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Hans-Peter Stricker
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Axiom of Choice and Order Types

A beginner's question:

We know: "Since order-equivalence is an equivalence relation, it partitions the class of all sets into equivalence classes." (from Wikipedia)

This holds since every set can be (well-)ordered by the Axiom of Choice.

But there can be many (well-)orderings of a given set. Especially, the Axiom of Choice doesn't tell us, what the choice function is and thus, what the well-ordering is: there can be many.

Thus, a set can belong to many order types and order-equivalence isn't an equivalence relation anymore.

What's wrong with this (presumably dummy) line of thoughts?

Hans-Peter Stricker
  • 9.7k
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