meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
[personal profile] meanwright
Okay, so I went overboard on Twitter.

Agnes Callard put up a poll asking how many holes there are in a straw. Zero, one, two, or more than two. My initial guess from that was that people conventionally would choose two holes per straw, one at the top and one at the bottom, but some jackasses would point out that topologically there's only one hole in a straw because, through continuous deformation, the straw's shape could be stretched, pulled, and squashed to become a torus. However, the actual vote came out 55% for the nerds with only 30% for common sense.

Because common sense is always wrong.

A further 10% went for "no holes," 2.5% for more than two, and the remainder spread among them meaninglessly. But it was a nice thread, since it really clarified the meanings of the three answers:

0. Structural Integrity - A hole damages an object, so a working straw has no holes.
1. Cavity - A hole is an region where material is absent.
2. Opening - A hole is a breach in the surface of an object.


I posted as much immediately, but I didn't have a good rationale for more than two holes. I can't say that I wasn't looking for a good way to argue that there were an infinite number of holes in a straw, but I didn't think it was meaningful.

Until a very stubborn person showed me what he really meant by having two holes. That, itself, meant that I could pull a Zeno and get an infinite number of holes in my straw.

And then I was happy.

So, I am going to go through these interminably, to try to keep writing and to try to flesh this out. The next three parts will be:

II - The Integral Straw: Structural Integrity and the History of Drinking Straws. [0]
III - The Shape of Things: What It Means to Be a Hole. [1]
IV - Dimensions and Infinity: How to Turn Anything Into a Paradox. [2]


I'll change the titles after I write them.

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meanwright: Hail Eris (Default)
Jim Wright

July 2025

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