Freedom is the freedom to say that 2+2=4. If that is granted, all else follows  George Orwell, 1984

Andrew Doyle is a British comedian, the creator of a spoof Twitter account run by a fictional character called Titania McGrath.

“Titania” is very active on Twitter, specializing in Woke posts deliberately placed at the margin between the obviously ludicrous and something that, in the current climate, some of the more egregious zealots might actually say.

As Doyle points out, time and again stuff that Titania posts is taken up seriously after a short interval. For example, Titania posted that the film Mary Poppins is racist because of a scene where Mary’s face is covered in soot after going up a chimney. Blackface!

An obvious joke? Well can you believe the New York Times, a few months later, published a turgidly serious article raising exactly this concern – to the immense delight of Titania. As someone tweeted in response “Parody is literally becoming reality these days.”

However, on a much more serious note, ponder the implications of a debate that erupted last year when James Lindsay, an American mathematician and co-founder of the New Discourses website, decided to test the limits of Woke lunacy by posting to Twitter what he calls a “woke mini”, little graphics that Titania could have come up with (see here for some examples).

Here it is:

Another obvious parody, you would think, but incredibly the Wokeists took the bait, and a major debate ensured, involving some major figures in the ethnic studies field, including some involved in recasting the school mathematics curriculum in Washington state and California, who are pushing something called “ethno-mathematics”.

Here is how James Lindsay characterizes the debate that ensured:

To elaborate, while the most popular assertion being made to counter “2+2=4” happens to be “2+2 can equal 5,” this coming from people including from self-described mathematicians and genuine math educators, among others, the Critical Social Justice activists’ point isn’t that 2+2=5 any more than it is that two and two represents any particular quantity. Their point is that 2+2 can equal 5, though it doesn’t have to. That is, their point is that the objectively true statement “2+2=4” can be deconstructed by means of claiming that it is possible that, in fact, other things can occur too. This allows them to sidestep accusations like that they’re denying that “2+2=4” even while they do it, and (we have to admit) fairly enough because their whole point has literally nothing to do with what two and two add to equal.

The activists’ point comes in three stages. First, it is that a statement like “2+2=4” is just one mathematical truth among many, and this seems to be a point that many mathematicians who should know far better are eager to help them make. Second, it is that “hegemonic narratives” don’t get to decide it objectively, and thus that nobody can say that “2+2=4” is objectively true, which is, of course, patently ridiculous. Third, it is that narratives that have been considered hegemonic in the past or present (e.g., “2+2=4”) should be regarded with extreme suspicion going forward into the future, and people who can make a claim to being oppressed by “hegemonic narratives” at all get to have the say on how we should think about those narratives and their specific contents, including simple matters of quantity. That is, the activists are seeking a radical rewriting of the entire rational project, and any reason that doesn’t forward their favoured actors as the sole arbiters of what is true and correct needs to be deconstructed by rhetorical tricks and marginalized by moral and, perhaps, physical force and intimidation. They’re seeking a revolution.

Lindsay lays out the whole astonishing story  in the video below - long, but well worth watching. Be amazed!

The depressing thing is that this kind of lunacy is starting to contaminate fields that you would think would be immune. Even in the Soviet Union under Stalin, mathematics was the one field that was free from meddling by state ideologues, leading to Soviet pure mathematics being described as one of the intellectual wonders of the world. What hope, if this continues, for the US in its strategic competition with the CCP dictatorship?