I‘ve waited for this to play out before commenting.

The issue with 2 + 2 = 5 playing out in @ConceptualJames’ feed is about the “Principle of Explosion” and is quite serious despite the stupidity of the exercise. It isn’t about math, conventions or assumptions. It’s about us.

The Principle of Explosion is that “From a contradiction, you can deduce anything.” and weirdly we just lined up:

TEAM Y: I don’t want to live in a world subject to claims of objective reality and so I always emphasize the subjective.

TEAM Z: [just reverse Subjective/Objective]

Now in truth, we should all fight for both objective and subjective realities (e.g. light as having objective wavelength perceived subjectively as color) but we won’t. So the 2+2=5 Team Y crowd like the idea that in some tortured way, no one can say that this is “wrong”. But why?

Well, it has to do with an entire world view. “Speaking my truth”, “Lived Experience”, etc all point to ways in which the dominant story fails to include. But the remedy sought is not a separation of objective reality from dominant narrative. It’s the destruction of consistency.

And so the game is increasingly to go after anything-at-all being objectively wrong. Why? Because if we can get a single seeming contradiction through the hard STEM subjects then the principle of explosion does the work. It’s Luke Skywalker looking for the thermal exhaust port:

So one team yells “What about the assumptions!!” but is really saying “I don’t want folks I dislike telling me that things have to be some particular way in an objective reality!” Yet ultimately that will lead to the Principle of Explosion & the loss of the “Unity of Knowledge”.

Because if 2+2 is both 4 and 5 then Zero equals One, True and False are the same, and the whole edifice collapses. Which if you are on TEAM Y is basically Christmas...until you figure out what you just did. Because TEAM Y depends on the objective reality & assumptions they decry.

Too me the issue isn’t about the excercise. It’s simply this: “What do we now do about the sudden ascendency of an entire class of reporters, professors and other trusted figures obviously trying to unhook the constraints of logic, data and reality for political & activist ends?”

They think they are the rebel alliance, but they are actually unhooking all of our shared reality trying to turn everything universal into yet another “social construct”. Yet in their minds, they are fighting an evil empire of white western patriarchal tyranny. A kind of LARPing.

So to sum up: I believe in an objective reality. I believe we are subjective beings. I believe that 2 + 2 = 4 and not 5, but that one can obviously redefine words and symbols to rescue any falsehood.

Yet the matter is serious. It’s about the Principle of Explosion, after all.