More on 2 + 2.   Whether you want to make it add up to 4 is, indeed, “a choice,” as we are hearing from Woke-land. That choice, however, has the vast power Dan Dennett ascribed to his concept of “universal acid.” That power can be either constructive or destructive. To the extent that we choose to teach (in classrooms and elsewhere) that 2 +2 ≠ 4, this creative choice would permeate everything. not only math. This fanciful and proudly rebellious choice would keep spreading to encompass everything else we believe too, because the explosive power of knowledge depends upon compounding. Our big impressive truths are exapted from our simplest of truths, even truths so simple that we verify them by counting fingers. This ability to compound our know-how from little grounded truths to much bigger truths allows us to discover vaccines and to design aircraft.

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Yes, it’s a choice, but it’s a choice with ramifications. We can fuck around, acting like we can individually conjure up entirely new inert mental axioms willy-nilly each day, intentionally oblivious to verifiability, and oblivious to what anyone else is doing. Or we can collaborate in a mentally disciplined way using principles hard-gained from Enlightenment thinkers and others, such that there are correct and incorrect answers to many things based on A) whether those things actually function in predictable and meaningful ways and B) whether they further human flourishing.

I tend to see morality in terms of a personal aesthetic deeply tied to my vision for human flourishing. What does your personal sense of aesthetics (or morality) demand? A world where 2 + 2 equals 4? Or a world unhinged from any ability to collaborate with other sentient beings, a world where we pass the time organizing under rival warlords and throwing rocks at each other?