Subj : Re: Spontaneous locale change on Bookworm
To   : Lawrence D'Oliveiro
From : Pancho
Date : Tue Oct 01 2024 09:34:08

On 10/1/24 00:16, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 23:16:21 +0100, Pancho wrote:
>
>> On 9/30/24 23:06, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>>
>>> On Mon, 30 Sep 2024 22:45:45 +0100, Pancho wrote:
>>>
>>>> One assumes time is well ordered, so even if I don't know what the
>>>> least century is, I know there was one.
>>>
>>> Integers are well ordered, but there is no least integer.
>>>
>>>
>> No they aren't, precisely because the don't have a least integer.
>> Perhaps you are confusing having a total ordering with well ordered?
>
> You were the one who used the term “well ordered”, and then said that,
> because of this, there had to be a least century.
>

Well ordered is a text book definition, an important one in maths. Not a
particularly "well" named one, as people do tend to confuse the meaning
with total ordering. It should also be known in computer science, as the
assumption that the positive integers are well ordered is equivalent to
the assumption that induction works and induction is a similar concept
to recursion.

>>> All we want, I think, is a zero point far enough back that there is
>>> less real-world need to deal with negative time points.
>>
>> That is basically what well-ordered implies. Obviously I was
>> bullshitting as I have no idea if time is totally-ordered, let alone
>> well ordered :-).
>
> Einstein’s Special Relativity says time is not totally ordered,
> unfortunately ...

Well, possibly. In banking software we assumed time was totally ordered,
(but times from different clocks wasn't). In GPS software I don't know.
In general, given we are all terrestrial observers, I'm not sure
relativity matters, when discussing centuries. I'm not a physicist.

The joke was meant to be that it is totally unreasonable to assume that
time did start with the big bang and that it was a stupid special case
anyway.

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