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Comment by groundzeros2015 | Hacker News Reader

groundzeros2015·

> I could find in there was that the author does not like the people using/doing research in geometric algebra

The start of the article makes a specific technical claims:

> Hestenes’ Geometric Product is not a very good operation and we should not be rewriting all of geometry in terms of it

Later he explains why:

> there is no good general interpretation or usage for the geometric product or mixed-grade multivectors

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How is the geometric product any less motivated than any other notation? Ultimately the value of a notation is how easy it makes it to work and think. I'm not sure if GA achieves that or not, but what's the harm in trying a new approach?

AFAIK nobody is proposing to replace all of geometry with GA, only 3+1 spacetime.

Author doesn't argue against the idea of choosing a new notation, he makes very detailed arguments about why this specific new notation is clumsy to work with.

Yes but my point is that their argument is undermined by the extreme clumsiness of standard mathematical physics notation. I don't believe GA is the best possible notation for physics but it could be a stepping stone. We need more people who explore such things rather than more people who call each other crackpots.

Author is not calling them crackpots, and _is_ strongly advocating for some of their new notation, and explicitly encouraging readers to find better notation where he dnsagrees with theirs.

I’m just refuting the claim that the article only focuses on ad hominem arguments.

He's distressingly wrong about this, the geometric product is transform composition

(Apologies to folks who have seen me repeat this a million times; but it's very important folks be aware of it)

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