>>14348063To be clear, your statement "the only way I know if it's infinite is by checking for infinitely many different " is false. There are more ways, such as a proof by contradiction.
Note that I didn't prove for any finite that has a largest element, although I'll prove it here by induction on the size of :
Base case: . Then contains exactly one element which is vacuously greater than every other element in .
Inductive case. Suppose we know for any finite subset of size that has a largest element. Let be of size . Choose some element in . Either is the largest element belonging to or it is not. If it is, we are done. Suppose that is not the largest element belonging to . Then the largest element of is the largest element of . In particular, we know that is a finite set of size , which has a largest element by our induction hypothesis. Hence, does as well.
QED.