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Stream: learning: questions

Topic: Abelianisation Adjoint


view this post on Zulip Fawzi Hreiki (Nov 02 2020 at 15:05):

The inclusion CMonMon\text{CMon} \hookrightarrow \text{Mon} of commutative monoids into monoids has a left adjoint (often called abelianisation). Likewise, we have such adjoints for groups, rings, etc.. It is known that, for a topos EE, EE has free monoids iff it has a NNO. But what structure in general is needed on a category CC with finite products (or finite limits) to have such abelianisation adjoints Mon(C)CMon(C)\text{Mon}(C) \rightarrow \text{CMon}(C)?

view this post on Zulip Jacques Carette (Nov 02 2020 at 15:44):

The construction at the nlab requires quite a bit, i.e. quotients and forming sub-structures. So which meta-theory you are in will come in quite strongly. I don't quite know what minimal vocabulary you'll need to state all those things, but it feels like quite a lot, i.e. quite a bit more than just having finite products.

view this post on Zulip Jade Master (Nov 02 2020 at 16:11):

Fawzi Hreiki said:

The inclusion CMonMon\text{CMon} \hookrightarrow \text{Mon} of commutative monoids into monoids has a left adjoint (often called abelianisation). Likewise, we have such adjoints for groups, rings, etc.. It is known that, for a topos EE, EE has free monoids iff it has a NNO. But what structure in general is needed on a category CC with finite products (or finite limits) to have such abelianisation adjoints Mon(C)CMon(C)\text{Mon}(C) \rightarrow \text{CMon}(C)?

I think that coequalizers would do the trick? I'm pretty sure that belianization can be thought of as coequalizing the symmetry composed with multiplication with the multiplication.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 02 2020 at 16:13):

Coequalizers sound right, but perhaps we need products to "get along" with coequalizers in some way for the coequalizer to actually inherit a monoid structure.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 02 2020 at 16:57):

To be a bit less mysterious, I'm suggesting we'll need binary products to distribute over coequalizers. I haven't checked this.

view this post on Zulip Jacques Carette (Nov 02 2020 at 16:59):

But the question remains: what vocabulary do you need to write down 'coequalizer' ? And do you need additional vocabulary to start they they distribute?

view this post on Zulip Morgan Rogers (he/him) (Nov 02 2020 at 17:04):

A coequalizer is a finite colimit; what "vocabulary" are you talking about?

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 02 2020 at 17:11):

Jacques is talking more about the metatheory; I think first we should settle this question in the plain old framework of mathematics, because it's so simple: in what sort of category C with finite products can we abelianize a commutative monoid object, getting a left adjoint to Mon(C) \to CMon(C)?

My conjecture: it's enough for C to have coequalizers and for binary products to distribute over these.

view this post on Zulip fosco (Nov 03 2020 at 16:11):

John Baez said:

Jacques is talking more about the metatheory; I think first we should settle this question in the plain old framework of mathematics, because it's so simple: in what sort of category C with finite products can we abelianize a commutative monoid object, getting a left adjoint to Mon(C) \to CMon(C)?

My conjecture: it's enough for C to have coequalizers and for binary products to distribute over these.

The monoids are not already commutative; and the left adjoint is to the embedding CMon(C) → Mon(C); in fact the abelianization functor G ↦ Gᵃ is left adjoint to the inclusion (and there is also a right adjoint, that sends a monoid to its center). Of course, both were typos :smile:

It seems very natural to ask the same question in terms of the PROP of monoids, TM\mathbb{T}_M and the theory of commutative monoids TCM\mathbb{T}_{CM} (this is just the category of finite sets and functions, and a commutative monoid in C\mathcal C is just a monoidal functor TCMC\mathbb{T}_{CM} \to \mathcal C...); there is a morphism of PROPs ii from TM\mathbb{T}_{M} to TCM\mathbb{T}_{CM}, because the latter is just the former with an additional equation (commutativity). ii^*, precomposition with ii, gives the functor that forgets commutativity; adjoints to this functor are governed by the request that left/right Kan extensions sends a monoidal functor G:TMCG : \mathbb{T}_{M} \to \mathcal C into another monoidal functor TCMC\mathbb{T}_{CM} \to \mathcal C.

However, this is just a high-level approach, that might yield the same conjecture as John's.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 16:49):

Yeah - I didn't mean to write "abelianize a commutative monoid object" - I meant "abelianize a monoid object".

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 16:54):

There's definitely a nice morphism of props here, as you say. But to do the abelianization using props - that is, to abelianize a monoid in C\mathcal{C} and get a commutative monoid in C\mathcal{C}, for example by constructing the left Kan extension you want, we need C\mathcal{C} to be "nice enough".

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:01):

I know more about this for Lawvere theories than for props. Let's use ModC(T)\mathrm{Mod}_{\mathcal{C}}(\mathbb{T}) to denote the category of models of a Lawvere theory T\mathbb{T} in a category with finite products C\mathcal{C}. Given a map of Lawvere theories i:TTi : \mathbb{T} \to \mathbb{T}', we always get a precomposition map i:ModC(T)ModC(T)i^\ast: \mathrm{Mod}_{\mathcal{C}}(\mathbb{T}') \to \mathrm{Mod}_{\mathcal{C}}(\mathbb{T}). And this always has a left adjoint when C\mathcal{C} is cocomplete, with finite products distributing over colimits.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:01):

So for example it always works for C=Set\mathcal{C} = \mathsf{Set}.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:03):

This is a consequence of a special case of Theorem 3.3 here:

In fact Todd shows it more generally for multi-sorted Lawvere theories, and he shows that the precomposition map ii^* is not only a right adjoint, but monadic.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:06):

But in the case where T\mathbb{T} is the theory of monoids and T\mathbb{T}' is the theory of commutative monoids, I'm conjecturing that it's enough for C\mathbb{C} to have finite products and coequalizers, with the finite products distributing over the coequalizers. In fact I'll conjecture this whenever T\mathbb{T}' is obtained from T\mathbb{T} merely by adding extra laws - that is, equations between morphisms.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:08):

And we don't need a Lawvere theory to describe monoids or commutative monoids: a prop is enough.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:10):

So we can ask for any symmetric monoidal category C\mathcal{C} if the forgetful functor ComMon(C)Mon(C)\mathsf{ComMon}(\mathcal{C}) \to \mathsf{Mon}(\mathcal{C}) has a left adjoint. And I will conjecture that this happens whenever C\mathcal{C} has coequalizers, with the tensor product distributing over coequalizers.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:10):

And while I'm at it, I'll conjecture that this happens whenever we have a pair of props, with the second obtained from the first merely by adding extra laws.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 17:11):

There are lots of obvious-sounding - or at least plausible - results about Lawvere theories and props that I haven't seen written up. There should really be a book that analyzes these things in detail.

view this post on Zulip Fawzi Hreiki (Nov 03 2020 at 17:20):

I had a quick look in the book Algebraic Theories by Adamek, Rosicky, and Vitale and I couldn’t find anything on this

view this post on Zulip Jade Master (Nov 03 2020 at 18:51):

A maybe sufficient but not necessary condition is that CC is a locally presentable category. Then because the forgetful functor is accessible and preserves finite limits (right?), it has a left adjoint by the adjoint functor theorem. Check out Theorem 2.2 here: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/adjoint+functor+theorem

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:03):

Sufficient but not necessary for what, exactly?

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:03):

Let me stick to the concrete question of whether we can abelianize monoids in C.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:07):

C being locally presentable is certainly not necessary: for example neither FinSet nor Top are locally presentable, but we can abelianize monoids in these categories.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:22):

I'm not quite sure how you're getting the sufficiency, Jade, but I'll take a guess. You want the forgetful functor U: ComMon(C) \to Com(C) to have a left adjoint, so you're planning to check that if C is locally presentable, then:

1) ComMon(C) and Com(C) are locally presentable
2) U is accessible and it preserves all small limits

(You said "preserves finite limits", but that's not enough for Theorem 2.2 to kick in.)

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:24):

I bet this will all be true, but it seems like a massive hassle compared to just constructing the left adjoint "by hand", which seems to require only that C be symmetric monoidal, with equalizers, and that the tensor product distribute over equalizers.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:30):

I have a dumb question for the experts in the room: does a locally presentable category automatically have all small limits?

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:34):

My intuition says yes, but I'm not finding that spelled out anywhere.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 19:40):

John Baez said:

I have a dumb question for the experts in the room: does a locally presentable category automatically have all small limits?

Yes, definitely. Not a dumb question. It's in "the Bible" (Adamek-Rosicky, Locally Presentable and Accessible Categories), Corollary 1.28.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:43):

Thanks! I was looking through the bible and not finding it!

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:44):

I think I'm gonna stick this fact in the nLab. The nLab treatment is very heavily biased towards colimits, which makes sense of course, but one wants limits too.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:47):

So it comes from the fact that a reflective subcategory of a complete (resp. cocomplete) category is again complete (resp. cocomplete).

