Talk:2 + 2 = 5

Trivia Section should be removed

Wikipedia does not recommend trivia sections, so the section should be removed or the information worked into the article elsewhere as appropriate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.10.158 (talk) 04:30, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

And as far as trivia goes, the Monty Python quote is irrelevant (it doesn't even mention 2+2, as the subject matter is Arthur's counting). Will somebody please remove it? 76.104.175.228 (talk) 21:05, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

accuracy of quote from 1984 (novel)

I haven't read 1984 in a while, but I distinctly remember it being "Two and two make five". Am I just misremembering? Ketsuban has spoken. The debate is over. 03:05, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I have the novel in front of me (a UK Penguin edition, printed 1990. Part 1, Chapter 8., says:

In the end the part would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.

But on the following page, Winston writes in his diary:

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.'

He later writes TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE in the Ministry of Love (Part 3, Chapter four, and 2 + 2 = 5 after that. (In many copes this comes says 2 + 2 = - this is the result of a disastrous printing error in an early edition.)

It's a bit academic - but I think the quote from Winston's diary entry is the axiom we're referring to, so I'd rather mimic that format.

I've redirected Two and two make five and (more common in modern UK English) Two plus two makes five here.

And egad, I've just noticed the 2005 in the date of your question... oh well, better late than never. Robin Johnson 14:50, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

From 1984 (novel)#External links: The following free online or downloadable editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four are available:

• (English)
• (With publication data)
• (Project Gutenberg Australia e-text)

--Jtir (talk) 22:02, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

computing 2+2=5

Well I could divide 5 by 2 and have the visual rounding to 1 digit, then when I add them it turns to 5. {Seas 23:00, 25 August 2005 (UTC)}

2.4 (displayed as integer 2) + 2.4 (displayed as integer 2) = 4.8, displayed as integer 5. -- 201.83.172.13 (talk) 06:07, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Not true ints always round down. 4.8 = 4 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.213.120.190

True and not true. If done with 2.8 + 2.8 then the result is 5.6, which has a 1-digit value of 5. So, 2 + 2 could, in fact, in sincere and correct use of maths, become 5 - and infact, 6 - since 2,999999->infinity is mathematically undistinguishable from 3. 144.127.1.1 (talk) 13:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC) First edit ever, so apologies for all the numerous mistakes I will have made.(talk) 21:22, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

No offense, but is this in any way relevant to the article? Mr. Granger (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:11, 24 May 2009 (UTC).

I believe so. There was some famous quote that 2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2. This makes perfect sense in a scientific context, where rounding to significant figures is the norm. It's a great example of the problems of rounding.

I doubt the aforementioned quote did not get the specific equation from 1984. This warrants further study. — trlkly 10:55, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I came to this article after finally realizing that "2+2=5 for sufficiently large values of 2" is true in the sense of scientific or engineering measurement. I was surprised to find only references to the mathematical meaning of 2+2=5, which is a false statement. We should incorporate the former expression into this article together with an explanation of why it makes sense. I have found one source that discusses this aspect of 2+2=5: Does 2 + 2 = 5 for very large values of 2? -- 12.105.216.42 (talk) 14:00, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

This section is full of mathematical and philosophical nonsense. Citing a retired psychology professor to the effect that 2+2=5 might be true is not helpful; cite mathematicans or philosophers of mathematics. If you can find any, which I doubt. Gene Ward Smith (talk) 20:56, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

I bit the bullet and did some editing. The bit about sufficiently large values of 2 is a JOKE, by the way. Ha ha? Gene Ward Smith (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Descartes

This phrase is also used in Descartes' Meditations. Should that be included? It's much earlier than any of the other references. Batkins 21:10, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

[1] "But when I considered any matter in arithmetic and geometry, that was very simple and easy, as, for example, that two and three added together make five, and things of this sort, did I not view them with at least sufficient clearness to warrant me in affirming their truth?" Seems reasonable. Whoever wants to put it in would have to read through the section a bit more than I'm going to right now. Paxfeline 12:52, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

2+2=11

At least they do in base-3 arithmetic. Saying 2+2=4 carried the unstated assumption that we are using familiar base-10 arithmetic, or at least something higher than base-4, where 2+2+10. In binary, 2 does not exist but 1+1+1+1=100.

