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If you don't have a total order then there are decisions you simply can't make.


No there's just decisions that you can't make well.


The equation A < B holds anytime you would choose B over A (and vice versa). If neither A < B nor B < A, that's the definition of making no decision.

If you advocate making an arbitrary choice, your decision process is either a total order (if you don't break transitivity), inconsistent (if you do break transitivity) or subjective (if the choice is nondeterministic).


Noticing that reality is under no particular obligation to be sortable is not the same as advocating a particular strategy to deal with it. It's just admitting that yeah sometimes subjective decisions (gasp?) will be made and yeah sometimes inconsistent decisions (gasp?) will be made.

And as long as you aren't an evil computer in Star Trek:TOS that's not actually a problem.


It doesn't mean subjective or inconsistent decisions have to be made, it just means you need to learn to get comfortable with degrees of uncertainty.




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