so if $f:A \to B$ is an epimorphism, then $B \to B \otimes_A B$ is an isomorphism (choose either component), but this map is just $f:A \to B$ tensored with $B$ over $A$
@MatheinBoulomenos is the following reasoning also acceptable? That $f$ is epic is equivalent to $A\to A\otimes_\Bbbk A$ being a $\Bbbk$-algebra isomorphism. In particular this is a $\Bbbk$-linear isomorphism, so $\dim _\Bbbk A = \dim_\Bbbk A\otimes _\Bbbk A=(\dim _\Bbbk A)^2$ whence $\dim _\Bbbk A=1$. Now since $f$ is a $\Bbbk$-linear injection between $\Bbbk$-linear space of the same dimension, it's bijective.
@MatheinBoulomenos I read the following nice proposition today: a finite type ring morphism is epic iff its (scheme-theoretic) fibers are empty or isomorphisms. The reference was EGA, but I thought you might see a self-contained approach :)
Nakayama implies that if $\kappa(\mathfrak{p}) \to \kappa(\mathfrak{p}) \otimes_{R_{\mathfrak{p}}}S_{\mathfrak{p}}$ is surjective, then so is $R_{\mathfrak{p}} \to S_{\mathfrak{p}}$
so from the condition that scheme-theoretic fibers are empty or isomorphisms, we even get that $R \to S$ is surjective, not just epic
Sorry if this is silly confusion, but I seem to get a strange conclusion. If $R\to S$ is epic then its fibers are either isomorphisms or empty. In particular its fibers are surjections. Conversely if $R\to S$ is of finite type and has surjective fibers then you've shown $R\to S$ is itself surjective. Doesn't this imply that any finite type epimorphism is surjective?
@Semiclassical your surface area integral is also 1/2 times the integral over $[0, 2\pi]^2$, and you can straightforwardly replace that with two contour integrals over $|z| = 1$ and $|z'| = 1$, which don't look too bad except for the square root and the branch points ...
@MatheinBoulomenos do you happen to have a geometric intuition for the fact surjectivity is stalk-local for ring (even module) morphisms? For sheaves over topological spaces this isn't true, and I guess it holds in the affine case because some cohomology vanishes, but I don't really understand the picture.
Hmm... I just realise that sets with restricted number of subsets is actually pretty common in social context
For example, consider a group of 8 people, and compute its powerset. Then there are clearly some subsets of people that are impossible because those people are incompatible
and thus need to be excluded
Of course, this can be easily done within the usual framework of set theory as follows:
Let the set by $A$. Then the required set of subset is:
$f(\mathcal{P}(A))$
where $f$ maps from powerset of $A$ to itself, getting some of its subsets
Therefore it should not be far fetch to have an axiom where there exists some set $S$ such that: