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Inkstain
Another Pen  Usergroup: Members Joined: Dec 05, 2007 Total Topics: 12 Total Posts: 99 |
 #1
Subject: Can 2+2=5? If you've read the book 1984, you know what I'm talking about. If not, go buy 1984 and read it so you know what I'm talking about. The book brings to mind an interesting idea, that when an entity is powerful enough over all people it controls, they can change what truth is. In the book, the government has gotten so powerful that they can alter the records of history to their benefit. Does that mean that they can actually alter history? Could our government reach a power so great that they can tell us that 2+2 now equals 5, and everyone would be forced to believe it? When the clock strikes end, will anyone stop to look over their shoulder? |
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Swordfishtrombone
Death to Malaria  Usergroup: Members Joined: Dec 05, 2007 Location: Erdschweinhöhle Total Topics: 6 Total Posts: 266 |
#2
Yes, 2+2 can equal 5, depending on how you use those symbols. After all, there are different words for our 2 in different languages, and different symbols to represent it as well. If you redefine the symbol 5 to mean, ultimately, that for which we currently use the symbol 4, but you maintain the concepts symbolized by '2', '+', and '=', then that statement would be perfectly true. If the government told us that 2+2=5, it would be nothing more than the words and symbols that change. Why? Because = is a symbol of identity. And the concept referenced by the symbol '4' has identical information content to the concept referenced by the phrase '2+2' or '2.1 + 1.9' or '2.01 + 1.99', etc. Saying 2+2=5 is more plausible than making the general statement "green is always spicier than drumbeats" -- because in this case you've got words that refer to something that has sensory meaning, and furthermore you're comparing things that are defined by mutually exclusive 'sense' experiences. Of course you can redefine those words as well, but the illogic would still persist since 'that which you once called green is always gustatorily more of what was once called spicier than that which was once called drumbeats.' In other words, the referential sensory concepts would exist even if you changed the words. Paul - http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74 "Everything you can think of is true..." -Tom Waits |
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Seneca
Graduate  Usergroup: Members Joined: Aug 06, 2005 Total Topics: 3 Total Posts: 217 |
#3
Some of us would. Then again math would have to become obsolete, which is nearly impossible to accomplish because it is so objective. It is most often sujective or speculative knowledge that get's manipulated by governments. Swordfishe's point is very good though, semiology can be subjective. |
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keda
Ijon Tichy  Usergroup: Members Joined: Jul 25, 2005 Location: Finland Total Topics: 40 Total Posts: 4015 |
#4
History is written by the victors - Winston Churchill. All about making money Free Europe Now How to fix your country In thought, men distance themselves from nature in order thus imaginatively to present it to themselves--but only in order to determine how it is to be dominated - Adorno and Horkheimer |
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Inkstain
Another Pen Usergroup: Members Joined: Dec 05, 2007 Total Topics: 12 Total Posts: 99 |
#5
If I may, I would like to add a follow up question to this topic. You seem to agree that 2+2 can equal 5 under certain circumstances of power. Let's apply this to today. Do you think that our government is in a position of power so great that, if they chose, they could sway the minds of the general population to believe that 2+2=5? When the clock strikes end, will anyone stop to look over their shoulder? |
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Landlady
curious skeptic  Usergroup: Moderators Joined: Feb 09, 2007 Location: USA Total Topics: 26 Total Posts: 700 |
#6
Yes it can.  A joke: A western anthropologist is told by a Voohooni that 2 + 2 = 5. The anthropologist asks him how he knows this. The tribesman says, "By counting, of course. First, I tie two knots in a cord. Then I tie two knots in another cord. When I join the two cords together, I have five knots." There is time to laugh and there is time not to laugh, and this is not one of them. - Insp. Clouseau. Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. - Frankl. |
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myrmecophaga
Student  Usergroup: Members Joined: Dec 19, 2007 Total Topics: 1 Total Posts: 51 |
#7
@ Swordfishtrombone, the purpose of the comment in 1984 is not one of semantics, but rather one of the powers that be stating that 2+2=5, under current definitions, makes it so. This is a matter of whether somebody can lie and, due to their power make it so. I say this in order to avoid the obvious debates that separate mathematical proof from science and history. So I shall attack not the question with regards to 2+2, but the question with regards to changing the past. Now what is the past, we must ask. Is the past what we perceive it to be alone? If so, then surely a supreme power could change the past, however this is not the case, since the past is fixed. In 1984, the idea is not whether you can change the past etc. when you have sufficient control, but that you can change what people believe the truth to be. In terms of importance, this is all that matters as people can only act on what they think is true or remember. The past may remain the same, but everyone is oblivious to what it is, and only what they think it to be matters in the present. "It would be wrong to call it Patriotism, because the word is so given to misunderstanding. It is better expressed as a concern for your country that runs so deep, you find it physically impossible to switch off and cultivate the garden" -- Lord Deedes. "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"- Henry Ward Beecher |
