Timeline for Set theory for category theory beginners
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
5 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 25, 2010 at 20:36 | comment | added | The Mathemagician | @fpqc"....independent of the technical nonsense."You know,this is why I've never been confortable with category theory-it's because too many of us are perfectly happy shooting arrows into things they just throw into a category without looking inside the boxes. It's reminiceint of Skinnerian behaviorism,Chomskian structuralism or some of the more extreme forms of string theory:They have dogmatic answers to basic questions that seem designed to avoid the nuts and bolts of what they're doing."String theory is obviously true-why do you people question it just because we can't TEST it?"Is it me? | |
| Nov 22, 2009 at 18:27 | comment | added | Harry Gindi | The point is that there are rarely statements you can even formulate at all in category theory that you can't fix by doing a bunch of messing around with universes or proper classes. Basically, if you understand category theory well enough, the statements you formulate will be independent of the technical nonsense. | |
| Nov 22, 2009 at 3:42 | comment | added | Greg Stevenson | I should clarify by saying that there are plenty of things which are not true without size restrictions and that there are some genuine issues that arise. A lot of effort sometimes gets devoted to working around size problems. It is more of a philosophical thing that one should think like size is not a big deal and then worry about it if/when one wants to make precise statements about certain things. | |
| Nov 22, 2009 at 3:36 | comment | added | user709 | I guess the problem for me is I never know precisely what I can do with sets. I heard about Russell's paradox before, so I have a vague idea that a "very large collection" may not be a set, but other than that I know nothing. Perhaps that's why I feel very uncomfortable with these (possibly) mere technicalties. Thanks for the links anyway! | |
| Nov 22, 2009 at 3:27 | history | answered | Greg Stevenson | CC BY-SA 2.5 |