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Exercise 8.1.9
Every infinite set is equipotent to some of its proper subsets. Equivalently, Dedekind finite sets are precisely the finite sets.
Answers
Proof. By Theorem 8.1.4, any infinite set has a countable subset so that such a set is Dedekind infinite by Exercise 5.1.10. Therefore any infinite set is equipotent to a proper subset of itself by the definition of Dedekind infinite as desired. In fact, any countable set (and by extension any infinite set) is equipotent to an infinite number of its proper subsets. To see this we note that the mapping is a bijection from to , which is clearly a proper subset of , for any natural number .
Of course the contrapositive of this is that, if a set is Dedekind finite (i.e. not Dedekind infinite), then the set is finite (i.e. not finite). □