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Comment by bobbylarrybobby

The Cartesian product of nonempty sets is nonempty.

This is obvious!, you might say — obviously we can just pick one element from each set and be done with it. But the statement that we can pick an element from each set is the axiom of choice.

Note that it's not necessarily simple to pick an element from a set. For instance, how would one pick an element from the set of uncomputable numbers? A human cannot describe said element, by definition. The axiom of choice says it's possible anyway.

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