Dijkstra: Why numbering should start at zero 17 years ago
"Consider now the subsequences starting at the smallest natural number: inclusion of the upper bound would then force the latter to be unnatural by the time the sequence has shrunk to the empty one."
Maybe it is too late, but I don't understand this sentence.
A sequence starting at the smallest natural number would be: 0, 1, 2. The variant Dijkstra is arguing about is: 0 <= i <= 2. How can the latter be unnatural? And what does he mean with "shrunk"?