Writing at New Discourses, James Lindsay covers a recent low-scale dustup among academics about the idea that 2+2 could equal 5.
As Lindsey points out, a number of different academics in different fields attempted to "prove" not that 2+2 did equal 5, but that it could and the idea that it 2+2 always and must equal 4 is a form of hegemonic thinking. Lindsey's piece is long, but the upshot of it is, of course, that 2+2 equaling four is not hegemonic thinking, it's plain old logical thinking. And the idea that 2+2 could equal 5 is not a form of open-minded thinking, it's plain old illogical not thinking.
There were a couple of hilarious examples of folks trying to come up with situations in which 2+2=5. One involved two factories with two machines apiece and an assortment of spare parts. If the factories were merged and the assorted spare parts were assembled into another machine, then 2+2 would equal 5! Except, as Lindsay points out, the example actually proves that 2.5+2.5=5, which is the exact same kind of statement as 2+2=4. Other finagles may have smelled mathier but none of them provided any real case for saying that 2+2=5.
Sure, Kurt Gödel's "Incompleteness Theorem" makes it impossible to prove that 2+2=4 using just plain old arithmetic. But in the history of humanity's use of simple arithmetic it has always done so and every mathematical operation which has assumed basic addition to be true has shown itself to work.
Lindsey quotes some of the tweets that sniffed down their collective noses at his posts (Jack Dorsey, I don't know if you are a praying man but if you are, a fit subject for your most fervent, ground groveling petitions is that karma is not real, because if it is your invention has loaded you up with enough of the bad kind to keep you reincarnating as a bug long past the heat death of the universe). It emphasizes something that people in my line of work need to remember.
People who follow Jesus and proclaim him as Lord are not, if they obey the instructions, permitted to hate other people. Especially just because of disagreements over worldviews.
But we are not required to pretend they are not stupid as all get-out.
2 comments:
my reaction, as just a stupid biologist, to this, is to go get two rocks, and then go get two more rocks, and line them up.
Call "two" and "four" what you will, but the arithmetic seems to hold up. Higher mathematics may be something humans invented, but I think basic numeric arithmetic is an underlying principle in the universe that we discovered: it seems many animals, for example, can do basic counting, so two eggs in a crow's nest, with two additional eggs, is four eggs (and probably too many crow babies to feed), not five eggs.
I'm also vaguely reminded of a ST: TNG episode where Picard insisted that there were four lights, not five.
Yeah, I can't really fathom what a refusal to admit the basic operations of math does to help oppressed people.
Like your point on what we call the numbers, the operations stay the same. Lindsay mentions some people who claimed that, since in a base-3 counting system, 2+2=11, we can't say that it's always equal to 4. Except that in base-3, the way you write 4 is 11, so it's the same statement. I had poor math grades, but even I knew that.
Post a Comment