I have very mixed feelings about this blog post, let me tell you why (a thread) 1/ https://twitter.com/maanow/status/1291354617780076546

To start, @profkeithdevlin is a very talented math communicator. One thing he does really well is call hard things hard, easy things easy, complicated things complicated. 2/

The blog post does a nice job of illustrating that 2+2=4 is more complicated than it appears and also a nice job of illustrating why it appears easy. 3/

Mixed feeling 1: Devlin acknowledges that the bulk of work on 2+2 and culture has been in primary education, but promptly sets that aside. On the one hand, that's fine, it's not his field. 4/

On the other hand, the context in primary education is actually really important for understanding why the controversy really matters, and why it's definitely *not* a controversy about axiomatization. 5/

Related, mixed feeling 2: I really sympathize with Devlin's impulse to set aside the ignorant straw-man-spouting trolls (to paraphrase the intro), but if your takeaway is "oh, it's about axioms rather than bad-faith trolls" then you've really missed the point. 6/

It would be great of @profkeithdevlin took this opportunity when the expertise of primary educators is under attack from reactionary trolls to stand up for these colleagues rather than dismiss the attacks and set primary educators aside. Maybe a future post? 7/

The cultural politics of primary math education (and the devaluing of culturally-aware instruction) are a huge part of the culture-ness of 2+2 and also a huge part of the background to the attacks on twitter and elsewhere. 8/

Mixed feeling 3: If you're going to make this about axiomatisation, I love the example of Russell and Whitehead's really long and complicated proof of 1+1=2. But Devlin misses some key points about the history that make the example even more relevant and illuminating. 9/