A Proof That All Natural Numbers Are Interesting

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This is a proof that all natural numbers are interesting.

Suppose, for the sake of contradiction, that not all whole numbers are interesting. Using the well-ordering property of the whole numbers, among the non-interesting numbers there is a smallest non-interesting number N. But that would make N interesting, after all, a contradiction.

Therefore all numbers are interesting.

Thanks to Gerald for this submission!

Source: http://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/20004.8.shtml

9 thoughts on “A Proof That All Natural Numbers Are Interesting”

  1. Doesn’t that just prove that there exisits natural numbers that are interesting, not that all natural numbers are intersting?

  2. After all, we can have “the smallest natural number, which wouldn’t be interesting otherwise”.

  3. The problem is that once you declare that a given number is the smallest non-interesting number (which makes it interesting), it no longer is the smallest non-interesting number, which makes it no longer interesting, which makes it interesting, which makes it no longer interesting, which makes it….

  4. Uuck Fou aou yll 😀 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 😛 🙁 🙁 👿 👿 ❗ 🙂 😯 😎 ➡ 😐 😥 😥 😥 :mrgreen: :mrgreen: 😐 🙄 😈 😈 😆 😀 🙂 ❗ ❓ ❓ 😯 😕 😕 😎 😆 😡 😈 🙄 😉 💡 ➡

  5. 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿 👿

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