[FOM] "Mathematician in the street" on AC

[Thomas Forster]

Vaughan,

  Thank you for this nice exposition.  The notion you are using is 
the one that Conway coined the phrase *counted set* for.  However, i 
think you are being far too charitable in your description of normal 
mathematical practice.  I think you are crediting these good people 
with using the notion of counted set *consistently* (in which case, 
as you observe, no AC is needed).  Sadly what i think is going on is 
that the mathematician-in-the-trailer-park is engaged in a fallacy of 
equivocation between the two notions.  Worse, they do not take kindly 
to having this equivocation pointed out to them.


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