On Friday October 16 2009 10:56:29 am Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote: > On Friday 16 October 2009 11:03:13 Matthew Moore wrote: > > On Friday October 16 2009 9:11:05 am Lee Winter wrote: > > > And you are adding to it in order to shorten it? > > > > This thread is much like any infinite set. Adding a finite number of > > elements to it does not change it's size. > > By size do you mean cardinality or ordinality?
The size of a set is a cardinal number. Generally, when you talk about the "size" of a set, you are referring to it's cardinality. > You can take a set of (infinite) ordinality aleph-naught and add single new > element that is greater than all the others (generally denoted "1*") and > get a new set of the same cardinality but an ordinality of aleph-naught + > 1. I suppose that you are thinking of the "length of the thread" as the length of the maximal ascending (or descending) ordered chain (here a<b if and only if b is a reply to a). I admit that I interpreted "this thread has to stop!" as "this thread must stop having additional members added to it!" and not "this thread must have a finite maximal chain!". MM -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
