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HoTT doesn't build on any notion of omega groupoids; at the lowest level it's a collection of typing and computation rules which one can apply successively to d
by Kutta 10y ago
HoTT doesn't build on any notion of omega groupoids; at the lowest level it's a collection of typing and computation rules which one can apply successively to do proofs and constructions. The resulting constructions can be interpreted as talking about properties of spaces. The rules themselves are very stripped-down and abstract when viewed in a homotopical light, like "every path can be retracted to an endpoint" or "the interval has two points and a path between them". Originally the basic rule for reasoning about paths ("path induction") was intended to allow construction of equality proofs between elements of types. Later people discovered that equalities can be interpreted as paths in spaces (and equalities of equalities as homotopies and so on).
Remarkably, the four typing rules of equality suffice to generate all homotopical reasoning in classic HoTT. However, they aren't enough to prove univalence as a theorem, or at least no one knows how to do it. If we switch to cubical type theory, we get considerably more structure which allows us to prove univalence. But cubical type theory is also "synthetic" and builds up notions of spaces from ground-up.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoThanks to you (and Chinjut) for the replies. I don't know how to correlate your reply to Chinjut's, though (or vice versa). Could either of you take a stab at it? Are you saying the same thing in different ways? Or are you actually disagreeing?
- Kutta 10y agoThe same thing as far as I see.
- Chinjut 10y agoI concur.
- AnimalMuppet 10y agoSo when you said, "at the lowest level it's a collection of typing and computation rules which one can apply successively to do proofs and constructions", That was what Chinjut meant by "Homotopy Type Theory axiomatizes weak omega groupoids; it gives you formal rules you can manipulate to reason about weak omega groupoids"? That is, those lowest-level rules don't assume weak omega groupoids; they turn out to define weak omega groupoids?