Statement : If you have never been here before then this is your first time.
Proof : (By contradiction). The hypothesis states
that "you are here and that you have never been here before" (Note that
the "you are here" part is implicit in the statement; we state it explicitly
here since it is required in the proof). Required
conclusion
: "This is your first time". Let us index the times that you have
been here with the natural numbers, (i.e., t1
is the first time that you have been here, t2
is the second that you have been here, .... tn
is the nth time that
you have been here,....and so on). Since by hypothesis, you are here, then
the set {t1, t2,
...tn, ...} is non-empty.
In this sequence of times, {t1,
t2, ...tn,
...}, tn - 1 is considered
to be a time before tn.
We wish to show that this time is time t1.
To prove the statement we will suppose
that this is not your first time, i.e, this is a time when
you are here but this is not the time t1.
Then this must be a time tn,
n a natural number greater then 1. Then n - 1 is an integer greater than
0 and so is a natural number. Then tn -1 is
a time you were here (since it belongs to the sequence of times above).
Since tn - 1 both
belongs to the sequence of times above AND is considered to be a time before
tn, then you were
here before this time tn.
This contradicts our hypothesis which states that you have not been here
before. This contradiction arises from supposing that this is not
your first time. We must conclude that this IS your first time, i.e, this
must be time t1.
QED
NOW do you believe it?
I know I do. (I just hate being confused about such things. Don't you?)