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Comment by kordless | Hacker News Reader

The possibility of a perfect circle exists in this universe, but the last digit we are aware of is definitely a posteriori. In other words, the description of a circle is prior knowledge given it allows calculating pi, but the actual values are post observational knowledge, given they must be calculated and continue to be irrational forever. (At least as far as we know.)

It would take an infinite amount of power to calculate every digit in pi, given pi itself is irrational, even while describing how to calculate it is rational.

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You are moving someone else's goalposts

I answered where circles are in our universe and you then try to change the original intent of omalleyt's question to mean a symbolic representation of pi

> It would take an infinite amount of power to calculate every digit in pi

Calculating pi is so simple life without nervous systems does it

Now, expressing that value in our limited yet overly verbose base ten symbolic representation would indeed require infinite recursion

I'm not aware of a means by which goal posts can exist in a philosophical debate around rational vs. irrational thinking. Both types of thinking are valid, but I can see how and why some tend to argue for absolute rationality at all times.

I apologise, I thought you were implying that what omalleyt 'really meant' was a perfect circle is data we can calculate

It seemed to me you were changing the question that was being asked, and a question asked implies an answer, or 'goal post'

But if you were just developing new inquiry stead building off omalleyt then I apologise and would hope to encourage like critical thinking in the future

.. Thinking on it 'goal posts'.. and 'soap box' elsewhere in this thread.. lacks a timeless quality, I really should have left it out ;P

I asked my daughters friend why pi was irrational, and she said "because you have to calculate it". The knowledge of those calculations cannot be given, but the way to calculate it, with a bit of suffering, can.

"It would take an infinite amount of power to calculate every digit in pi"

Representation by digits is just one representation. We have plenty of finite representations: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiFormulas.html

Base 10 notation also requires a calculation to get the concrete number: You have to sum and multiply and power a lot

(Imagine whole numbers described in base 10, now how you get that number of something?)

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