There is a rather older saying, that no authority can decide that one plus one equals three. Of course married couples manage to achieve it, from one viewpoint.

What the book actually says is "Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four."

This comes from the fake book he gets given by apparant rebels who are actually secret police. He has earlier written "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."

Which is rubbish. No real system ever asked people to believe basic arithmetic. For that matter, Orwell in his 1942 essey Looking Back on the Spanish War gives no specific cases of history being falsified. Nothing better than the Fascists saying that there were more Russians in Spain than there really were, without naming a specific source or asking if it could have been a sincere false belief.

Orwell in Looking Back on the Spanish War contradicts what he's said in Hommage To Catalonia, which had been mostly ignored at the time. He says in 1942: The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalise factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestos would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn’t. No political strategy could offset that. This is flatly against what he'd said earlier and no longer admits to having said.

I'd say that the right leadership probably could have won that war, but that there is no actual person who had those gifts. Nestor Mackno might have managed it, if he'd still been alive and fit to fight: he had done pretty remarkable things in the Russian Civil War before being destroyed by the Bolsheviks. In China, Mao won an anti-fascist against rather worse odds.

Orwell is an interesting writer but not an honest one.

--GwydionM 19:13, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Similarly, Douglas Adams pointed out that 6 * 7 == Forty-two... in base 13. --Kris Schnee 08:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the assumption of base 10 may safely go unstated, eh? Perhaps Pop Culture should have a 'Parody/Altered formulation' category to hold stuff like this and the 'for extremely large values of 2' joke. (And my extremely pithy addition.) Paxfeline 12:44, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

If two and two make five, what does five and five make?

After first hearing this phrase, one question stung in my mind: if two and two make five, what happens to all of the other numbers? Is five plus five still ten, or is it now eight? Logialy speaking, if two and two make five, then five is four. If five and five is the same as two plus two plus two plus two, then five and five make eight.

The proposition "two and two make five" is false, so from it any proposition can be derived, including: five and five make eight, and five and five make ten, and five and five make seventy-nine. Also, you should give me money. Melchoir 20:56, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

This is reminiscent of "if pi were 3, what would circles look like?" All sorts of answers are possible, since, after all, pi isn't 3, and most likely cannot be without ultimately creating a contradiction somewhere. What would "really" be the case is an unanswerable question without making some further assumptions, and really says more about human psychology and how our minds represent reality than about the statement itself. What if two and two make five? We can entertain the notion superficially, but whether it's meaningful in any sense is another matter. If two and two really made five, then "two", "five" and the concept of addition would not be what they are. Your guess would be as good as mine on what five and five made, or if bananas are yellow in such a world, assuming there are bananas and colors in the first place... 82.92.119.11 16:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Eugene Lyons

Does anyone have a clear authority for the idea that the main influence on Orwell was Goering's statement? (I'm not disputing that Goering said it.) Although some of this could be regarded as original research, as far as I can judge the main influence was Eugene Lyons's Assignment In Utopia. When I read it I thought that Orwell must have read this, since there is a similarity of mental atmosphere to 1984, including e.g. the cult of personality around Stalin and the demonisation of Trotsky, but above all it contained a chapter "2+2=5", actually a slogan used to predict that the 5-year plan would be completed in 4 years. My suspicions were confirmed when I came across a review of Assignment in Utopia in Orwell's collected journalism. The next point is not original research, Bernard Crick's important biography of Orwell considers Assignment in Utopia to have been an important influence. This is not to deny that Orwell may have been aware of Goering and Dostoevsky's comments.

BTW, Gwydion M is right to point to Orwell apparently changing his position on the Spanish Civil War, but that is not the same as dishonesty. (And I don't think the Trotskyists ever did say the Republic should have burned more churches.) PatGallacher 20:41, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

If two and two make five, what does that make one and one?

