And the best way to build a foundation to avoid such errors is to start off teaching children to THINK To understand that mathematics, including even simple arithmetic, is a CONSTRUCTED TOOL Which is what all that newfangled nonsense about set theory and whatnot is about
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
That CONSTRUCTED TOOL creates a meaningful SHARED UNDERSTANDING
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Replying to @Aya62335284 @perdricof
Yes And it is VERY IMPORTANT that our society have a SHARED UNDERSTANDING that of the LIMITS OF THE TOOL
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It is therefore of GREAT SOCIAL VALUE for educators to talk about circumstances in which "2 + 2 = 5" might be true, and of NO SOCIAL VALUE to go on angry Ayn Rand rants about how people who deny eternal verities like "2 + 2 = 4" are heretics and anathema
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
How utterly irrelevant Ayn Rand is here, and your discussion of educators/ education is a continued deflection. You’re still deflecting. Why?
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Replying to @Aya62335284 @perdricof
I'm not deflecting, this is the topic at hand You are arguing against a ridiculous strawman and acting like the people who want to advance human understanding are somehow the ones delaying it
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Replying to @arthur_affect @perdricof
Become a street vendor and start arguing for that degree of rounding. See how it goes.
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Replying to @Aya62335284 @perdricof
If I do not have access to a measurement tool with the degree of precision I want, and I am forced to compromise based on estimates (a common outcome in street vending, depending on the street), there are many situations where the 2+2 = 5 result is the fairer one
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You get that, right Do you understand I'm talking about a completely commonsense, real-life problem here That there are plenty of situations where dogmatically saying 2+2 = 4 is a way for me to cheat you
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The more general way to phrase what I'm talking about is "Weigh them all together" If the scale has a fudge factor then adding up separate results from it will make it worse But the "2+2=5" idea is absolutely an accurate way of describing it
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(This came up on Square One TV when I was a kid Months typically have four seven-day weeks, plus a few days extra It is very tempting to round down and just say "one month = four weeks" But if you do that for the whole year, you've cheated someone out of 4 weeks out of 52)
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(That particular example, even though you'd think it's a fucking obvious one, is one that's been used to fuck over uneducated people in the wild before Hence you always count the number of weeks in a year by dividing 365 / 7 = 52 plus a day, not by adding up the months)
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think dates and times are an excellent example to show how flawed our systems can be, too. Years are not exactly 365 days, hence why we have to adjust with a leap year every four years (except on the turn of the millennium, except every four centuries its still a leap year...)
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