Reality Can’t be Defined Away
Or: Proving statements with semantic trickery isn’t the silver bullet you think it is.
It’s become tedious seeing how many political spats on twitter start and end with everyone on all sides frantically comparing each other to the State in Orwell’s 1984. Regardless, It’s happened again and I’d like to explore what I’ll now called the “2+2=5” incident.
If you aren’t a regular on twitter, I’d like to first offer my congratulations and profound respect. Second, let me tell you about the 2+2=5 incident. James Lindsay, a former professor of mathematics, hoax paper author, and anti-woke commentator began by posting the following image on twitter:
Meant as a satirical statement about dominant perspectives in academic critical theory, this image is meant to highlight the absurdity of some postmodern philosophers rejecting “objective reality” in favour of scoring political points.
This was also a reference to Orwell’s 1984, wherein it is claimed that:
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it.
Lindsay’s personal politics aside, 2+2=4 is relatively unobjectionable. However, by associating the claim with an anti-woke position, it inevitably invited a series of otherwise very intelligent people to start grasping at all the ways in which 2+2=5. See below for some select examples:
Kareem Carr, a Harvard data science PhD student was an early participant. Apparently 1+1=3 if you’re talking about chickens, or perhaps the addition of a fox could make 1+1=1.
Presumably non-western countries don’t think 2+2=4? Actually, on second thought, I’d bet serious money that mathematicians in Kenya, Japan, or Trinidad also know that 2+2=4.
Points for creativity?
Finally. the enlightened centrist take we’ve all been waiting for. Perhaps we should all band together to support 2+2=3 to shift the Overton window back to 2+2=4
How did we get here?
What makes legions of otherwise extremely intelligent people — I’ve found Kareem to be a particularly great science communicator — begin searching for any way to prove that 2+2=5?
I think a major factor in this dispute is that very few people involved really care about mathematics. What they see is Lindsay, an anti-woke, right-aligned commentator making a claim, and Kareem and other left-y accounts mounting a passionate defence against him. Your support for either side would, I’d guess, depend pretty much entirely on your political beliefs which are entirely orthogonal to whether or not 2+2 equals 4.
- For right-wing users, this is further proof of postmodern neomarxist deconstruction of western civilization. (did I pass the ideological Turing test?)
- For left-wing users, this is clever data scientists, mathematicians, and other intellectuals debunking a conservative dinosaur’s inordinate fixation on “objectivity”, which we all know isn’t possible in science or mathematics. (did I pass again?)
- Sane people on either side will see the argument as a smokescreen to diminish or inflate the status of participants. They could be arguing about the best flavour of ice cream and would have similar levels of vitriol.
I’ve found this dynamic best captured by Eliezer Yudkowsky, in his essay politics in the mind-killer. I’ll let him explain it:
“Politics is an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back — providing aid and comfort to the enemy. People who would be level-headed about evenhandedly weighing all sides of an issue in their professional life as scientists, can suddenly turn into slogan-chanting zombies when there’s a Blue or Green position on an issue.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky
If this is a war, let’s look at how either side fortifies their position.
Words, words, words
Definitions are a tricky thing. They help us categorize our world, but the way they’re created is through the most subjective process possible — the emergent use of a word by our entire society. English is not like French, with an official authority on the language. Instead, we rely on common usage to determine what words mean.
We can even change the meaning of words on the fly, or create new ones as it suits of. In a conversation I could say “gargamel means happy, and I’m very gargamel today”. You might think that’s weird, but you’d understand what I meant. It would be another thing entirely if I said “gargamel means beautiful, so when you see a photo of gargamel, understand that he is very beautiful”
I’ll admit some people would find Gargamel incredibly atttractive. Some people also think Nickelback is a good band. Let’s set those people aside for a moment and consider the remaining vast majority of the human population. Redefining the word gargamel to mean “beautiful” is a valid move in the English language, but this does not entail that Gargamel himself becomes beautiful.
The 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 camps seem to be undergoing a similar misunderstanding. When someone like Lindsay says 2+2=4, he is referring to the idea that two objects — let’s represent them by sticks ( I I ) — in addition to another two objects ( I I ) would then be equal to four objects ( I I I I). Put succinctly, I I + I I = I I I I.
Proponents of 2+2=5 instead fall back on the inherent subjectivity of language. Here’s an example:
For the 2+2=5 people. it depends on what the words “two”, “plus”, “two”, “equals”, and “five” all mean. We could arbitrary define 2 to mean passion, the second 2 to mean intelligence, and therefore claim 5 is equal to genius and it would be correct in some sense.
Dynamics of Definitions
Scott Alexander describes a similar phenomenon in his essay the categories were made for man, not man for the categories. He asks us to imagine explaining the concept of “fish” to the main character of Duck Dynasty, and how the existence of hair, genetic trees, and other mammalian characteristics make whales a kind of mammal, not a fish. Mr. Dynasty might respond that he doesn’t really care, and calls a whale a fish because “it lives in the ocean”. Per Alexander:
You can point out how many important professors of icthyology in fancy suits use your definition, and how only a couple of people with really weird facial hair use his. But now you’re making a status argument, not a factual argument. Your argument is “conform to the way all the cool people use the word ‘fish’”, not “a whale is really and truly not a fish”.
In the case of the 2+2=5 incident, I’d offer a slight amendment to Scott’s terminology. Definitions made to describe reality, reality needn’t conform to our definitions.
If a 2+2=5 advocate says they’re right, assuming a host of idiosyncratic definitions, they are correct but annoying. If they claim 2+2=5 in the sense of I I + I I = I I I I I because, in their estimation, literal reality is socially constructed, they’re wrong and annoying. From direct observation, most of the big names in on this side of the debate belong to the former category. There is, however, a disturbing number of people who seem to earnestly reject the idea of mathematical proof out of a bizarre commitment to their conceptions of social justice.
If a 2+2=4 advocate says they’re right, in the sense of I I + I I = I I I I, they’re right and boring. If they say they’re right because language is objective and we should be sticking it to the postmodern neomarxist leftists who have corrupted our educational institutions, they’re wrong and annoying. Most people on this side of the debate seem to be in the wrong and annoying category. The big names commenting seem to favour the right and boring interpretation with the air of someone wondering why this became such a big deal in the first place.
In summary, we have a lot of annoying people out there. The people who mean 2+2=4 in the boring sense never seem to go viral on twitter in the same way people who say wheat can be used in breadmaking never go viral. Trivially true statements don’t make it to the big leagues of twitter — it’s the exciting claims, true or false, that get airtime.
The real intellectuals involved seem to believe their respective side’s more reasonable interpretation, Lindsay being a notable exception. Their various followers, on the other hand, are very much in arguments-are-soldiers mode.
Takeaway
Twitter is a flaming pile of hot takes — most of which are exciting, few of which are true when subjected to a modicum of scrutiny. I fully expect to see similar arguments in this vein play out over the coming months with the same actors, same arguments, and same end result: each side confirming their belief that the other is full of raging lunatics that can’t understand simple truths about how the world works.
