James Lindsay: "2+2 Never Equals 5"

Arguing with stupid people is a fool's game. 

And arguing with PC leftists is the same.

It's a kind of asymmetrical warfare in which they say whatever nonsense comes to their mind--because their principles basically tell them that there's no objective distinction between bullshit and non-bullshit...and their bullshit is in the service of "social justice"...so anything they say, no matter how insane, is justified if it advances that aim. And wasting your time, rationalist bigot, advances social justice. Because you do think there's an objective difference between bullshit and non-bullshit...so bullshit that took them ten seconds to think up could take you ten hours to disentangle and explain/refute. 

It's akin to getting sucked into a never-ending "why?" game with a kid...but against people who are even less intellectually honest.

Arguing with ignorant people is pretty similar.

And arguing with stupid people who are also ignorant is only for super-fools.

And arguing with stupid, ignorant people who have a political agenda...whew! You gotta be super-duper foolish...

God bless James Lindsay for being foolish enough to spend a bunch of time and electrons patiently describing Orwellian woke math: or "mathematx" as--and I'm not making this up--they call it. It's basically the most sophomoric thing I've ever seen. And I mean that as close to literally as I can: it's the kind of thing drunk sophomores argue in the dorm at 2 am on a slow Saturday...or, well, Thursday...night.

Hey, dude, if, like you got 1 rabbit and another 1 rabbit, and you put them together, sometimes you end up with like 10 rabbits...so 1+1=10!...

You could actually have a decent discussion with a genuinely interested undergraduate about why that's wrong--actually, it leads pretty quickly to interesting questions about formalism, meaning, and the nature of mathematics... And to some low-grade math about bases, too. 

Unfortunately, mathematixians...of whom there seem to be actually none...because, of course, this nonsense is limited to....where? You know where: math education. 

I stop here to, once again, reflect on the catastrophic state of our ed schools...

Or is that: mathematx educaxon?

Anyway. Also of course: it's not based on genuine philosophical puzzlement, it's an excuse for injecting postpostmodern pseudophilosophy and, most importantly, leftist politics into math education, too.

Of course the point isn't to make sound arguments: the guiding conclusion is actually a presupposition, and everything ese is mere rationalization (in the non-normative, psychological sense) for injecting "social justice" indoctrination into primary and secondary school math courses, too. And if you can rationalize that, you can rationalize its inclusion in any class. 

Remember: they think that the most important purpose of education is leftist indoctrination. Sometimes they, paradoxically, characterize this indoctrination as emancipation...but, well, it's just basically the same move again: they're just saying words--just blowing out a verbal smokescreen that's not even really meant to make sense--or, anyway, not to make sense to anyone who isn't really, really stupid...