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:49):

So why is a reflective subcategory of a complete category again complete? Yet another hole in my education.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:50):

The nLab says it's because the inclusion of the reflective subcategory in the larger category is monadic.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 19:53):

John Baez said:

The nLab says it's because the inclusion of the reflective subcategory in the larger category is monadic.

Yes, it's true. The subcategory can be identified with the objects in the super-category for which the unit of the induced monad is an isomorphism (we were discussing that a little yesterday). You might find more information under "idempotent monad" (monads for which the counit is an isomorphism) -- all idempotent monads arise this way (via a reflective subcategory).

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:54):

The stuff you're saying, I kinda know. The hole in my education is something like "a monadic functor reflects limits"... is that it?

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 19:54):

Yes, that's right.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 19:56):

Now that I think about it, I've probably been told that a dozen times... for me, facts of that sort tend to go in one eye and out the other. Which is something I'm trying to cure.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 19:57):

It's not too hard to see. Limits are universal objects that are targets of cones. For example, if X×YX \times Y is a product (of underlying objects of algebras), then you can produce an algebra structure T(X×Y)X×YT(X \times Y) \to X \times Y just by exploiting the universal property of a product.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:05):

Thanks. I think my problem is that I got into category theory through knot theory, TQFTs and quantum mechanics, so I quickly got to like braided monoidal categories, symmetric monoidal categories, 2-categories and then higher categories, but none of this stuff focused my attention on the behavior of limits and colimits... which is half of category theory. So when I saw people saying something like "monadic functors reflect limits" I'd just say "yeah, yeah, another fact".

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:06):

But now the stuff I'm doing is, more and more, forcing me to learn such facts.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:07):

Yeah, for me it was the other way around. First I had to have universal properties really well under control.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:14):

To me things like braided monoidal categories and such are intensely visual and thus very easy to understand.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:15):

But your conjecture above is interesting. The proposed abelianization (I'm American; it's with a 'z') I guess is a reflexive coequalizer of a pair of maps of the form XXXX \otimes X \to X, one being the multiplication on the monoid XX, the other being that twisted by a symmetry. That's a reflexive pair because both are left inverses of the evident map XXXX \to X \otimes X formed with the help of the unit. And you need that the monoidal product preserves reflexive coequalizers in each argument. I imagine your conjecture is correct, although I've never really thought about it before.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:16):

Okay, trimming it down to reflexive coequalizers - a very Trimble-esque move in my opinion!

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:18):

If we need coequalizers to "impose extra properties" - e.g. to force an algebraic structure to obey extra laws, as I was discussing - what sort of special extra properties require only reflexive coequalizers?

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:18):

It's actually an important move (and not my own). There is a strong tendency for monoidal products to distribute over reflexive coequalizers even if they don't distribute over arbitrary coequalizers. This is true for example for locally presentable categories.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:19):

Oh, interesting.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:20):

Oh wait, I'm not sure about that last sentence. But the general point stands.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:21):

I was imagining we could analyze maps of multi-sorted Lawvere theories f:TTf: \mathbb{T} \to \mathbb{T}' into various kinds, corresponding to how much the forgetful functor f:ModC(T)ModC(T))f^\ast : \mathrm{Mod}_C(\mathbb{T'}) \to \mathrm{Mod}_C(\mathbb{T})) forgets.

ff can add "extra stuff" (sorts), "extra structure" (operations), or "extra properties" (equations).

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:21):

Meaning that ff^\ast forgets stuff, structure or properties.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:23):

If ff^* only forgets properties, the left adjoint of ff^\ast, maybe I'll call it f!f_! (???), seems to involve only coequalizers.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:24):

That is, we can define it whenever CC has coequalizers, and I guess products distribute over them.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:25):

But if ff^* forgets structure, we seem to need quite general (countable) colimits in CC to get a left adjoint for it.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:25):

I'm not sure about "stuff", but if the algebra categories ModC(T)\text{Mod}_C(T) are monadic over CC (which is not guaranteed without nice properties of CC), then you need only reflexive coequalizers. I tell ya, the reflexive coequalizer stuff is really important.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:26):

What?

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:27):

Sorry, what what?

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:28):

So if I'm working in C=SetC = \mathsf{Set}, say, and I form the free monoid on a set, I'm only using reflexive coequalizers?

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:28):

Or the free ring on a (multiplicative) monoid?

