[FOM] Potgieter on hypercomputation

[Gernot Salzer]

Numbers (in the sense of number theory) like 2^1000 are used
on a routine basis. RSA keys typically have length 1024 nowadays
and are generated by multiplying primes of similar size.
I don't see much sense in considering an RSA key as infinity (in
fact 2^24 times infinity :-), and also not in restricting the notation
of numbers to unary notation.
I consider an RSA key real in the same sense as the number 1 is.

Whether there are 2^1000 particles in the universe is an entirely
different question. Fortunately, to represent a number we don't have
to line up "number" things in a row.

Gernot Salzer