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In an article by A. Borovik, “Is mathematics special?Is mathematics special?”, he talks about the fact that carrying is a cocycle. He then says

[A student] discovered that carry is doing what cocycles frequently do: they are responsible for break of symmetry.

I have never thought about cocycles in this way. In what sense are cocycles often breaking symmetry? Are there any other examples of this?

In an article by A. Borovik, “Is mathematics special?”, he talks about the fact that carrying is a cocycle. He then says

[A student] discovered that carry is doing what cocycles frequently do: they are responsible for break of symmetry.

I have never thought about cocycles in this way. In what sense are cocycles often breaking symmetry? Are there any other examples of this?

In an article by A. Borovik, Is mathematics special?”, he talks about the fact that carrying is a cocycle. He then says

[A student] discovered that carry is doing what cocycles frequently do: they are responsible for break of symmetry.

I have never thought about cocycles in this way. In what sense are cocycles often breaking symmetry? Are there any other examples of this?

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Do cocycles “break” symmetry?

In an article by A. Borovik, “Is mathematics special?”, he talks about the fact that carrying is a cocycle. He then says

[A student] discovered that carry is doing what cocycles frequently do: they are responsible for break of symmetry.

I have never thought about cocycles in this way. In what sense are cocycles often breaking symmetry? Are there any other examples of this?