2+2=5 wall of shame

submitted by xoenix from midi.moe

all 33 comments
sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun

[–]ClassroomPast6178 12 insightful - 3 fun12 insightful - 2 fun13 insightful - 3 fun -  (7 children)

The whole 2+2=5 argument is ridiculous, it was a stupid maths joke and now some idiots are acting like it’s actual maths.

Next they’ll be claiming that cows are spherical because of a physics joke.

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 9 insightful - 2 fun9 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

The whole 2+2=5 argument is ridiculous, it was a stupid maths joke and now some idiots are acting like it’s actual maths.

I think it's worse than ridiculous. If you think about it, it's a very insidious mental trap that manipulates people into agreeing that a falsehood is truth (or vice-versa) because of a bit of verbal (or mathematical in this case) sleight of hand. And once you trained those people to agree to that "truth," you escalate in steady increments until they finally agree to the truth of that one thing that you most need their agreement on.

Look at all of the other "truths" that are being incessantly pushed; January 6th was an insurrection (oh, and look, states are now using that as justification to pull Trump from their ballots, convenient that), men can be women and women can be men, Covid is the new Black Death and we all need to mask up, isolate, and boost on command, children are fully capable of making life-altering choices regarding their bodies and we need to listen to them, and so on.

I'm not saying that 2+2 = 5 is going to reshape people's way of thinking all on its own, but I do see it was another aspect of the on-going effort to get people to blindly agree that something is factual just because a bunch of other people all nod their heads and agree that it's so.

[–]ID10T 11 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

"In 1984, "2+2=5" is a false statement created by the Party and an example of the many ways the Party controls people. In making people believe that a random, false statement is an objective truth, the Party distorts and claims control of truth itself. Winston understands that slogans like "2+2=5" are mechanisms of the Party's social control until he is tortured. In the end, he traces the equation in dust, showing that the Party eventually controls him, too."

[–]ClassroomPast6178 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes, I didn’t link it to the push to get people, especially normies, to accept untruths as truths. Makes sense why it’s all over twitter now.

[–]hfxB0oyADon't piss on my head & tell me it's raining. 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's a humanities answer to a mathematics question. So modern day.

[–]Musky༼⁠ ⁠つ⁠ ⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠ ⁠༽⁠つ 🐈 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

War is peace.

[–]LordoftheFliesAmeri-kin 2.0. Pronouns: MegaWhite/SuperStraight/UltraPatriarchy 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

From a certain twisted perspective, that's not even wrong. The ones who die do, indeed, have peace.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I identify as a nineteen dimensional hyperspherical cow and your remark triggers me!

[–]LtGreenCo 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Funny enough these are all essentially a boiled-down version of how they argue, e.g. use their own redefined terms or their own special brand of logic, cite heavily biased and/or unqualified sources, or gaslight with moral or material relativism, then, failing all of that, label their opponents bigots or nazis or something and declare victory by default.

[–]Musky༼⁠ ⁠つ⁠ ⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠ ⁠༽⁠つ 🐈 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I have managed to get the trifecta. I have been called a bigot, racist, and neo-nazi this week.

#winning

[–]LtGreenCo 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Congrats! Bonus points if you can ask them for proof/evidence and then they tell you to google it because it's not their job to educate you.

[–]OuroborosTheory 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (0 children)

mathematicians hate this one weird trick!

[–]hfxB0oyADon't piss on my head & tell me it's raining. 4 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I would be ashamed to admit i was this retarded.

[–]Tom_Bombadil 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Each argument is based on a borderline circumstance.

Let their employers pay them with 3+3=5 math.

Optimistically, these characters will run their organizations into the ground.

Realistically, these organizations are managed by globalist think tank NGOs, and they are not fools.

[–]Nintendogirl2 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'll admit embarrassingly enough I'm terrible at math (but really good at video games, really useful skill, I know). But I would never claim that math is the one in the wrong. These people are insane.

[–]HiddenFox 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah I wouldn't plan on getting to the moon with that math.

This whole conversation is a waste. Another distraction. Leave a one liner about how stupid people can be and let's move on.

[–]Musky༼⁠ ⁠つ⁠ ⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠ ⁠༽⁠つ 🐈 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Getting to the moon is easy, you just have to launch yourself at a place that isn't the moon and miss.

[–]topiary2 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ths is demoralization that Bezmenov talked about.

[–]notafed 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I took Discrete Mathematics in university a couple of years ago. The fun part is that you can prove that adding two even numbers always results in an even number and can never result in an odd number.

edit: you can also prove that adding two ODD numbers always results in an even number.

[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Lemma even_even_plus : forall n m, even n -> even m -> even (n + m). Proof. intros n m; case (even_plus_aux n m). intros H H0; case H0; auto. Qed.

See also: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall07/cos595/stdlib/html/Coq.Arith.Even.html#even_plus_aux

[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In case anyone tells me I am faking it, here is a low-level version of the proof. By far the non-trivial step is the implementation of Coq.Arith.Even.even_plus_aux, obviously. The fact that such a lemma would come in handy, would however is quite trivial with some practice.

