Quote:
narf poit chez BOOM said:
The thing you're ignoring is that, while there would always be a room opening up, the room the person is moving into is occupied. The best you could get is to always have someone in transit.
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That would be true if we were moving people one at a time, but we're not. The hotel's intercom brings the room change announcement to every room simultaneously, and each person moves himself, so all moves are accomplished all at once. When the manager tells everyone to move to the room with double their current room number, person 2 doesn't show up at room 4 and then have to wait for person 4 to leave, person 4 is already out. As is person 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and so on down the line. Here's how it works at Hotel Infinity:
Step 1: Manager gets on the intercom and tells everyone to move to the room with double his current room number. The intercom relays this message to everyone simultaneously, so all infinity residents are notified in as little time as it takes to say the announcement once.
Step 2: All occupants pack up and move themselves and their belongings into the hall. Every room is now empty.
Step 3: Each occupant steps into the teleporter across the hall and gives "double my previous room number" as the destination. All even numbered rooms are now occupied, but the odd numbered rooms are still empty.
After these steps are completed, in the finite time required for a single person to change rooms, every previous resident has a new room, no one had to be tossed out, and everyone is finished moving into his or her new room. The Hotel contains exactly as many people as it did before, but now every odd numbered room is empty, giving enough room for the entire fraternity of infinite odd-numbered people to move in.