I have two questions about the many recently vocal people who are questioning that 2 + 2 = 4:

A) Are they insincere? If they are pranksters or math anarchists, why are they spending all of this time and effort digging in? Thus, it seems unlikely that they are consciously being disruptive for the hell of it.

B) If they are sincere, the analysis becomes far more interesting, but also dangerous to society at large.  2 + 2 = 5 is not the sort of math that cures viruses or puts sophisticated robotic probes on the surface of Mars. Consider this overwhelming push back to the claim that “2+2 = 4,” where many of these by people pushing back claim to be mathematicians or math teachers:

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This is a screenshot of people saying 2+2=5. You read that right…2+2=5.

Among them are teachers, educators, and professors who plan on teaching this stuff to your children. So let’s talk about what’s going on here, why they’re doing this, and how we can stop it.

A thread: pic.twitter.com/3CY2IcsahY

— Wokal Distance (@wokal_distance) August 4, 2020

If they are sincerely concerned that 2 + 2 =  4, they might be A) Consciously motivated to pull down math standards in order that low performing students pass even though these students lack math proficiency. If that is the case, they should confess up that this is their motive and we can then have an open debate about whether this is a good idea. But consider option B) Their motives might be unconscious, which means that they are infected by social conflagration (the power of which was demonstrated in 1956 by Soloman Asch), and their math gymnastics are being driven by what Jonathan Haidt terms social intuitionism:

Haidt distrusts the reasons people give for their moral decisions. See, for example, his article: “The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment.”

Intuitionism in philosophy refers to the view that there are moral truths, and that when people grasp these truths they do so not by a process of ratiocination and reflection, but rather by a process more akin to perception, in which one just sees without argument that they are and must be true . . . Moral reasoning is usually an ex-post facto process used to influence the intuitions (and hence judgments) of other people . . . [In sum], 1) the reasoning process has been overemphasized; 2) reasoning is often motivated; 3) the reasoning process constructs post-hoc justifications, yet we experience the illusion of objective reasoning.

Does 2 + 2 = 4? It’s too bad that we distrust each other so much that we need to meticulously lock down the parameters before proceeding. Apparently we need to argue about whether “2” = 2, and whether “+” means simple addition and then we need to decide whether “=” means equals exactly, more or less or “in some worlds.” And the real shame is that these math protesters are clearly hypocritical. When they stand up and walk away from their toxic keyboards, they might walk into a grocery store where they put two apples on the counter, then go back and get two more apples. Then, when they are charged for FIVE apples (by a math-challenged store clerk or, perhaps, a mathematically Woke clerk), they will speak up with moral-mathematical clarity that they should be charged for only FOUR apples, because 2 + 2 = [drum roll . . . ] 4.

If you think this explanation is tedious or self-evident or time-wasting, I highly recommend that you review the already-too-long sad story of this math dispute published recently at New Discourses by Anti-Woke Warrior (and Ph.D mathematician), James Lindsay: “2+2 Never Equals 5.” The intensity of this “math” dispute leads to one other possibility that loops back to top of this paragraph. Perhaps the anti 2 + 2 = 4 mob is digging in so deeply because they hate James Lindsay because Lindsay, co-founder of New Discourses, is actively decimating the claims of the Woke. For more on Lindsay, check out his new book (co-authored with Helen Pluckrose), Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody. Also see his recent discussion with Joe Rogan: