Mason  🏃‍♂️ ✂️

Like I said, I think there are not-necessarily-wrong ways to understand virtually everything as "socially constructed." But I think we need to either maintain careful conversational hygiene or use new terms if we're going to be talking about cultural stuff in the same breath

I think I disagree because one underlying aspect and strength of referring to it as a social construct is that it dispels the magic or alure of "facts don't care about your feelings, logic proves me right" belief structures.

Counterpoint: math is True with a capital T is the Motte to the facts don't care about your feelings, there are two genders, SJWs care too much about "fee-fees" Bailey.

I mean... it seems like you're choosing a factual claim — or at least, a lens on an area of epistemology — because it undermines the opinions of people you disagree with? FWIW I just don't think one's understanding of what math is has to imply anything about social ideology

Personally: I think it's silly to deny that there are ground mathematical truths, I think using the phrase "social construct" is v misleading on many of these layers, I don't think that facts care about your feelings, but I do think gender is complex & feelings matter a whole lot

I think ground mathematical truths are so buried in erudite axiomatic theories as to be useless to talk about! The ground truths are boring and even things like "not not P implies P" are serious contentious issues in modern math!

And I think the average person would have an extremely difficult time discerning between things that are the former - boring erudite truths - and the latter - simple statements a large chunk of mathematicians disagree with!

The fact that simple-seeming axioms are actually sometimes very contentious is like the rigor issue — we can not know the answer, or the field can be mistaken about the answer, but that does not mean there is not an actual ground truth