just like how infinitesimals are useful because they're indiscernible from 0, but have the advantage of being able to be divided by.
the other important number besides 0 is 1. gpt even suggested it as i was typing it.
the monad of 1 is numbers of the form (1 + ε) where ε is an infinitesimal. multiplying by them should be almost as good as multiplying by 1, aka a freebie.
this is just the lie algebra, and is why elements of it are always invertible. by using the infinitesimal version of a clifford algebra on the tangent space, we can use its rotor represention to see how the exponential map gives lie's third theorem.
With all due respect with your brand as LessWrong's ornamental hermeneutic I'm afraid I'll need some clarification.
What is the monad of 1 exactly? A monad is a functor - what category are we talking about here?
In particular - what are the unit and multiplication maps?
(my guess: 1+kϵ↦k for the unit and (1+kϵ)(1+mϵ)↦1+(k+m)ϵ+k⋅mϵ2=1+(k+m)ϵ+0 but now I'm using nilsquare infinitesimals instead of invertible infinitesimals.)
I'm not sure what tangent space we are talking about - but I assume it's a Lie group (hyperfinite graph?) and we are looking at the tangent space of the identity element. In this case - what is the clifford algebra of the tangent space? Construction of a clifford algebra needs a choice of inner product (or more generally a quadratic form) - what are we picking here?
I was thinking the one corresponding to a unit circle, just the ordinary dot product.
Canon is probably the wrong word in a mathy context.