"It is impossible in principle to well-order the reals in a definable manner."
To be more precise, the belief I am talking about is the belief that well-orderings of the reals are provably chaotic in some sense and certainly not definable. For example, the belief would be that we can prove in ZFC that no well-ordering of the reals arises in the projective hierarchy (that is, definable in the real field, using a definition quantifying over reals and integers).
This belief is relatively common, but false, if the axioms of set theory are themselves consistent, since Goedel proved that in the constructible universe , $L$, there is a definable well-ordering of the reals having complexity $\Delta^1_2$, which means it can be obtained from a Borel subset of $R^3$ by a few projections and complements. See this answer for a sketch of the definition of the well-order.
The idea nevertheless has a truth at its core, which is that although it is consistent that there is a definable well-ordering of the reals (or the universe), it is also consistent that there is no such definable well-ordering. Thus, there is no definable relation that we can prove is always a well-ordering of the reals (although we also cannot prove that none is).
