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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So in other words your using inaccurate measuring tools. The math isn't wrong, you are. Math describes with precision. Just because you are imprecise doesn't mean math isnt.
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Math itself can't be wrong or right, it's a tool used to organize our thinking about the real world, and the choices of how to translate real world phenomena into mathematical abstractions are fundamentally subjective and limited by our human perspective
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ChanceRisker and
At most you can say that "Given the assumptions and rules agreed to, you can evaluate whether certain mathematical statements are true or false." But it's a big qualification.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @arthur_affect and
And one that has required centuries of mathematical research and study to really unpack. It's ongoing.
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