Not theOnion and not the Babylon Bee: 2 + 2 = 4 is just “cultural”
Don’t ask Brittany “O’Brien” Marshall to design a bridge for you:
“Nope the idea of 2+2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing,” wrote Marshall…
Marshall goes by the pronouns “she/her” and describes herself on Twitter as a “teacher, scholar, social justice change agent, Chicagoan, PhD student, architecture enthusiast, wannabe math person, BLM always…”
As a “wannabe math person,” Brittany clearly has a long way to go. And of course, no one on earth is saying that 2 + 2 is the only way of knowing, so even that part of Marshall’s statement is wrong.
It’s easy to joke about this, but really it’s no joke. What’s actually happening among bona fide scientists and those who decide whether or not to publish their work and/or to hire them and fund them is that cancel culture has been coming for them for many years now. I’m not sure who the first target was, but I know that when it happened to Larry Summers in 2005 I took notice. Back then I wrote:
…[T]his entire [Summers] affair is extremely chilling. There seems to be a trend in academia to try to drag us into a new Dark Ages–this time one in which political correctness, rather than religion, triumphs over science. And some of its proponents are academics and scientists themselves.
And I also wrote in 2005, concerning the Summers flap:
…[T]his is a case where feelings seem to have triumphed over reason. That academics–and scientists, at that–would allow this to happen is not a good sign. Whatever happened to the Enlightment? If Galileo were to return at this point, he might be in grave danger again–at least, if he were to suggest that the earth didn’t revolve around women.
In my own experience in an academic environment during the ’90s, after decades of being away, I was shocked at how far the PC police had come in stifling academic freedom. It seemed the new criterion for censure was whether a remark had offended someone. However careful the professor might be to couch the remark with qualifications, however delicately it was stated, if it offended the tender sensibilities of anyone in the audience, the professor was in trouble.
What happened to the Enlightenment? It got woke.
[ADDENDUM: This news from Princeton is utterly horrendous.]
Just wait until she gets a paycheck. She will certainly know what 2+2 is not 3.
Any criticism of the innumerate Brittany (a strong advocate for BLM, and an excellent example of the miseducation of the young) will be interpreted by many on the left as “racism” or perhaps as “Eurocentrism” for valuing reason and logic over emotion and ideology. One of the best books ever written on the hostility of many progressives to science and rational discourse is Higher Superstition by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, the former a biologist and the latter a mathematician (and neither one a conservative).
The left has gone 1984. 2+2=5 or whatever number one may choose in order to destroy Western Civilization.
Meanwhile I keep reloading.
Political correctness is a religion, which makes the Dark Ages an apt metaphor for our current societal descent.
I’d love to watch video of her audit by the IRS. Maybe the rest of us could learn new ways to reduce our taxes.
LYNN HARGROVE (5:06 pm) said:
“Just wait until she gets a paycheck. She will certainly know that 2+2 is not 3.”
She will *insist* it’s 5, because she is entitled to additional dollars by virtue [ahem!] of being a member of a historically oppressed group. See how it works?
There are four lights!!
I wonder if Marshall has a pet hampster.
She is probably the type of person that designed the pedestrian bridge that collapsed. There are literally thousand of these pedestrian bridges so you would think that the design had been standardized by now and all you need to do is choose a standard design and copy it. Evidently these people were reinventing the wheel, or bridge, as the case may be, but not very well.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/22/design-error-blamed-florida-international-university-pedestrian-bridge-collapse/2449316001/
You do a disservice by misquoting the author, newneo.
“And of course, no one on earth is saying that 2+2 is the only way of knowing”
Thus spake the author: “2+2 equaling 4”
So, then, count me among the first.
“2+2 equaling 4” is, indeed, the only way of knowing.
guinspen:
Of course 2 + 2 = 4 is the only way of knowing what 2 + 2 is.
But math is not the only way of knowing about life. It doesn’t tell us everything about everything. So it’s not the only way of knowing.
It is, however, the final word on 2 + 2.
This, however, is the Bee, only a bit in advance of the NYT, I suspect.
https://babylonbee.com/news/international-manhunt-under-way-for-those-who-signed-letter-asking-for-tolerance-of-differing-viewpoints
2+2 = 4 is counting arithmetic. 2+2 “=” 5, 6, 7 is a sociopolitical construct or congruence.
On the Princeton letter. It is indeed horendous, but not surprising as academia has been heading down that road for awhile. Two thoughts:
1) Let’s see if the AAUP lives up to their charter. I sincerely doubt it as they have been moving away from academic freedom for sometime. The real test is if this tribunal model goes to public universities and survives the inevitable lawsuit. If so, the US is over as a free country.
2) scan the list of signatories. Lots of STEM people there. The virus of totalitarianism has now infected even them. Higher education is done.
…the idea of 2+2 equaling 4 is cultural and because of western imperialism/colonization, we think of it as the only way of knowing… –B. Marshall
Keep in mind that Carlos Castaneda got his Master’s degree from UCLA in 1968 with “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” about a magical shaman. He acquired a Ph.D from UCLA with a later Don Juan book. He went on to write 12 books in the series and sell over 28 million copies.
