Paradoxes of The Infinite Set
Instead of relying on ambiguous descriptions such as "that which cannot be enlarged" or "increasing without bound", set theory provides definitions for the term infinite set to give an unambiguous meaning to phrases such as "the set of all natural numbers is infinite". Just as for finite sets, the theory makes further definitions which allow us to consistently compare two infinite sets as regards whether one set is "larger than", "smaller than", or "the same size as" the other. But not every intuition regarding the size of finite sets applies to the size of infinite sets, leading to various apparently paradoxical results regarding enumeration, size, measure and order.
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