><em>The Atlantic<\/em><em>, among others, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow. She has gotten occasional help from a handful of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/index.php\/about\/authors\/\" >guest contributors<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brainpickings.org\/2015\/02\/19\/the-infinite-hotel-paradox-david-hilbert-ted-ed\/?mc_cid=ec09e7202b&amp;mc_eid=f209d58223\" >Go to Original \u2013 brainpickings.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cInfinity is a demented concept,\u201d astrophysicist Janna Levin, who studies the finitude of the universe, wrote in her spectacular diary-turned-book about the universe. Infinity is also a dementing concept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257139,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54171\/revisions\/257139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}