Read on Twitter
If your defense of the thesis "trans people deserve human rights" literally cites "well, actually, sometimes, 2 plus 2 really *is* 5" as support, you are not helping. You are acting a fool, and making us (not *just* you) look like narcissistic jackasses.
This is literally the climax of the most overwhelmingly bleak work of dystopian fiction I& #39;m aware of - 1984. The depravity and power of Big Brother is demonstrated and enhanced by forcing Winston to say and believe that 2+2 is 5. Can you even hear yourselves?
This is pretty much along the lines of "Sauron was right, he really *should* have one ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them, otherwise Trump wins!" level of enthusiastic embrace of literary evil in support of a reasonable cause. Just please, stop.
If you& #39;re going to cite fictional evil characters as inspiration, at least try to have some humor about it:
"Bender was right, kill all humans! Otherwise they& #39;ll keep yelling stupid things at each other on twitter!"
"Bender was right, kill all humans! Otherwise they& #39;ll keep yelling stupid things at each other on twitter!"
And on top of that, I honestly can& #39;t tell if I& #39;m more annoyed at this by virtue of being a (I hope) reasonable transsexual, or by virtue of being someone who deeply loves mathematics. Trans rights are obviously important to me. But *everyone* needs math and science.
And on that, the reason 2+2=4 is because the integers are foundational to all of mathematics. Carefully-constructed cases where "2" doesn& #39;t mean 2 and "4" doesn& #39;t mean 4 can be mooted, but that just means the question you& #39;re answering is not "2+2=?", but something different.
For instance, in modular arithmetic, "2" is used as shorthand for "the equivalence class to which the integer 2 belongs", not "the integer 2". As long as you& #39;re clear it& #39;s shorthand, it& #39;s fine, but these are two different concepts. Deliberately muddying them is not mathematics.
