You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

DataPacRat comments on Integral vs differential ethics, continued - Less Wrong Discussion

6 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 03 August 2015 01:25PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (18)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: DataPacRat 04 August 2015 12:59:25AM 0 points [-]

What are the forms of math called where you can compare numbers, such as to say that 3 is bigger than 2, but can't necessarily add numbers - that is, 2+2 may or may not be bigger than 3?

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 04 August 2015 09:06:03AM 0 points [-]

As banx said, take ordinal numbers (and remove ordinal addition). Classical ordinal numbers can be added, but they can't be scaled - you can't generally have x% of an ordinal number.

Comment author: gjm 04 August 2015 02:37:14PM 0 points [-]

There are mathematical structures that allow for comparison but not arithmetic. For instance, a total order on a set is a relation < such that (1) for any x,y we have exactly one of x<y, x=y, y<x and (2) for any x,y,z if x<y<z then x<z. (We say it's trichotomous and transitive.)

The usual ordering on (say) the real numbers is a total order (and it's "compatible with arithmetic" in a useful sense), but there are totally ordered sets that don't look much like any system of numbers.

There are weaker notions of ordering (e.g., a partial order is the same except that condition 1 says "at most one" instead of "exactly one", and allows for some things to be incomparable with others; a preorder allows things to compare equal without being the same object) and stronger ones (e.g., a well-order is a total order with the sometimes-useful property that there's no infinite "descending chain" a1 > a2 > a3 > ... -- this is the property you need for mathematical induction to work).

The ordinals, which some people have mentioned, are a generalization of the non-negative integers, and comparison of ordinals is a well-order, but arithmetic (albeit slightly strange arithmetic) is possible on the ordinals and if you're thinking about preferences then the ordinals aren't likely to be the sort of structure you want.

Comment author: banx 04 August 2015 04:02:19AM 0 points [-]

I think you're talking about ordinal numbers vs cardinal numbers. With ordinal numbers you can say a > b, but not by how much.