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Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

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Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#51
post #32
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, I'm not a part of this community, and I don't know if the thing I'm about to complain about is what the author was thinking of with this comment, but as someone who was trained as a mathematician and who has read some of the popularizations of geometric algebra that sometimes get posted to HN, there is a tone that some (though probably a minority) of them take that I find pretty obnoxious. These piece…

It goes both ways. Mathematicians will take a moment denigrate Geometric Algebra as "linear algebra with a uselessly nonstandard notation", ignoring that we should prefer a less awkward way of structuring linear algebra than "pseudoscalars" and "pseudovectors".

> "linear algebra with a uselessly nonstandard notation"

Let me chime in that as a physicist (who does use the "pseudo" stuff occasionally) I very much share this opinion.

The notation may be really cool and compact, but I just do not see the benefit - for example, d*F = j and dF = 0 is compact enough for me.

It is all fine if people use this language to learn linear algebra or differential geometry. And maybe it has a use for numerics or computer science. But I am quite sure that the geometric algebra formalism will not be widely adopted in physics any time soon. Sorry.

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#52
post #22

I'm a big fan of Eric Lengyel, and I never would have ever gotten my arms around Geometric Algebra if it hadn't been for his books and articles. How many people can do theoretical math AND code a state-of-the-art game engine? The guy is a walking, coding miracle. So if I'm a little critical of the tone of the article, it comes from a place of love. There has been a very toxic, clickish vibe in Geometric Algebra circl…

> Yet, I don't think Gunn should be criticized for it at all. The article dedicates itself to critiquing the techniques, but spends no time that I can remember talking about the human beings and their feelings. That’s how I write professionally, and I’ve found it can really upset people who infer that critique of some thing is therefore critique of some person — even when no such inference is intended by the author.…

He repeatedly makes assertions that "the authors" have "no idea what they're talking about". The difference between flaming an individual person and "the authors" is thin at best, arguably only different in that it flames more than one person at once. And honestly, to the extent he's correct, I think that's fine. But let's not kid ourselves about what we're reading.

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#53
post #43
post #22

I'm a big fan of Eric Lengyel, and I never would have ever gotten my arms around Geometric Algebra if it hadn't been for his books and articles. How many people can do theoretical math AND code a state-of-the-art game engine? The guy is a walking, coding miracle. So if I'm a little critical of the tone of the article, it comes from a place of love. There has been a very toxic, clickish vibe in Geometric Algebra circl…

So, I've shipped a game with his engine, so have a unique relation ship with him, and he's a complicated individual. To be clear, he is a very talented, intelligent individual. But he form strong opinions, has a very hard time taking criticism, or understanding other people's differing context, and has a hard time not taking disagreements personally. This is really nothing new from him. I think the best way to intera…

// I've shipped a game with his engine //

Do you have a blog post or write-up about the experience? I'd love to know more about what working with both the engine and the man is like--and I suspect there's more stories to be told :-)

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#54
post #42
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I did not downvote the parent of this comment, nor am I angry. I can't speak for anyone else.) Seems a bit of a weird request, but sure. I assume the point of it is some sort of credential-test, so I'll focus on things relevant to that. My name's Gareth McCaughan. I'm a mathematician, though I've never worked specifically in the field of geometric algebra, nor in the foundations of mathematics, and I haven't been do…

(I know you it doesn't let you, unless you have an alt account.) I must say that I am a little surprised that this is something you have not come across before and I take it you are surprised as well. Apparently foundations are not taught in every school. When we are talking about foundations we are usually concerned with something that prompted Euclid to write a very long time ago. In his Book 2 he defines geometric…

If your thought experiment involving pieces of paper has helped you to think of useful or interesting things that you wouldn't otherwise have thought of, that's great. It hasn't so far done anything of the kind for me. The fault could of course be mine.

What I said was not (as you claimed in another comment in this thread) that I don't see how constructivism is relevant -- though in fact I don't think constructivism is relevant -- but that I don't see how your thought experiment about pieces of paper is relevant.

I regret that it wasn't immediately apparent to me that your thought experiment was about constructivism. Now that you say it is, I can kinda see how it kinda relates, but for me thinking about your pieces of paper doesn't conjure up any useful insights about constructivism, and if I didn't already know about constructivism I don't think it would particularly point me in that direction. Again, if it works that way for you, good for you, but I think that when you present it to other people you are forgetting that the others (who unlike you haven't been thinking about this picture for 30 years) don't have the same associations with your imaginary pieces of paper that you have.