Is it possible, I am not stating that to be true, that one plus one make three. I won't continue on with my point until someone questions my integrity--Lord X 19:16, 7 May 2006 (UTC)Xinyu

See above. There is no reason to assume 2 + 2 = 5 implies 1 + 1 = 3, since 2 + 2 = 5 is just false. You can certainly think of a system where 2 + 2 = 5 and 1 + 1 = 3, but such a system wouldn't describe the natural numbers accurately: in such a system it's simply impossible for the symbols "1", "+", "=" and "3" to stand for 1, addition, equality and 3.

What's 5 ÷ 2 in your system? 2 × 2? 5 - 3? 2 + 2 - 1 - 1? 1 + 1 + 1? 3 ÷ 3? Either you hit a contradiction somewhere or you've just found a way to describe some interesting but probably pointless way of stringing symbols together. It's like asking "if you could divide by zero, what would the answer be?" You can't divide by zero, for good reasons, so this question is meaningless. You can speculate about it all you want, but there's no such thing as a definitive answer. There aren't even "more right" and "more wrong" answers, unless you're just talking about what seems right to us—a matter of psychology.

You can redefine the meaning of "division" so division by zero does have an answer (as our article on it mentions), but if you do that you're no longer asking the same question. Same thing with two and two making five: you need to redefine "two" and "plus" and "equal" and "five", and when you do that you can make "one and one" equal anything you want while you're at it. Doesn't make it meaningful. 82.92.119.11 22:51, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

You in fact CAN divide by zero. Take a walk to the nearest college and ask the head of the math department. ;-) (not necessary, i know, just pointing out an error in your logic. NOT an attack)

$\lim _{x\rightarrow \infty }{\frac {1}{x}}=0\,$ English Translation: as x approaches infinity (or gets large), one divided by x approaches zero

That is to say that it never reaches zero, except at infinity. For the purpose of our finite brains (and calculators), a 1 followed by 1000 zeros is sufficient.

Slithytove2 04:12, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

I linked to the article divide by zero, which does a much better job than you pointing out under what circumstances dividing by zero makes sense. Your example obviously does not qualify, as x (the divisor) never equals 0. That the limit of some fraction is 0 has nothing to do with dividing by zero. Are you sure you don't want to take that walk to the college yourself? :-) 82.92.119.11

To my knowledge, if one takes arithmetic as well as 2+2=5 as given, one can deduce 1+1=3. For out of 2+2=5 and normal arithmetic follows a contradiction, and out of a contradiction follows triviality in classical logic. In any given trivial system, any statement is true, hence, so is 1+1=3. 87.64.170.119 16:03, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Pi

Is the "pi = 3" comment appropriate here? --Kris Schnee 08:51, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

If so, it would seem that we live in '1984'. Oh God... Paxfeline 09:44, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Pithy addition

2 plus 2 makes five, for values of 4 masquerading as five. I lobby this be added to the lexicon. :P (Go out and start saying it!) Paxfeline 09:47, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

• Note: only true for large values of 2

Decibel Addition

I'm a little surprised that no-one's picked up that when adding two identical decibel values, the level increased by 3. So there is a real case where 2 dB + 2dB = 5dB. --scruss 12:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Image

I'm not sure some photo of a graphitii "artist" is really appropriate to this article. Any thoughts? BoosterBronze 19:09, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

• Has nothing to do with this article. Removed. 71.110.135.203 18:56, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

e e cummings

Don't want to make any page into a "list", but wanted to throw out "is 5", one of e e cummings books of poems. Don't want to type out the introduction for fear of plagiarism, but the gist of it is a quit different view of the concept than those in the article; Through art (poetry in his case) one can see the world through a different light, where someone stuck in science can only see the world as it is (two time two is four), the artist can see the world in a different light, where two times two may be 5. It's a personal favorite book, so I don't want to add it just because I like it, but wanted to toss it out for discussion sblaxman 15:02, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Additional research

In the telivision show: the fairy oddparents, there is an episode where the main character puts on a math test "2+2=5," and his teacher gives him an F, but Stephen Hawking shows up, makes a long drawn out (but logically impossible) math problem that "proves" "2+2=5." This is alike because of how the authoritative person (stephen hawking) simply said so and used false principles to base it on. This would be a humorous addition to the television section.63.215.29.113 21:57, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Needs redirect BADLY

In "1984" it is "Two AND two make five" instead of "two plus two equals five"...

