"I quickly learned to hate spinors. They’re non-intuitive, far more complicated than they have any right to be, and come either with two components or four, both versions being equally hard to comprehend." A Child’s Guide to Spinors William O. Straub
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Replying to @j_bertolotti
The worst thing about spinors is that a large chunk of one's brain thinks it has a workable intuition for how they should behave when it really doesn't and more care is needed.
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Replying to @TimonGutleb @j_bertolotti
Wikipedia has my personal favorite summary of the situation in "What characterizes spinors and distinguishes them from geometric vectors and other tensors is subtle.".
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Replying to @TimonGutleb
I am trying to build up an intuition about them, and so far I am failing miserably
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That is what I found most material about, but I'd be happy with some intuition about any spinor to be honest. Fun fact: the paper I took the complaint about spinors in the tweet actually has the best explanation I've found so far.
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Replying to @j_bertolotti @TimonGutleb
If you have a question I can try to answer it.
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Replying to @johncarlosbaez @TimonGutleb
Sorry but you made a mistake. Now I will DM you a million questions :-)
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Replying to @j_bertolotti @TimonGutleb
All I ask is that the questions be public. I'm happy to explain spinors. But there's no reason this explanation should be kept secret! (I know you're just kidding, but still: public discussion of science is my thing.)
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Replying to @johncarlosbaez @TimonGutleb
You really want to show everyone how ignorant I am
Well ok, but everybody be warned, stupid questions will follow at an alarming rate!2 replies 0 retweets 4 likes
I'll happily join @johncarlosbaez in this noble evangelical effort. Spinors are wonderful, and by no means unintelligible. Indeed, it's possible to tell their story very simply and concretely, so that no single step in the narrative is at all perplexing, and all of them cohere.
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