Sewing-Machine comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 8 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: Unnamed 25 August 2011 02:17AM

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Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2011 01:22:11AM 4 points [-]

No something sillier. You can prove the axiom of choice from the assumption that every set can be well-ordered. (Proof: use the well-ordering to construct a choice function by taking the least element in every part of your partition.)

If one doesn't wish to assume that every set has a well-ordering, but only a single set such as the real numbers, then one gets a choice-style consequence that's limited in the same way: you can construct choice functions from partitions of the real numbers.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 08 September 2011 01:42:04AM 2 points [-]

I'd hardly call a well-ordering on one particular cardinality "almost the full strength of AC"! I guess it probably is enough for a lot of practical cases, but there must be ones where one on 2^c is necessary, and even so that's still a long way from the full strength...

Comment author: [deleted] 08 September 2011 01:49:00AM 1 point [-]

I just have a hard time imagining someone who was happy with "c is well-ordered" but for whom "2^c is well-ordered" is a bridge too far.

Comment author: Sniffnoy 08 September 2011 01:53:17AM *  3 points [-]

Hm, agreed. I guess not so much "the full strength" but "the full counterintuitiveness"? Where DC uses hardly any of the counterintuitiveness, and ultrafilter lemma uses nearly all of it?