Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

I don't know that he's ever made either of those claims specifically, at least prior to Matt's tweet. Uri Harris wrote the piece that referenced those claims, and I read it as a hand-wavey reference to the extremist fringe

Is math being a social construct an extremist fringe? Am I for defending that? That seems like a bizarre association to make

It depends on what you mean by "social construct," which is why it's fertile ground for an effective motte/bailey. All of reality is and its contents are "socially constructed," given a particular definition for "social construct." You'd have to ask Uri what he meant

For my part (being non-mathsy), David Deutsch has gotten me interested in Popper & I like Popper's take (what we call math can be logical *or* descriptive claims). A layer up, I think relabeling "useful math conventions" as "social constructs" isn't helpful for understanding them

You can go another layer up and talk about whether any society (necessarily biased & systemically ignorant, as they all are) that funds maths research for its own purposes will output distorted math. I'm certain this does output some amount of bad work and less useful conventions

I'm not a mathematician and have low confidence in all of these positions, and tbh at each layer I don't think "Is this socially constructed?" is a particularly useful question — though I think it's a more useful question at the top of the stack (re: institutions).

But I wouldn't bemoan anyone asking or answering it at any layer **as long as they're clear about the layer they're working on.** When Matt relies on a "philosophy of math" motte & then follows up by tweeting about trans athletes, I feel very https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1126228807273336833 …

Why is that? I don't see the Motte and Bailey here. Both are socially constructed, neither of which confers a moral value on the construction. Indeed, in the case of both gender and math, it invites criticism that long held beliefs that are held to be may not be true