[hzhou321]

Given any finitely described real numbers, there will be a finitely described mapping map it to a unique natural number. But if you use real numbers that can never finish describing, we have to use a mapping that cannot be finished in describing. That is not the same as "there is no such mapping that doesn't miss any of the reals". If all mappings that cannot be finitely described are excluded, what will be the reason? And why that reason cannot be applied to exclude some real numbers (that cannot be finitely described) as numbers? I understand that is what it is, but being what it is seems meaningless.

The general halting problem is uncomputable. It can only be simulated. However, any program is still assumed to be finitely described. Any discussion in finite domain (including arbitrarily big finite) cannot lead to conclusions or insight toward infinite.

> I don't know if you are using the word "countable" in the standard way, so I don't know what you mean by that last sentence.

In the context of infinity, words such as countable, bigger, order, etc. all lose its standard meaning. We don't really know what it means if we don't really know what infinity is. Mathematicians simply made a definition to countable here -- a finitely described mapping -- that is fine on its own, but completely useless. Since we can't draw any parallels from infinity to finite (including arbitrarily big), we can't really relate any definitions over the infinity to "standard" meaning of those words to the domain of finite.