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Exercise 6.1.1
Give an example of a linearly ordered set and an initial segment of which is not of the form , for any .
Answers
We claim that and with the usual order meet the criteria.
Proof. First, clearly is a linearly ordered set. So consider any and any so that we have
Hence also so that by definition is an initial segment of . Now suppose that does have the form
for some . Since clearly by the original definition so that by the above . But now consider , which is clearly in . By the above since so but we also have (hence it is not true that ) since so that by the original definition . Since we have a contradiction it must be that cannot be expressed in such a form. □