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> The question is what’s 2+2 and the answer being it’s a social construct. Brother, you'll never guess what type of construct numbers are. If American voters
by bccdee 1y ago
> The question is what’s 2+2 and the answer being it’s a social construct.
Brother, you'll never guess what type of construct numbers are.
If American voters prefer simple, incorrect answers over complex truths, that's a problem with their education system, not with trans rights.
- account42 1y agoYou're proving his point. Discussion of Peano axioms or however you want to construct natural numbers is irrelevant to the question what's two plus two, which has a straightforward answer to anyone who isn't being intentionally obtuse.
- bccdee 1y agoA better point of comparison would not be a question like "what is 2+2," but "what is 4?" There's a superficial, circular answer ("What is 4? It's 2+2"), and there's a more complex and rigorous answer which doesn't look good on camera ("What is 4? Well, numbers are a social construct used to communicate and analyze etc etc, Peano arithmetic blah blah"). These questions also admit "straightforward" answers ("what's 4?" raises 4 fingers "this many") ("what's a woman?" points to a woman "one of those"), but these don't really answer the deeper question being asked. They gesture at a preexisting category and demand that it be recognized without actually explaining the nature of that category or its boundaries.