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:29):

In the first case I'm surely using countable coproducts (and products).

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:31):

We're probably talking past each other. If you know already that the categories ModC(T)=Prod(T,C)\text{Mod}_C(T) = \text{Prod}(T, C) are monadic over CC, then the forgetful functors ff^\ast have left adjoints under existence of reflexive coequalizers. Sorry for the miscommunication.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:32):

Okay, I'm thinking about that in the case where f:TTf: T \to T' is the map from theory of "plain objects" to the theory of monoids.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:33):

Then ff^* is the forgetful functor from the category of monoids in CC to CC.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:33):

And I want to know how nice CC must be, for ff^* to have a left adjoint.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:34):

Of course CC must have finite products for us to even play this game.

But you seem to be saying that if CC also has reflexive coequalizers, f:Mon(C)Cf^* : \mathrm{Mon}(C) \to C has a left adjoint.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:34):

So anyway, yes, if your Lawvere theory TT is presentable by finitely many operations and finitely many equations, and if the functor c×:CCc \times -: C \to C preserves countable colimits for each object cc of CC, then Prod(T,C)\text{Prod}(T, C) is monadic over CC.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:35):

John Baez said:

Of course CC must have finite products for us to even play this game.

But you seem to be saying that if CC also has reflexive coequalizers, f:Mon(C)Cf^* : \mathrm{Mon}(C) \to C has a left adjoint.

No, I wasn't saying that.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:36):

Okay, good.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:37):

The question I've been asking about is when it does. Or more generally, under which conditions f:ModC(T)ModC(T)f^* : \mathrm{Mod}_C (\mathbb{T}') \to \mathrm{Mod}_C (\mathbb{T}) has a left adjoint, for some map of Lawvere theories ff.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:39):

And I'm trying to answer that. If CC has sufficiently many colimits and if the functor c×:CCc \times -: C \to C preserves such colimits for each object cc of CC, then all those forgetful functors have left adjoints. It doesn't have much to do with stuff, structure, properties unless I'm confused.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:42):

I was about to say: in the case of the forgetful functor Prod(T,C)C\text{Prod}(T, C) \to C, the (underlying object of the) free algebra on an object cc is given by a coend

n:FinSetT(n,1)cn\int^{n: \text{FinSet}} T(n, 1) \cdot c^n

(as calculated in CC) where TT is your Lawvere theory. This is a countable colimit if TT can be presented with only finitely many operations and equations.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:45):

Oh, but you're speaking of multisorted Lawvere theories. I think my answer is pretty much the same, but I'd have to think to be sure. There's a lot of stuff in that note on my nLab web page that's relevant.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:46):

Todd Trimble said:

And I'm trying to answer that. If CC has sufficiently many colimits and if the functor c×:CCc \times -: C \to C preserves such colimits for each object cc of CC, then all those forgetful functors have left adjoints. It doesn't have much to do with stuff, structure, properties unless I'm confused.

My question is about what kinds of colimits count as "sufficiently many colimits". For the forgetful functor from commutative monoids in C to monoids in C to have a left adjoint, I was conjecturing it's enough for C to have coequalizers (and c×c \times - to preserve them). Or, for example, the forgetful functor from "groups where every element is 5-torsion" to "groups". These are cases of "forgetting properties". In these cases the left adjoint to the forgetful functor just "imposes extra equations", which we can do with coequalizers.

But for the forgetful functor from "commutative monoids" to "plain objects", we are forgetting structure. In this case the left adjoint to the forgetful functor involves coproducts as well as coequalizers.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:48):

Oh, gotcha. Haven't thought about it much.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:48):

The only reason I brought in multisorted Lawvere theories is that then we can investigate "forgetting stuff", as well. But never mind.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:49):

This started off being about Jade's question, and I suspect your conjecture is correct there.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:49):

So now you're adding extra twist of the knife: reflexive coequalizers. And this makes me wonder if these are sufficient for "extra properties of some particularly mild sort".... and if so, what does "mild sort" mean!

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:50):

I don't know!

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:52):

Yeah, it's a weird question: I'd need to get a catalog of examples before I could get any intuition for this.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:54):

I was imagining something a little less refined, like a 3-level factorization system on the category of multisorted Lawvere theories, where any morphism f:TTf: \mathbb{T} \to \mathbb{T}' can be factored as one that only adds extra sorts, followed by one that only adds extra operations, followed by one that only adds extra equations... or something like that...

