Re: Idempotence and "Replication Insensitivity" are equivalent ?

Marshall wrote:
> Jan Hidders wrote:
> >
> > Now supose we are talking about sets (and require A to be associative,
> > commutative and idempotent), the it is clear that you can still give a
> > triple (E,S,A) such that it computes for example the top 5 of the set
> > according to some ordering.
>
> Something that's always bugged me about this sort of construction,
> is that I never see authors distinguishing between a partial order
> and a total order. It seems to me that if the supplied ordering is a
> partial ordering, and you want to do something like top 5, you have
> to either introduce nondeterminism or change top 5 to top at least
> 5. Yes?

Something like that.

> Or is this just considered so obvious that no one bothers
> to make it explicit?

It's simply not that important at this stage of the discussion. Nits should be picked when they are ripe, not before. :-)

• Jan Hidders