Hilbert's Paradox of The Grand Hotel

Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel is a veridical paradox (a valid argument with a seemingly absurd conclusion, as opposed to a falsidical paradox, which is a seemingly valid demonstration of an actual contradiction) about infinite sets presented by German mathematician David Hilbert (1862–1943) in the 1920s, meant to illustrate certain counterintuitive properties of infinite sets.

Read more about Hilbert's Paradox Of The Grand Hotel:  The Paradox, Analysis, The Grand Hotel Cigar Mystery, References in Fiction

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