Uncountability of countable ordinals

Question

According to Wikipedia, there are uncountably many countable ordinals. What is the easiest way to see this? If I construct ordinals in the standard way, $$1,\ 2,\ \ldots,\ \omega,\ \omega +1,\ \omega +2,\ \ldots,\ \omega\cdot 2,\ \omega\cdot 2 +1,\ \ldots,\ \omega^{2},\ \ldots,\ \omega^{3},\ \ldots\ \omega^{\omega},\ \ldots,\ \omega^{\omega^{\omega}},\ \ldots, \epsilon_{0},\ \ldots$$ I seem to get only countably many countable ordinals.

Answer 1

Let $\alpha$ be the set of all countable ordinals.

It is an ordinal : if $\beta \in \alpha$, then $\beta \subset \alpha$ because the elements of $\beta$ are countable ordinals.

It is uncountable : if it were countable, $\alpha$ would be a member of itself, so there would be an infinite descending sequence of ordinals.

Therefore, $\alpha$, the set of all countable ordinals, is the smallest uncountable ordinal.

Answer 2

Fact: If $A$ is a set of ordinals which is downwards closed, then $A$ is an ordinal.

Now consider the following set: $A=\{\alpha\mid\exists f\colon\alpha\to\omega,\ f \text{ injective}\}$, this is the set of all countable ordinals.

If $\alpha\in A$ then clearly $\beta<\alpha$ implies $\beta\in A$, simply because $\beta\subseteq\alpha$. We have, if so, that $A$ is itself an ordinal. If $A$ was a countable ordinal then $A\in A$, which is a contradiction. Therefore $A$ is uncountable, in fact $A$ is the least uncountable ordinal, also known as $\omega_1$.

There are just many ordinals which you cannot describe nicely. It just shows you that you can well order a countable set in so many ways...