Freiling's Axiom of Symmetry - Relation To The (Generalised) Continuum Hypothesis

Relation To The (Generalised) Continuum Hypothesis

Fix an infinite cardinal (e.g. ). Let be the statement: there is no map from sets to sets of size for which either or .

Claim: .

Proof: Part I :

Suppose . Then letting a bijection, we have clearly demonstrates the failure of Freiling's axiom.

Part II :

Suppose that Freiling's axiom fails. Then fix some to verify this fact. Define an order relation on by iff . This relation is total and every point has many predecessors. Define now a strictly increasing chain as follows: at each stage choose . This process can be carried out since for every ordinal, is a union of many sets of size ; thus is of size and so is a strict subset of . We also have that this sequence is cofinal in the order defined, i.e. every member of is some . (For otherwise if is not some, then since the order is total ; implying has many predecessors; a contradiction.) Thus we may well-define a map by . So which is union of many sets each of size . Hence and we are done.

(Claim)

Note that so we can easily rearrange things to obtain that the above mentioned form of Freiling's axiom.

The above can be made more precise: . This shows (together the fact that the continuum hypothesis is independent of choice) a precise way in which the (generalised) continuum hypothesis is an extension of the axiom of choice.

Read more about this topic:  Freiling's Axiom Of Symmetry

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