Infinite Loops

In the trade of programming there is such a thing as an “infinite loop”; when a loop is executed and dependent on a condition which remains true, the inner code is said to execute “infinitely”; meaning, the same code never stops running. Over and over. Amateurs and experts are susceptible to this (no matter what the latter tell you).

But this infinite loop nomenclature is misleading. A truly infinite loop would mean two things 1) the loop never ends (which is already the case), and B) the loop never begins (which is not the case). Truly infinite things don’t start; only finite things do. Thus, an infinite loop is not truly infinite because it starts. This means that the loop must have an end, since it had a start mechanism; that which is born must die, that which begins must have an end.

But isn’t this a contradiction? Conventionally speaking, the loop actually cannot end, but how am I claiming that it can? Well, the program running it can end, and further the system running the program can end (be destroyed), and further the planet housing it will end, and finally the universe itself, likely cyclically apparent, is destroyed. 

There are no truly infinite loops nor infinite programs; these are only semantic games made by the treasured thinkers of our past. Even intellectual steam-heads who try to nail the most semantically compatible words for a thing end up making a mess such as “infinite loops”. Their use of infinite in “infinite loops” means “relative infinity” – too long for a human to bare. Thus we can see that the word infinity has umbrella definitions, this particular instance being a partial form of true infinity.

We have welcomed this meaning of what it is to be infinite in the programming world, which is just a semantic veil over true infinity. Such a veil is produced as a consequence of a difficulty in grasping the infinite as we’ll never come to experience it directly. In the programming world we leverage it liberally to mean “relatively long enough that you’d begin to feel uncomfortable waiting to kill the process.”

Only things that never start can truly be infinite. The word “infinite” in “infinite loops” is akin to the creationist view of the infinite; “there is an initial start (cause), then that goes on infinitely”; it’s a “zero to positive infinity” look at things. It opposes the “negative infinity to positive infinity view” – one akin to the eastern view of infinity; forward and backwards, no beginning nor end, but eternally present.