Mystification aka categorification

 

Stephen Schanuel

mystification and categorification

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While I’m airing my confusions, can anyone tell me what ‘categorification’ means? I don’t know any such process; the simplest example, ‘categorifying’ natural numbers to get finite sets, seems to me rather ‘remembering the finite sets and maps which gave rise to natural numbers by the abstraction of passing to isomorphism classes’.

Finally, a note to John Baez: While you’re trying to give your audience some feeling for the virtues of n-categories, couldn’t you give them a little help with n=1, by being a little more precise about objects and maps?

Greetings to all, and thanks for your patience while I got this stuff off my chest,

Steve Schanuel