I had a very strange conversation a couple of years ago. It seems that some people think that math is used only as a tool to control the population or something.
We were talking about something that most people would consider pretty innocuous, catch and release fishing. I mentioned that I had recently read an article that claimed that mortality among released fish was still high enough that approximately every second released fish should be counted against your limit because of the percentage of released fish that die of catch-related causes.
That lit the other guy’s hair on fire. “That’s math! You can’t seriously think that math is real? It’s all made up!” (Or words to that effect. Mouth frothing removed to protect the innocent.)
Over the course of the rest of the conversation, I “learned” that math was invented as a tool of oppression. Science uses math to create fake knowledge. Our senses are the only true sources of knowledge.
If they actually followed through with that you’d kind of have to admire it. What else would they have to do away with? All abstract concepts obviously, along with everything they’d been told, read, or imagined. How about theory of mind? Object permanence? Would they be newly surprised by the sunrise every day?
I had a very strange conversation a couple of years ago. It seems that some people think that math is used only as a tool to control the population or something.
We were talking about something that most people would consider pretty innocuous, catch and release fishing. I mentioned that I had recently read an article that claimed that mortality among released fish was still high enough that approximately every second released fish should be counted against your limit because of the percentage of released fish that die of catch-related causes.
That lit the other guy’s hair on fire. “That’s math! You can’t seriously think that math is real? It’s all made up!” (Or words to that effect. Mouth frothing removed to protect the innocent.)
Over the course of the rest of the conversation, I “learned” that math was invented as a tool of oppression. Science uses math to create fake knowledge. Our senses are the only true sources of knowledge.
They are anti-everything they don’t understand. Unfortunately that’s most things.
How to control a population 101:
Make them only trust their emotions.
If they actually followed through with that you’d kind of have to admire it. What else would they have to do away with? All abstract concepts obviously, along with everything they’d been told, read, or imagined. How about theory of mind? Object permanence? Would they be newly surprised by the sunrise every day?
It devolves pretty quickly into an infantile solipsism. The world exists only for me, and only when I’m looking.