It’s kind of odd, how widely misunderstood the idea of infinity is; or, if the concept itself is understood, its implications are not. Clearly, Buzz Lightyear was a nutjob who thought you could travel beyond ‘infinity’. Unfortunately, many if not most people are just as ridiculous.
One common misconception, for example, is the treatment of infinity as a number. Really, folks, just because something is used in mathematics doesn’t make it a number. Arguments that devolve from “uh-huh” and “nuh-uh” to “uh-huh TIMES INFINITY” and “nuh-huh TIMES INFINITY PLUS ONE”, though (hopefully) not reflective of the true intellect of those involved, exacerbates the false definition.
Another mistake: an infinite universe necessitates infinite matter within the universe, arrange in infinite arrangements. It’s surprising how many people would be amazed to hear that, assuming our universe is infinitely expanding, there is NO reason to believe that somewhere out there aliens exist. One begins to think these people are the same who mishandled ‘infinity’ in math, as well; anyone who has divided one by three can find an infinite sequence with a finite variety of numerals.
I realize at this point that nobody cares how many other people misuse vocabulary; after all, modern society spits on language in favor of looking like a moron on the internet. Strange value systems aside, I think the concept of ‘infinity’ is much more important than grammatical crimes, and society’s inability to understand it speaks a lot about our breadth of mind.
Of course, it may not seem like it matters, given that people have been making the same mistakes for eons. Yet humankind is spreading at a frightening rate; advances in information technology, communications, transportation, and other fields have massively increased the reach of each person. Before widespread sea travel came around, a person in Europe could be completely mistaken as to how far the Americas were, and it wouldn’t really make a difference to everyday life. But those distances became important as improving capabilities put them within reach. Same deal with air travel. Now, as society eyes the ‘final frontier’ of space, a true understanding of what space really entails is becoming more relevant.
Such a literal context, however, might make it seem insignificant; we’re not vacationing to the moon yet, after all. In that case, consider the somewhat recent movement for people to become ‘global citizens’. Belonging to the Earth instead of a nation, it is said, would promote responsibility to treat the planet well, as well as sympathy towards others far away from you. In my opinion, the realization that an infinite universe does not automatically supply us with another inhabitable planet is a frightening and much more effective way to put our planet’s ills in context. It makes you realize how small, fragile, and unique the Earth truly is, and how moronic it is for us to blindly mistreat it.
Also, it means all those people studying stars that are millions of light-years away are wasting their time. That’s like dreaming of a space shuttle before the steam engine was invented. Let’s get that space elevator up and running, and connect it to a lunar colony. That sounds better to me.
