the coastline paradox.
In: Earth Science
It’s a weird quirk of measuring the edge of something that has *fractal-curve properties*. It starts with the question of “How long is the coastline of England?” Seems straightforward enough, just use your map, measure the coastline, and scale it properly. Except, you missed some detail, the coast is actually bumpier than your map, so you get a better map that has those missing bumps. Except, again, this map isn’t bumpy enough. You can get more detailed in your measurements, but then your coastline will always have more detail.
And, as you add that detail, the coastline can get arbitrarily large.
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