Oversimplifications like this are not helpful. There are a ton of ways that complex numbers are interesting, and they have important generalizations as e.g. an

Oversimplifications like this are not helpful. There are a ton of ways that complex numbers are interesting, and they have important generalizations as e.g. an even subalgebra of G^2 (leading to quaternions as the even subalgebra of G^3, and so on). They’re not just “a circle”. > EDIT: I would also say the lie that we live in a 3+1D world (X, Y, Z + Time), helps confuse the mater. We probably live in a 6D + 1 world: X, Y, Z, Pitch, Yaw, Roll, and Time. If your model doesn’t treat time the same way as space up to the metric tensor, it’s probably not very well generalized. There should be an even number of parameters. Rotation including the time dimension is just acceleration. The math is simpler if you’re in a ++++ metric - rotations are a bit weird in +++- because rotations into the time dimension are hyperbolic. I suggest reading Dichronauts, a book covering a ++-- tensor.