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Swordfishtrombone
Death to Malaria Usergroup: Members Joined: Dec 05, 2007 Location: Erdschweinhöhle Total Topics: 6 Total Posts: 266 |
#8
The semantics are integral to the power question, however, because 2+2=5 depends on the definition of its constituent parts. So to make 2+2=5 a true statement would require redefining either 2, 5, +, or =. And if you redefine one of them, then you have to redefine every statement in which that term takes place. For instance, if you redefine 5 to mean what we now know as 4, then you have to replace 4 with 5 in every other statement. You cannot just replace it in the statement 2+2=5. Also, consider the following statements: 2 + 2 = 5 ii + ii = v .. + .. = ..... two plus two is equal to five dos mas dos iguales cinco and, you could also include a mixture of terms: 2 mas ii iguales ..... By convention 5 = v = ..... = five = cinco. So would the change affect all ways of using the concepts inherent in the terms? My point is that what people regard as a universal logical truth, 2+2=4, is a semantic statement that interdigitates with a lot of synonyms, and the logic of the statement completely depends on what the terms reference. So the ramifications of starting with 2+2=5 and changing a whole system to make that plausible to a susceptible society are vast and probably far beyond any power. Paul - http://www.pbase.com/drpablo74 "Everything you can think of is true..." -Tom Waits |
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enkidu
Tenured Poster  Usergroup: Members Joined: Jul 27, 2006 Location: Hachioji, Japan Total Topics: 24 Total Posts: 1457 |
#9
A power in place does not exercise power for the sake of exercising it, whatever measures they take, whatever lies they transform into truth, aim at furthering order and the perrenity of their power. To state that 2+2=5 (not talking about the signs but of the concepts behind the signs) would not really achieve anything to promote order, on the contrary, it would quickly destroys all scientific truths, since it's rather easy to imply from such a statement that 0=1, and that therefore any number equals any number, it becomes impossible to count, and to measure, basically to do science. The order that is implied by our current understanding of nature would be shattered. Far from furthering order, such a lie would destroy it. All power has the possibility to destroy itself. It is a power to be able to commit suicide, some people are actually deprived of this power (in jail or in psychiatric hospital for instance). And the more power one has in a general sense, the easier it is for it to self-destroy. Ultimately though, when power effects itself, it always decreases itself, true power resides in the potentiality to do something, but when a thing is done, the potentiality dissapears, and with it the power. Political powers which reinforce themselves through spreading fear in their people have understood that, whether they do it directly (repressive dictatorship spreading the fear of being caught by the thought police) or indirectly (by spreading the fear of an imminent enemy and transferring the fear of this enemy, which empowers the enemy, into a need for order, this latter strategy though is double-edged), it is the potentiality of their action (or of the action of the enemy) that ensures their power. As to transforming the past, it's also done in order to further one's position in power, and this is done in all country of the world as far as I know. To consider an example you may know of, if you are american, I don't think it is written in history books that Roosevelt knew that Pearl Harbour was about to be attacked even before japanese planes had taken off (or that there is very serious reasons to think so, and that there is an ongoing controversy about that, obviously such a debate would not even exist in a highly repressive country). And the same can be said of history books in UK, France, Germany, Italy,... not to talk of China or Japan (most japanese, even today, don't believe in the Nanjing massacre). Edited by enkidu on Dec 20, 2007 - 10:15 AM Tight toy night, streets were so bright. The world looked so thin and between my bones and skin there stood another person who was a little surprised to be face to face with a world so alive. I fell. (Tom Verlaine) |
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TecnoTut
Tenured Poster  Usergroup: Sponsors Joined: Jul 09, 2002 Location: Florida Total Topics: 213 Total Posts: 4725 |
#10
Two plus two equals four, regardless of what symbols used to express the concepts, and regardless of whether anyone believed it or not. I won't utter falsehoods, but I've no objection to uttering meaningless statements - A.J. Ayer, when saying grace. The apparent negation of a pseudo [meaningless] statement must also be a pseudo-statement - from Carnap's Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology Those who deny [Aristotle's] first principle should be flogged or burned until they admit that it is not the same thing to be burned and not burned, or whipped and not whipped. - Ibn Sina (Avicenna) |
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