Theorem adding_even: forall (x y:nat), Coq.Arith.Even.even x -> Coq.Arith.Even.even y -> Coq.Arith.Even.even (x + y). intros n m. case (Coq.Arith.Even.even_plus_aux n m). intros. apply H0. left. split. assumption. assumption. Qed.

Even shorter would be intros; apply H0; auto., but that would not be better.

[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

2+2=5 could be true in some system of logic. It's just that to understand that sentence, you need a university education with good grades.

None of the people talking there will understand.

Most people can't prove 2 + 2 = 4 in its usual interpretation, which is fucking pathetic, because even computers can do that since the 1960s.

[–]LtGreenCo 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

2+2=5 could be true in some system of logic

It would not be a practical system of logic, not for us anyway. Sure we can get creative and come up with fictional systems and wax philosophical about it all day but it doesn't change anything.

Any actual system where, conceptually, 2+2 really equals 5, if it even exists, would be so insane and unfathomable to our tiny brains that we'd have to ascend to an entirely new plane of existence to even begin to grasp it.

[–]binaryblob 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you don't know what you are talking about, why do you speak?

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

2+2=5 could be true in some system of logic.

The issue isn't with logic but with arithmetic.

We could invent a system of arithmetic where 2 + 2 = 5 is true. The trivial way to do so would be:

  • Redefine the symbol "2" to mean something else. Or "5", or "+", or "=".

But that's not changing the semantics of the statement, only the symbols used. It's not an honest change, it's just a trick:

"Aha, but if the symbol = means not equal to, then it's absolutely true and correct that 2 + 2 = 5. Gotcha!"

And that argument is about as honest and sincere as it would be if I called you "a stupid poop-head" and then insisted that in my sentence "stupid" actually means very smart and "poop-head" actually means "handsome".

There are other such tricks that can be played, like defining two as the gaps between three vertical lines "|||" and the "+" sign as concatenation:

2 + 2
= ||| + |||
= ||||||

which has five gaps and therefore 2+2 = 5. But of course this too is just a trick of changing the meaning of words and symbols.

Most people can't prove 2 + 2 = 4 in its usual interpretation, which is fucking pathetic, because even computers can do that since the 1960s.

Dude. Dude. Of course they can: hold up two fingers, hold up another two fingers, and count them. Four fingers.

That's a perfectly satisfactory proof. And before you start going on about Bertie Russell's Principia Mathematica, I'm just going to say three words: Gödel's incompleteness theorems.

The only semi- standard way to get "2+2=5" is to define the group Z_2 as the set {0, 1} under addition modulo two, in which case 1+1 = 0 (mod 2). Modulo arithmetic (or "clock arithmetic") is standard. Now form a group isomorphic to this Z_2 but rename the element 0 to 5 and 1 to 2. So now we have 2 + 2 = 5.

Except this is still just a linguistic trick, where we redefine regular addition as clock addition modulo 2, redefine the symbol 5 to mean zero and 2 to mean one, and the symbol = to mean equivalent to under modulo addition.

There are tons of other "tricks" (some funnier than others) you can use to prove this, like the guy who proved that 2 + 2 = 5 by taking a piece of string with two knots in it, and a second piece of string with two knots in it, and tied them together. Ta-da! A piece of string with five knots in it.

[–]Wanderingthehalls 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The round up, round down thing is, at a stretch, technically kind of correct. However, it's also an example of the phenomenon of oversimplification. A process where something is simplified to the point of being incorrect. These people are basically showing that they have oversimplified their brains.

[–]Musky༼⁠ ⁠つ⁠ ⁠◕⁠‿⁠◕⁠ ⁠༽⁠つ 🐈 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It's not even technically correct, they're only demonstrating error introduced by rounding.

[–]LtGreenCo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah and to even do that you have to add rounding notation, e.g. ⌈2.5⌉, which fundamentally changes the equality so it's no longer 2+2=5.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

These people are so stupid, they think they are smart.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Some of those are clever ways to make 2+2 APPEAR to be 5 but none are saying that it's true. So yes there are clever arguments to make fiction appear to be true.

The second down on the left they are dividing by zero. Just because they write it a different way doesn't mean it isn't zero.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The background of this bullshit is here:

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/math/a33547137/why-some-people-think-2-plus-2-equals-5/

Not one single of these people really believe what they are saying, and that includes the guy who started the twitter discussion. He's now calling it "a joke argument", which is fair enough but the original post was more serious than a joke.

The original statement made was:

“I don’t know who needs to hear this, but if someone says 2+2=5, the correct response is, ‘What are your definitions and axioms?’ not a rant about the decline of Western civilization.”

The correct response to this is Nobody needs to hear this, because it's bullshit and you don't mean one single word of it.

The fact is, if he got a bill that added 2 + 2 and got 5, he wouldn't ask about definitions or axioms, he'd immediately complain that the bill was inaccurate.

Every single one of the defences of this boil down to an insincere redefinition of words or symbols or both in an effort to appear too clever by half.

[–]SMCAB 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

2+2=5 you racist bigot fags.

Now excuse me, I'm going to the grocery store to buy Corn Dawgz.

[–]binaryblob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Here is an actual formal proof of the opposite in a consistent formal system:

Theorem not_two_plus_two_equals_5: 2 + 2 <> 5. Proof. trivial. Qed.