The whole project was a hoax from the beginning and was thoroughly busted by Richard de Mille (whose uncle was Cecil B. DeMille) to the standards of anyone objective.
Nonetheless, UCLA stands by the degrees it granted Castaneda and his books are still classified in libraries as non-fiction. There was a brief attempt to shame UCLA into admitting the hoax, but the priests of that temple stood fast.
Once you confess that 2+2=5, and it was your fault that anyone ever thought otherwise, your Owners can do whatever they want with you.
Doc Zero:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1280476277309427713.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1280854385111769089.html
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1280915656536477700.html
Make Orwell Fiction Again.
Please.
Thankfully (and hopefully), all this madness will disappear when Trump is defeated by mail-in voting in November. The mask police and the morality police will fade away as everything opens back up and we are allowed to do things we enjoy. People will be told to no longer worry about the cold virus that had been going around. I’ve given up, and really hope Trump is defeated, so that I can be permitted to live a somewhat palatable life as a slave to the elite.
Ask a progressive if it’s true that there is no such thing as truth?
PostModern Lysenkoism.
I do soooo much want someone to gather together statements like this, fly to Nairobi, Kenya and ask Africans what they think about this crap.
As everyone here knows, the Left has long been using our Constitutional freedoms and legal protections against that very system. So there’s no peaceful cure to the Left’s machinations because there’s no legal remedy to widespread sedition and treason. Only a temporary palliative, for those like us, only a temporary stay of execution.
It’s already begun, the Marxist left with the support of their liberal useful idiots is conducting a “full court press” with the goal of ‘canceling’ our unalienable rights. That’s why it is going to come down to “politics by other means”. It’s now just a matter of when, not if.
We increasingly face a binary choice; ‘living’ upon our knees or refusing to back down.
When push finally comes to shove, some of us are going to refuse to back down and then everyone will, one way or another, declare themselves.
The greater the evil, the greater the sacrifice good must make to defeat evil.
Yet any reservations from normal citizens and Trump supporters about the craziness coming from certified experts are met with the accusations of denialism, fragility and ignorance. Hence, Tom Nichols’ book, “The Death of Expertise” (2017). Nichols is a NeverTrump conservative and almost all his blame is heaped on the Right.
__________________________________________________
Donald J. Trump’s taste for advisers with little or no government experience; his selection of cabinet members like Scott Pruitt and Rick Perry, who have expressed outright hostility to the agencies they now oversee; and the slow pace of making senior-level appointments in high-profile departments like State, Treasury and Homeland Security — all speak to the new president’s disregard for policy expertise and knowledge, just as his own election victory underscores many voters’ scorn for experience.
This is part of a larger wave of anti-rationalism that has been accelerating for years — manifested in the growing ascendance of emotion over reason in public debates, the blurring of lines among fact and opinion and lies, and denialism in the face of scientific findings about climate change and vaccination.
“Americans have reached a point where ignorance, especially of anything related to public policy, is an actual virtue,” the scholar Tom Nichols writes in his timely new book, “The Death of Expertise.” “To reject the advice of experts is to assert autonomy, a way for Americans to insulate their increasingly fragile egos from ever being told they’re wrong about anything. It is a new Declaration of Independence: No longer do we hold these truths to be self-evident, we hold all truths to be self-evident, even the ones that aren’t true. All things are knowable and every opinion on any subject is as good as any other.”
–Michiko Kakutani, “‘The Death of Expertise’ Explores How Ignorance Became a Virtue”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/books/the-death-of-expertise-explores-how-ignorance-became-a-virtue.html
huxley,
Based on your excerpt, Nichols’ book, “The Death of Expertise” reveals an appalling amount of projection. The only question is he an utter fool or a mendacious knave…
In either case, he’s demonstrated himself to be “a waste of skin”.
I am old and have lived through a lot of American history. I can’t shake this feeling of impending doom for our country. Am I alone in this feeling?
You are not, Francesca. That’s why I recently bought 1000 rounds of .223 ammunition to stave that doom off as long as I can.
Could explain a lot about performance in schools
how did she get her phd? according to my sis, they give them out like candy to the girls… the boys arent there with a huge ratio of free money for more edumacation like that… (given the degrees my sis has (i have zero), she is pissed they are losing value… me? i never had the money… though she has 5 and working on 6 now.. she never went to bronx science, and i did… had to sleep in the park to get the unfinished education i did get… but dont worry, i am not self made and will be living on the street soon as i am a racist (though my indonesian wife doesnt think so))
Zaid Jilani, Ilhan Omar,… it’s who happens when you let in the “ wretched refuse“ who are filled with hate and refuse to love liberty.
Based on your excerpt, Nichols’ book, “The Death of Expertise” reveals an appalling amount of projection. The only question is he an utter fool or a mendacious knave…
Geoffrey Britain: Since “fave” [fool+knave] is taken, how about a new category, the “knool” [knave+fool]?
