[Agda] Tips for working around proof relevance

[Daniel Lee]

Hi Nicolai, Jacques,

Thanks for the pointers! I have indeed already had to assume function
extensionality.

So just to make sure I understand correctly, the reason that associativity
is impossible to prove in the "wild categories" setting is that you not
only need associativity in the original category, but also a sort of
"second level" notion of associativity in the composition of the
commutative diagrams? And the reason it goes through when you assume that
hom-sets are sets is that any two commutative diagrams, as long as
their components are the same, are now assumed to be identical. Is that
right?

Then, is it possible to add this higher-dimensional coherence rather than
removing higher-dimensional structure completely?

I think I'll try out the setoid approach Jacques suggested, it does seem
like it could make things easier. Are there any major downsides to this
approach which would be useful to know. I've heard of talk of "setoid hell"
before where you build up a ton of extra proof obligations. Should I be
worried about that in this case?

Lastly, how would you recommend defining hom/represented functors?
Currently, I've used a universe category parametrized by some level 'c'
whose objects are 'Set c'. Will I run into similar issues with "wildness"
if I don't enforce that the objects in the category are sets?

Thanks again for the help.

Best,
Daniel

On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 7:22 PM Nicolai Kraus <nicolai.kraus at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi Daniel,
>
> nice Agda project! But using the winter break to learn category theory,
> topology, HoTT, AND to formalise things in Agda sounds pretty ambitious to
> me ;-)
>
> The short answer to your question is "no". There's no nice way to do this
> without the assumption that hom-sets are sets (or another assumption).
> Actually, there is just no way at all, not even an ugly one. It's not just
> involved and tedious and hard to read, it's not provable. The comma
> category construction does not work for the notion of categories that you
> use.
>
> To see why, look at your Agda code:
> When you define the objects of the comma category, you need to use objects
> + morphisms of the original categories.
> When you define the morphisms of the comma category, you  need to use
> morphisms + composition of the original categories.
> When you define composition in the comma category, you need composition +
> associativity of the original categories.
> Do you see where this is going? You always need "one level more" of the
> original categories than you currently define in the comma category.
> Thus, when you want to prove associativity for the comma category, you
> should expect that you need more than only associativity of the original
> categories: you also need the first coherence condition for associativity,
> known as "MacLane's pentagon". MacLane's pentagon doesn't show up
> explicitly for standard categories (where it is automatic), but it shows up
> when you study e.g. bicategories. Something similar happens for the
> identity laws.
>
> The notion of categories that you currently consider is badly behaved. We
> call them "wild categories" (or "naive" or "incoherent" or "approximate").
> They are higher-dimensional categories, but with almost all coherence
> structure removed. To understand why this is bad, think about categories
> where you don't require composition to be associative: you can probably
> imagine that all sorts of constructions from standard category theory will
> break.
>
> Your approach to require hom-sets to be sets is the standard approach. It
> ensures that the categories behave like standard 1-categories. It implies
> MacLane's pentagon coherence and all other coherences. Thus, it's a really
> strong assumption, but it's the right assumption if you want to do
> 1-category theory in this style. This is also how it's done in the HoTT
> book. I think this is equivalent to Jacques' approach with setoids, but I
> haven't checked this in detail. ("Equivalent" in the sense that the two
> approaches should make the same constructions possible, not equivalent in
> terms of how tedious things can become.)
>
> "--with-K" would, of course, imply that hom-sets are sets. But it also
> would mean that the type of objects (and everything else) is a set. This is
> quite restrictive. For example, your development wouldn't capture univalent
> categories. I don't know whether the added convenience would make up for
> the loss of generality.
>
> The issue that you found here is a pretty deep one. This issue, together
> with things that are very much related, causes the problem and motivates
> the constructions in this paper:
> https://arxiv.org/abs/2009.01883
> See also Section 3.2, "Deficiency of Wild/Incoherent Structure", for a
> discussion. Especially Example 9, which uses a slice category (special case
> of the comma category, where one can already see the issues).
>
> Best,
> Nicolai
>
>
> On 15/12/2020 01:40, Daniel Lee wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm an undergraduate in CS, trying to use this winter break to learn
> category theory via Categories in Context (and hopefully topology and
> HoTT). I thought it would be cool to formalize in Agda at the same time.
>
> Here's the link to the Agda development for reference:
> https://github.com/dan-iel-lee/categories-in-agda . Relevant files are
> probably "Core" and "Examples/Comma".
>
>
> I've run into a roadblock, specifically with proving that the comma
> category is a category, but which I imagine could be an issue in the future
> as well.
>
> I've defined the arrows in the category as:
> Σ[ (h , k) ∈ d ⟶ᴰ d' × e ⟶ᴱ e' ] f' ∘ (ℱ h) ≡ (𝒢 k) ∘ f
>
> Where h and k are the component arrows, and the body of the Sigma is the
> commutativity condition. Defining composition and identity are relatively
> straightforward, but proving the left/right unit and associativity
> properties become difficult because it requires proving that the identities
> are identified. And because there are a lot of steps, compositions,...
> involved, the Goal is super hard to read and I don't know where to start in
> trying to prove it. I managed to work around it by enforcing that all the
> hom-sets are sets (in the sense that their identification types are all
> identical). Is there a nice way to prove this without using proof
> irrelevance though?
>
> All help is very very appreciated. Thanks :)))
>
> Best,
> Daniel
>
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