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TimS comments on Explained: Gödel's theorem and the Banach-Tarski Paradox - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: XiXiDu 06 January 2012 05:23PM

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Comment author: TimS 09 January 2012 02:15:33AM *  1 point [-]

Pardon my ignorance, but I wasn't aware that the "strange" results dealing with infinite sets of various cardinality were related to the "strange" results related to accepting the axiom of choice. Is this a limitation of my mathematics education, or are the infinite set "paradoxical" results independent of the axiom-of-choice sphere cutting "paradoxical" results?

To really push my understanding of the terminology, I thought that definitions of equivalent size for infinite sets based on one-to-one and onto correspondence did not require reference to the axiom of choice.


Alternatively, I'm not understanding the implications I'm supposed to get from:

How about this? Take the set of all natural numbers. Divide it into two sets: the set of even naturals, and the set of odd naturals. Now you have two infinite sets, the set {0, 2, 4, 6, 8, ...}, and the set {1, 3, 5, 7, 9, ...}. The size of both of those sets is the ω - which is also the size of the original set you started with. Now take the set of even numbers, and map it so that for any given value i, f(i) = i/2. Now you've got a copy of the set of natural numbers. Take the set of odd naturals, and map them with g(i) = (i-1)/2. Now you've got a second copy of the set of natural numbers. So you've created two identical copies of the set of natural numbers out of the original set of natural numbers.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 09 January 2012 04:55:19AM 2 points [-]

You are correct. As several commenters have already pointed out, the provided explanation of the Banach-Tarski paradox is just bad.