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In: 4967
There won’t be a “real” number bajillion until we decide to define the term in relation to a particular number. Right now it’s defined as “an indeterminate but exceedingly large number”.
Before someone decided to define a googol as a googol (Google it if you don’t know :P), there was no real number “googol”. Same for googolplex. Not that those numbers didn’t exist, but they hadn’t been defined in those terms yet. Maybe someday “bajillion” will have a defined number associated with it, but currently it doesn’t.
Edit: spelling
Just because there is an infinite number of possibilities, does not mean that everything is a possibility. To give an example, there are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 2, but there is not one in that range that has a value greater than 2.
Likewise, even if every number was named, it does not guarantee a number named bajillion
I think he means that if you were to name every single number, it would be like the infinite monkeys with typewriters where every single letter combination would have to be used.
The problem with this is that you could have a system with some kind of rule like every single number is called (n+any random letter) increasing forever.
A millionj, a millionjj, a millionjjj, a millionjjjj, etc. infinitely without using any other letters.
There isn’t a number called bajillion right now, but that doesn’t mean that the mathematical community couldn’t pick any number that doesn’t currently have a name and decide to start calling it bajillion. Like googol or Avogadro’s number or Graham’s number.
An infinite set does not mean all possibilities are represented. There are an infinite number of even numbers, does not mean the set must contain odd numbers.
You could remove the letter b from the alphabet and still have an infinite number of names to represent the infinite numbers and because there is no letter b you could never name one ‘bajillion’.
Just because there are an infinite amount of something, it doesn’t mean it includes everything.
There are an infinite amount of even numbers, but there is no even number called “three”.
I am the 421st comments, apologies 420 people.
There are an infinite number of names and numbers, therefore Bajillion is one of them.
mathematically:
there’s a number equal to what he thinks of when he thinks “bajillion” but we just don’t call it that
logically:
if numbers are infinite the number of letters we can use to label them is also infinite, so there could potentially be labels that go unused.
Infinite means there’s always a next one. It doesn’t mean everything you can imagine must be in there. There are an infinite number of odd numbers, but none of them is 2.
Bajillion is more of a state of mind. Also stop hiding your curiosity behind that fake “kiddo”
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