this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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In the top one you will never actually kill an infinite number of people, just approach it linearly. The bottom one will kill an infinite amount of people in finite time.
Edit: assuming constant speed of the train.
Limits still are not intuitive to me. Whats the distinction here?
There are an infinite amount of real numbers between 0 and 1. On the top track, when you reach 1, you would only kill 1 person. But on the bottom track you would’ve already killed infinite people by the time you reached 1. And you would continue to kill infinite people every time you reached a new whole number.
On the top track. You would tend towards infinity, meaning the train would never actually kill infinite people; There would always be more people to kill, and the train would always be moving forwards. Those two constants are what make it tend towards infinity, but the train can never actually reach infinity as there is no end to the tracks.
But on the bottom track. The train can reach infinity multiple times, and will do so every time it reaches a whole number. Basically, by the time you’ve reached 1, the bottom track has already killed more people than the top track ever will.
Worse. It will kill an infinity every time it will move any distance no matter how small.