Wanted to share this thread from Tim Gowers on the “2+2=5” debate. As a Field’s Medalist he’s about as authorative as you can get on what math is. https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1290219038614798338

Trying to translate technical topics is a bit of a risk because you are going out on a limb and talking about things in a way that people don’t talk about them. You don’t have the safety of talking about things exactly how everybody else talks about them.

I worry about what other technical people will say because you have to understand things at an bery high level to get analogies right. What if I betray some basic misundertanding to thousands of my peers. How embarrassing would that be? I’m supposed to be Harvard student!

Just to sum up. I very much appreciate when my takes are appreciated by the technical community and of course, I’m sure I’ll come up short sometimes but I think it’s worth it because it pushes me to examine my own level of understanding.

Also, I appreciate that @wtgowers and the online math community don’t feel it’s “woke nonsense” to think about the ways that “2+2=5” might be true because when I decided to defend it, I wasn’t sure how the community would react!

Fields* (sorry had to add that. It was going to bug me. )

Addendum: I retweeted the original thread by one of my math heroes after only skimming it to see: 1. if it agreed with me on the math. It did. 2. if it mentioned me. It did not. I was 100% acting from ego. Only later did I realize its problematic aspects. I apologize.