... and then maybe this will match up with some 3-level factorization system on the categories of models of these Lawvere theories, like the usual "forgetting just stuff, forgetting just structure, forgetting just properties" system.

view this post on Zulip Dan Doel (Nov 03 2020 at 20:54):

nlab says every congruence is a reflexive pair. So it might be that everything you'd actually want to say is mild enough.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:55):

Interesting. Where does it say that?

view this post on Zulip Dan Doel (Nov 03 2020 at 20:55):

On the reflexive coequalizer page.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 20:57):

I mean, that much is true: a congruence is simply an internal equivalence relation EX×XE \hookrightarrow X \times X, and the induced pair of maps EXE \rightrightarrows X are both left inverse to the map XEX \to E coming from the reflexivity axiom.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 20:59):

Okay, thanks. I'm not at all sure of the implications of this for my wonderings.... if any.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 21:01):

One thing is, your response to Jade was very general, looking at symmetric monoidal categories rather than just cartesian monoidal ones. Whereas the remark above about congruences refers to cartesian monoidal structure.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 21:02):

Right.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 21:03):

This is one reason I started dreaming of a big fat book that settled all these questions. There should be a big fat chapter on props, and a big fat chapter on Lawvere theories.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 21:04):

And I guess I'm thinking of it in terms of a "big fat book" because I'd like to read the answers, but not actually do the work to figure them out. :upside_down:

view this post on Zulip Dan Doel (Nov 03 2020 at 21:05):

I guess I was thinking that all the equations you're adding in an algebraic theory would somehow be equivalence relations. But I'm not sure if that actually makes sense.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 21:06):

Depends on the doctrine where "algebraic theory" is being interpreted, I guess. I think that's right for the doctrine of cartesian monoidal categories. But I'm not sure how to interpret this for say the doctrine of symmetric monoidal categories (where "algebraic theory" means essentially "operad").

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 03 2020 at 21:10):

I think I'm on too little sleep, and typing so hurriedly, that I'm not thinking as clearly as I would like. (That's the trouble with me and this Zulip thing, which creates a kind of hectic sense in me that I don't really enjoy).

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 21:24):

There's no rush. The text just sits there, for years if necessary.

view this post on Zulip John Baez (Nov 03 2020 at 21:27):

I would be very happy to learn for which maps f:TTf: \mathbb{T} \to \mathbb{T}' between Lawvere theories the functor f:ModC(T)ModC(T)f^* : \mathrm{Mod}_C (\mathbb{T}') \to \mathrm{Mod}_C (\mathbb{T}') will have a left adjoint whenever CC has finite products and coequalizers, with the former distributing over the latter. And I will still be happy to learn this next year.

I conjecture it happens whenever T \mathbb{T}' is formed from T\mathbb{T} solely by adding extra equations: i.e., f:TTf: \mathbb{T} \to \mathbb{T}' is full.

view this post on Zulip Todd Trimble (Nov 04 2020 at 12:05):

Todd Trimble said:

It's actually an important move (and not my own). There is a strong tendency for monoidal products to distribute over reflexive coequalizers even if they don't distribute over arbitrary coequalizers.

One of my favorite examples of that is the substitution product (say on graded sets), where (XY)n=kXk×Yk(n)(X \circ Y)_n = \sum_k X_k \times Y^{\otimes k}(n) (here \otimes is the Day convolution induced by thinking of N\mathbb{N} as a discrete monoidal category). Here Y- \circ Y preserves all coequalizers and indeed all colimits, whereas XX \circ - preserves reflexive coequalizers but not much else.

view this post on Zulip David Michael Roberts (Nov 05 2020 at 03:07):

I was wondering, @Todd Trimble do reflexive coequalisers have better properties than arbitrary coequalisers?

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (Nov 05 2020 at 03:27):

not to answer for todd, but i can give at least one example of a better property they have: reflexive coequalizers are sifted colimits (i.e., they commute with finite products in Set)

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (Nov 05 2020 at 03:28):

so, for example, the category of models in Set (or, i think, in any grothendieck topos?) of a lawvere theory is gonna have reflexive coequalizers computed on the underlying sets (im pretty sure)

view this post on Zulip David Michael Roberts (Nov 05 2020 at 05:33):

Oh, nice. That's halfway to being pullback-stable, which is important for lots of things I do.

view this post on Zulip sarahzrf (Nov 05 2020 at 06:00):

hmmmm, not quite >.< image.png

view this post on Zulip David Michael Roberts (Nov 05 2020 at 08:42):

Well, I'm not an \infty-category theorist at present, but I'll file that point for later.