Post #1782137
2026-04-27 19:21 UTC
@vnikolov @screwlisp OK, I'm going to take it on faith for now that the value of (expt 1/2 3/4) is irrational, because I don't have the headspace at present to work the proof. But I'm surprised -- it violates my naive intuition.
What I'm trying to do with #PostScarcitySoftware is to think about how the software for the hardware of the deep future will work.
Actually, it probably won't, of course. Actually, we'll probably burn the planet in the near future. But it's a fun thought experiment.
Replies (1)
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@vnikolov@ieji.de 2026-04-27 19:43
@simon_brooke wrote: «But it's a fun thought experiment.» Definitely. Of course, it's a much bigger endeavor than just working out how to do exponentiation. I'll only say that the textbooks I have seen give a proof for the particular case of √2 being irrational. That proof is easy to generalize to the above case. @screwlisp