Sort of like “True, False, Null” as OBloodyHell mentioned in the kafkatraps topic, we can have “Knave, Fool, Knool”.
Knools. It really does seem to me that people manage the feat by jumping between the two states as fast as they need to. Which contributes to their camouflage since the rest of us waste time wondering, “Knave or fool?”
(Of course the nicer folks wonder, “Fool or knave?”)
Is it a particle or a wave?
Is it a fool or a knave?
Run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes?
Huxley,
Good catch on Castaneda. I once had a humanities course of some kind, taught by a clown who referenced Castaneda and some book called Morning of the Magicians repeatedly, citing them as if they were peer reviewed gospels. I suppose, given enough faith in your mushrooms, and of your disciples in you, you could literally fly. Though if some mean Neanderthals dragged you to the top of a 10 storey building and tossed you off, the flight might be said to have been successful in only a metaphorical sense, the cosmic conditions not being properly aligned.
But these references and claims came in the form, or I should say formlessness, of an amorphpus jumble of assertions piled one on another. It was as if the guy would light on an idea briefly, dump criticism on the convention minded, and then flit off in some other random direction to repeat the process. The nuts and bolts of this mysterious new dawning, were never described, nor were practical examples adduced.
Of course when I arrived at a school with an at least regionally prestigious reputation, I was taught anthropology by a professor there who still covered Margaret Mead, with a straighht face.
So ….
Some might find this old article interesting and maybe even reassuring. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/02/13/archives/alternative-realities-realities.html
Just because no one hasn’t found a case where 1+1 is not equal to 2 does not mean it is always equal to 2, because it has not been tried infinitely. “1” is an abstract concept. There is no actual physical thing as a 1…..
Oh really… hmmmm…
reminds me of the mistaken proofs that show 1=2
@om its a floor wax AND a desert topping! (new Shimmer!)
Huxley: Sort of like “True, False, Null” as OBloodyHell mentioned in the kafkatraps topic, we can have “Knave, Fool, Knool”.
and we all know about our Fave… right?
Princeton is appalling. Why the need for so many Afro-Am professors? And you gotta like that the Director of American Studies is a Chinese!
COVID will help the Ivies, the sanctimonious Leftist primas, dig their own graves.
Who will spend the money for an on-line education in order to hold a once-noble Princeton degree? We can thank COVID! A vaccine will not arrive for a looong time, if ever.
We are not entering the Dark Ages; we are in them. A few colleges, like Hillsdale (to which I contribute, as opposed to my leftist “highly rated” liberal arts college), will be sentinel hold-outs as long as they are permitted to exist.
Maths has to be internally consistent or it isn’t Maths. If 2 + 2 = 5 then the subject literally falls apart.
Bertrand Russell showed 1 + 1 = 2 from first principles. From that 2 + 2 = 4. From first principles — culture not a part of it at all.
It’s not like the Arabs, Chinese or Indians think different. Nor did Mayans, Aztecs, ancient Egyptians. These “other” ways of thinking are all — all — from societies that never built anything bigger than a large hut. They are very definitely a tiny minority, and not hugely successful, even in their own terms.
Good catch on Castaneda.
DNW: Thanks!
The Castaneda story still bothers me. I was, admittedly, a credulous young man, but not entirely stupid, when I read his books in the early 70s and I was quite excited. Here was proof of the wild stuff I had suspected was true. An account of paranormal experiences from a tradition I had never known with the stamp of approval from a major university plus some high-powered anthropologists and intellectuals of the time.
If the Castaneda books were true, they changed the world.
Unfortunately, the books got stranger and stranger and stupider. At the end of the fifth book, Don Juan and Don Genaro, the two sorcerers Castaneda’s readers had come to know and love, leave the earth to go live in some perfect red ladybug world, I had had it.
Later I learned that after the big success of his first three books, Castaneda withdrew from the public and began one of the weirdest cults I know of (and I know about a lot of cults). He was the charismatic leader and took on many of his female followers as lovers, which is par for the course, but he had them all dye their hair blonde and wear it short. After he died, five of those women disappeared never to be seen again. It’s suspected that they had a suicide pact with Castaneda to meet him at the end of infinity or some such blather. The bones of one of his women were found in Death Valley.
Castaneda’s books are still taught in college courses. I’ve read that most anthropologists consider his work fraudulent, but Castaneda is still on the side of truth and beauty as far as official academia goes.
[La Gorda, a female sorcerer, speaking to Castaneda]: “It was then that [Don Juan] first found out about the world of those little red bugs. He said that their world was the most beautiful and perfect thing one could imagine. So, when it was time for him and Genaro to leave this world, they gathered all their second attention and focused it on that world. Then [Don Juan] opened the crack, as you yourself witnessed, and they slipped through it into that world, where they are waiting for us to join them someday. [Don Juan] and Genaro liked beauty. They went there for their sheer enjoyment.”
–Carlos Castaneda, “The Second Ring of Power”