I have no problem with the idea that one might want to construct alternative number-like objects. (And yes, I know what Cauchy sequences are and what one does with them. And no, they really don't have very much to do with the parallel postulate. There's an analogy between the parallel postulate and, say, the LEM, but that's all.) But (1) again, this has nothing much to do with Eric Lengyel's critique of how geometric algebra is presented -- when Lengyel talks about "foundations" he isn't talking about going down to the level of set theory, logic, HOTT, or whatever, he's talking about getting the basics of geometric algebra right when one already has notions like "real numbers", "vector space", etc., in hand -- and (2) your thought experiment happens not to do anything for me to clarify, inspire, etc., ideas about alternative number-like objects. (Also, it seems to me that if you want to use that thought experiment to say something about number lines then you want your 0-width lines, half-planes, etc., to lie across the number line, not along it.)

It is simply not true that book 2 of Euclid "defines geometric algebra for the first time" or indeed defines it at all. Euclid is doing geometry but is not doing geometric algebra, which is something more specific.

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#55
post #22

I'm a big fan of Eric Lengyel, and I never would have ever gotten my arms around Geometric Algebra if it hadn't been for his books and articles. How many people can do theoretical math AND code a state-of-the-art game engine? The guy is a walking, coding miracle. So if I'm a little critical of the tone of the article, it comes from a place of love. There has been a very toxic, clickish vibe in Geometric Algebra circl…

Lengyel's post doesn't discuss the whole plane-based vs. point-based war at all, and he makes it clear in his book that both approaches are equivalent. He actually says both are happening at the same time whichever way you look at it, but I'm still trying to wrap my head around that. Gunn is not one of the authors of the material Lengyel is talking about in his post.

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#56
post #22

I'm a big fan of Eric Lengyel, and I never would have ever gotten my arms around Geometric Algebra if it hadn't been for his books and articles. How many people can do theoretical math AND code a state-of-the-art game engine? The guy is a walking, coding miracle. So if I'm a little critical of the tone of the article, it comes from a place of love. There has been a very toxic, clickish vibe in Geometric Algebra circl…

I don't think Lengyel is criticizing anything for just being ugly. When he says something is janky, it's because there's something mathematically wrong/incorrect/broken with it.

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#57
post #15

This explains very nicely why despite working through lots of GA resources, I never quite grasped it. It’s logically incoherent!

Yeah I’m pretty well-versed in free constructions of various algebraic objects and how this would interact with things like a quadratic form, etc, but couldn’t sort out GA (I think the authors of “GA4CS” had a very different sort of computer scientist in mind). When I saw the geometric algebra constructions clash with constructions I was already familiar with, I generally got suspicious and lost interest. I’m actuall…

I have Lengyel's book and it's great. Highly recommended.

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#59

As a former mathematician from one of the more elitist subfields of math, I have to say this is the first time I’ve heard anyone claim geometric algebra lacks rigor.

This is the second time I’ve heard geometric algebra lacks rigor. The first time:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576214

> even by the 90s/00s, GA had gotten a bad reputation because of its tendency to attract bad mathematicians and full-on crackpots

> those reasons disproportionately attract people who are not actually capable of rigorous mathematics, or are slightly prone to conspiratorial thinking, or are otherwise slightly deranged

> if you look around for papers that explicitly talk GA, they are very disproportionately (a) non-theoretical, (b) poorly-written, (c) trivial, i.e. restating widely-known results as if they’re novel, (d) only citing other GA papers, and of course (e) just plain crackpotty

Re: Poor Foundations in Geometric Algebra

#60

As a former mathematician from one of the more elitist subfields of math, I have to say this is the first time I’ve heard anyone claim geometric algebra lacks rigor.

This is the second time I’ve heard geometric algebra lacks rigor. The first time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39576214 > even by the 90s/00s, GA had gotten a bad reputation because of its tendency to attract bad mathematicians and full-on crackpots > those reasons disproportionately attract people who are not actually capable of rigorous mathematics, or are slightly prone to conspiratorial thinking, or are o…

In the linked blog, the author describes himself: “I am not a mathematician or physicist and am definitely not credible at all”.
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