4 hours ago, AlexL said:
Or that they (Howard) dares to have opinions in areas in which he is - demonstrably - not competent at all.
This succinctly summarizes not just this issue, but “the problem” in contemporary socio-epistemology. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, nobody is entitled to their own facts, and nobody talks about the proper method of evaluating conclusions. Somewhat surprisingly, the video spends 10 minutes on the topic but she provides the killer disproof in her refutation – falsification by definition – within less than 2 minutes. I was startled that she felt that more needed to be said, though there are two substantive questions of fact that could have been addressed in more detail. The first is to provide satisfactory proof of that the claim was made to the effect that Mr. Howard claims 1x1=2. I was recently sent a copy of “Letter from King Leopold II of Belgium to Colonial Missionaries, 1883”, and was curious about the authenticity of the letter (which is in English, not a language of 150 year old Belgium). I harbor a certain level of distrust as to the authenticity of the letter. I am not certain as to Howard’s claim (I haven’t obtained a copy of the book to verify the claim), but there is much more evidence that Howard made some claim than that Leopold II wrote that letter. For the sake of argument I willing to accept this claim (that 1x1=2) as “actually made”. Objectivists are very familiar with the problem of out of context quotes of Ayn Rand’s writing, so I would like to spend a lot more time scrutinizing the original text, though I would probably actually prefer to do something else.
The second part, which could stand some improvement, is the much more problematic argument from authority, that 1x1=1 by definition. I understand that it takes more than 10 minutes to prove that by definition 1x1=1, because for one, it requires a very long discussion of self-evident vs. arbitrary definitions (who sets the rules that determine what it “means” to multiply?). Her definition of multiplication is useful to her, Howard’s definition is useful to him, they are both entitled to their opinions. Unfortunately, her exposition of the utility of multiplication kind of fails because we do not multiply 1x7 in computing that there are 7 apples. We are on the boundaries of numeric primitives, that there are cognitively primitive numbers like 1, 2, 3… and not 10, or 9, or any other number. We do indeed use some additive definition of 10 etc by parsing clusters into directly-perceptible subsets of clusters such as “5 and 6”). A less error-prone method and the only one usable for numbers larger than about 12 is actual counting off using naturally-occurring body parts as accumulators. So indeed, she has failed to provide even a shred of evidence that multiplication is useful.
After a period of contemplation, I thought of some possibly useful applications of this concept of “multiplication”, for example planning for a party if there will be 19 guests and every guest gets 2 beers, then 5 six-packs will not be enough, to be safe I could get 8 six-packs. Try as I might, I cannot find any useful application of multiplication with 1 as a multiplier (also none with 0 as a multiplier, God forbid that I talk about 1.3 as a multiplier). I say, and I suppose Dr. Howard says, that she is pulling the wool over the eyes of the public. So even though it was initially surprising to me that she spent 10 minutes on the topic, in 2 minutes into the video, I observed an exponential acceleration of the argument, aided with the tool of authority. I do credit her with a small advance in science-education in her proposal of the unit “chopstick-Tesla”, because IMO “units” are or have not been well explained in science-math.
Ultimately, I think she is going the right direction, but it is a mistake to rely on apparently arbitrary definitions. It is also a mistake to rely even in the slightest on social convention (anything that smacks of saying “all scientists agree by convention…”), when one is addressing (attacking) wingnut amateur pseudo-scientists, including actual scientists speaking outside their own area of specialization. A well-known problematic example of scientific social convention is the “scientific consensus” on global warming. It is irrational denialism to deny global warming, or any other scientific consensus, however, I am unaware of (and therefore claim the non-existence of) any controlled and objective survey of scientists proving that there is such a consensus on so-called global warming – and that this “consensus” is significantly more-established than some randomly selected unrelated equally politicized factual claim.
I see all sorts of wingnut pseudo-science done on language, even by people with PhDs in some field of some sort, and wonder “How can one effectively combat this nonsense?”. Should one even bother? I think one should, provided that (a) one can correctly isolate an target audience (she’s not talking to the crazies but I am not sure who she is talking to – I would say it is more addressed to the scientists who already know the answer) and (b) one can adopt the premises of the intended audience and teach them something new. We can say that by definition the video is a success, and attempt to solve for a: who is she talking to?
but on… his Twitter 
This isn’t even funny…