Why are tuples ordered differently than lists in elixir/erlang?

If you are not going to sort tuples by size how would you order the 2 tuples {x,39,d,z} and {x,39,d}? Yes, you can compare the elements but what do you do when one tuple “runs out” of elements? Does the smaller tuple then come first, that is no element is always smaller than any element? Or what?

The current method is simple and consistent.