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- "So 2 + 2 = 10 (base four), 2 + 2 = 1 (mod 3). So much for determinism."
- "Does '2 + 2' look anything like '4' to you?" (Rolls eyes).
- "Western imperialist bias: ٢ + ۲ = ٤."
- "If you had two apples and two oranges that's not four of anything."
- "So two monogamous couples make a foursome? In your dreams, chauvinist!"
- "Like white middle-aged males reduce everything to abstractions!"
- "The voice of privilege. This is so not true for disadvantaged minorities."
- "It depends on what '2', '+', '=' and '4' are taken to mean. They're just conventions reflecting the patriarchal power structure."
- "An arrogant assertion presented without a shred of proof."
- "Life is more complex and interesting than sterile theories. Get over it."
- "Nazis/Communists/Zionists/Russians believe that."
- "You're just saying that to make me feel uncomfortable. You're so not in touch with your own feelings."
- "We shouldn't discriminate against people who have a problem with what you're saying."
etc etc.
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Say something true at the margins of the Overton window and be pecked to death by spurious attacks until everyone has forgotten the original proposition but is left believing it has been convincingly refuted.
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It's an interesting exercise, a homework assignment, to identify the fallacies in each of the 'rebuttals' above. The required concepts can be quite sophisticated: initial algebra; the formalisation of syntax and semantics in mathematical logic - wffs, valuation functions and models; the formal notions of proof and interpretation in mathematics and science.
Add a dash of sophistry and emotionalism to complete.
Actually the problem arises with whether 2 X 2 = 4. This is because there can be two kinds of X and two kinds of Y, but people might not accept that all four cases have equal validity: X1Y1, X1Y2,X2Y1,X2Y2. Some dissenting voices will assert that (say) X1Y2 is not worth studying, or worth the investment, or that it never arises.
ReplyDeleteAccording to one of the quoted reviews the Marxists are in the forefront of PC arguments against this kind of genomics. So we met this "Marxist anti-science" from the Marxism direction, and now from the genomics direction too.
Explanations required...
Tell me more: where did this X and Y come from?
DeleteI don't mean anything specific by X and Y - these are just possible parameters in some decision space each of which has (say) two options. So combinatorics requires that there are four overall cases to consider, if we are to be exhaustive in our analysis.
DeleteAn example I came across in the IT industry was similar: 3 X 3 = 3 (which was my question to the speaker). Here the first "3" corresponded to three probability levels (high, medium, low) of some incident and the second "3" was severity/impact (high, medium, low). So one would expect 9 overall cases - but it got contracted down to 3 in the model.
So we might find that some model has: 2 X 2 = 2, rather than the preferred value of 4.