Thinking about infinity

[TheRealJoeFish]

So actual infinities do not exist in reality? Do you think it is even possible for an infinite set of things to exist as a single thing?

I think that the set of real numbers is infinite. That is abstract though. 1...2...3...4 are real numbers. 

Have you ever read about Hilbert's Hotel:

---

Imagine a hotel with a finite number of rooms. All the rooms are full and a new guest walks in and wants a room. The desk clerk says no rooms are available.

Now imagine a hotel that has an infinite number of rooms. All the rooms are filled up so an infinite number of guests. A new guest walks up and wants a room. All the clerk has to to do is to move the guest in room #1 to room #2 and the guest from #2 to #3 and so on so your new guest can have a room #1. You can do this infinite number of times to a hotel that was already full.

Now imagine instead the clerk moves the guest from #1 to #2 and from #2 to #4 and from #3 to #6 (each being moved to a room number twice the original). All the odd number rooms become vacant. You can add an infinite number of new guests to a hotel that was full and end up with it half empty. 

How many people would be in the hotel if the guest in #1 checked out?

If everyone in odd number rooms checks out, how many checked out? How many are left?

Now what if all the guest above room number 3 check out. How many checked out? How many are left?

So from the above we get:
infinity + infinity = infinity
infinity + infinity = infinity/2
infinity - 1 = infinity
infinity / 2 = infinity
infinity - infinity = 3

---

But, of course, there are different levels of infinity as well.  For instance, you can famously prove that there are the "same" amount of natural numbers and rational numbers, but there are "more" real numbers than there are natural numbers.

I remember in Real Analysis 2 we discussed Omega (the "level" of infinity of the reals), which is greater than Aleph_0 (the level of infinity of the naturals), and then how you could make sets of things with different measures of infinity, like Omega^2 and such