• Bluewing
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    2 days ago

    Asking for a friend.

    If you can recognize “nothing” then “nothing” must be something right? So if nothing is a file, because /dev/null says so, then nothing MUST be something to be a file. And therefore /dev/null can’t be nothing.

    Or do I just need more tea? Or maybe whisk(e)y?

    • HeHoXa@lemmy.zip
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      2 days ago

      The word “nothing” isn’t itself nothing. It is something used to describe nothing.

      • Bluewing
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        2 days ago

        The word “nothing” is the English word describing the concept of nothing. And I have to use the word to describe the concept. So yes, you are correct the word is itself “something”. So that is probably one point for “nothing” to not exist.

        I have now consumed 3 cups of tea. And my head now hurts from thinking about nothing. I should never have stepped into this post.

        • nullptr
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          2 days ago

          it’s just a sentinel value. You ve reached the end. gimme back the length

      • gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org
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        2 days ago

        in fact that gets used in abstract mathematics to first introduce the natural numbers. the empty set (nothing) (which you define as 0) is not itself nothing, so you can define the set that contains just the empty set, which now is not empty itself, but contains one element, so you define that as 1 …