Assumed background knowledge: basic set theory lingo (∅, singleton, subset, power set, cardinality), what is first order logic (structures, universes, and interpretations), what are ℕ and ℝ, what’s the difference between countable and uncountable infinities, and what “continuum many” means.
1 Introduction
Here I give a high-level description of what an ultraproduct is, and provide a few examples. Skippable if you want to jump straight to the math!
2 Hypernaturals Simplified
Here you get a first glimpse of the hypernaturals. It’s a fuzzy glimpse from afar, and our first attempt to define them is overly simplified and imperfect. Nonetheless, we get some good intuitions for how hypernatural numbers are structured, before eventually confronting the problem at the core of the definition.
3 Hypernaturals in all their glory
We draw some pretty pictures and introduce the concept of an ultrafilter. The concept is put to work immediately, allowing us to give a full definition of the hypernaturals with no simplifications. The issues with the previous definition have now been patched, and the hypernaturals are a well-defined structure ripe to be explored.
4 Ultraproducts and Łoś’s theorem
We describe how to pronounce “Łoś”, define what an ultraproduct is, and see how the hypernaturals are actually just the ultraproduct of the naturals. And then we prove Łoś’s theorem!
5 Infinitely Large Primes
With the newfound power of Łoś’s theorem at our hands, we return to the realm of the hypernaturals and start exploring its structure. We describe some infinitely large prime numbers, and prove that there are infinitely many of them. We find more strange infinitely large hypernatural numbers in our exploration: numbers that can be divided by 2 ad infinitum, numbers that are divisible by every finite number, and more. We learn that there’s a subset of the hypernaturals that is arranged just like the positive rational numbers, but that the hypernaturals are not dense.
6 Ultraproducts and Compactness
We zoom out from the hypernaturals, and show that ultraproducts can be used to give the prettiest proof of the compactness theorem for first order logic. We prove it first for countable theories, and then for all theories. We then get a little wild and discuss some meta-logical results involving ultraproducts, definability, and compactness.
7 All About Countable Saturation
We now describe the most powerful property of ultraproducts: countable saturation. And then we prove it! With our new tool, we dive back into the hypernaturals to learn more about their structure. We show that for any countable set of hypernaturals, there’s a hypernaturals that’s divisible by them all, and see that this entails the existence of uncountably many hypernatural primes. We prove that the hypernaturals have uncountable cofinality and coinitiality. And from this we see that no two hypernaturals are countably infinitely far apart; all distances are finite or uncountable! We wrap up with a quick proof that ultraproducts are always either finite or uncountable, and a mind-blowing result that relates ultraproducts to the continuum hypothesis.
7.5 Shorter Proof of Countable Saturation
I give a significantly shorter and conceptually simpler proof of countable saturation than the previous post. Then I wax philosophical for a few minutes about constructivism in the context of ultraproduct-related proofs.
I found this series incredibly helpful in understanding Łoś Theorem and hyper numbers. Thanks for writing it!
Great! Glad to hear