Re: The horse race

Mark Johnson wrote:

>

The answer is: it can't. By definition.

> At what point does any type of sort create an ordered relation?

When you put the relation together with the "sort" or what is normally called the ordering relation, you have what is called an ordered relation.

> which makes it look more
> like a wordplay or semantics, by the common sense of the term.

Math is not about common sense. It is about consistency and correctness. Common sense is what you have when someone who doesn't know anything about a subject happens by accident to arrive at the correct conclusion. Common sense doesn't believe this is the definition of common sense, but this is one of those times when common sense gets it wrong.

> I wonder if the confusion isn't over this idea of transcendence or
> immanence and internal machine representation.

Honestly, I'm not sure where you confusion comes from. I guess it just comes from ignorance, since these are all basic issues. I've pointed you at basic reading a few times now, but you don't seem inclined to follow up.

> In such confusion it
> might lead some to insist that there is no such thing as intrinsic
> order, when in fact what is being manipulated by a database, which is
> really what this is all about, might become useless chaos if its
> intrinsic order remains unaccounted.

Sets don't have intrinsic order.

Marshall Received on Wed Feb 22 2006 - 19:02:21 CET