Molière's Dom Juan

In his play Dom Juan , Molière writes :

Sganarelle : Qu’est ce que vous croyez ?

Dom Juan : Ce que je crois ?

Sganarelle :Oui.

Dom Juan : Je crois que deux et deux sont quatre, Sganarelle, et que quatre et quatre sont huit.

That is : -What do you believe? -What I believe? -Yes. -I believe that two and two are four, Sganarelle, and that fout and four are eight.

I think it would be fitting, if only to show that equating arithmetic absolute and freethought well predates Tolstoy.

81.56.58.41 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 23:43, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Whistler

I also found this quotation, but I have no time to research the subject :

I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the ameteur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

 James MacNeill Whistler

81.56.58.41 23:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Apprael / Thinkgeek.com

In the interests of clarification and my own WikiKarma(TM), I'd like to state that my edit regarding a commercially available T-Shirt is intended purely for information and humour and should not be interpeted as an advert of any sort, and I am in no way affiliated with Thinkgeek.com or any of it's business partners, subsiduaries or associates.

--Tomcully (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Page title format

The current title is "Two + two = five", which strikes me as rather inconsistent. Why are numbers written as words, but "plus" and "equals" written with symbols? I think it should be either "2 + 2 = 5" (which gets my vote) or "two and two make five" (or "two and two are five", or "two plus two make five", all of which appear in 1984). Which should we choose? - furrykef (Talk at me) 05:21, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Considering the weight placed on 1984 I would say that we should put the page at one of the phrases from the book. Taemyr (talk) 00:12, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Science section

The science section on significant digits etc. is totally irrelevant and really should be removed. It contained the incorrect claim that errors are added linearly whereas (assuming gaussian errors) they are added in quadrature. I have corrected this, but now the general gist of the section makes no sense. I propose it is removed.

FJ. 1-10-2008

After realising another even bigger hole in the argument of the section (the error on an integral measurement e.g. 2 is not 0.5 but 1, assuming the number of measurements made is less than ~10) it became apparent that it is a trivial and poorly researched section. It has no place in this or any article. Removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.108.174.250 (talk) 15:41, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I have removed this section again. If a reliable source have mentioned this bit of trivia then feel free to re add it. Otherwise note that wikipedia is not a soap box or a vessel for original research. Taemyr (talk) 00:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Possible reference from Christopher Hitchens

From Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens, p.189:

"In truth, the idea that two and two makes five, for instance, was suggested by multiple sources. Stalin's propagandists were fond of saying that they completed the first Five Year Plan in four years; this was sometimes rendered for the simple-minded as 2+2=5. Sterne's Tristram Shandy has a comparable moment of official juggling with numbers, as does Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground."

How can this best be used in the article? Dirac66 (talk) 02:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

NPOV issue

I think the second section of the article is slightly biased, because it says (directly) that the Nazis and the Communists force its people to believe (or pretend to believe) 2 + 2 is 5, which is "obviously false" (sic), thus, implies, or induces the reader to believe that they are bad political parties (as "false" is slightly negative in this situation, presumably because your elementary school teacher blamed you when you state 2 + 2 = 5). Remember that Communists are in many countries (in some countries they are in power), Nazis as well. Zhieaanm (talk) 13:25, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

One implication of 2+2=5

2=2.4. 192.12.88.7 (talk) 16:46, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

With normal rounding, 2.5 would display as 3. However, $Round(2.4+2.4)=Round(4.8)=5$. If you displayed each number rounded, it would result in $2+2=5$ --BBM (talk) 00:02, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

See my comment above. I even found a source. [[2]]I think this is relevant enough to be included in the article. But I don't know how to go about proving that. I've at least got a source saying it's popular joke. Maybe someone can figure out how to fit it in?trlkly 10:59, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Non-math exceptions

Honestly I was recently thinking of mitosis for example, where two cells with two extra ones ultimately transform into eight identical clones (upon which one may safely write 2+2=8). Twilightchill t 21:08, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Hugo Grotius: De jure belli ac pacis (1625)

A similar phrase appears in Hugo Grotius book "De jure belli ac pacis" (The Rights of War and Peace), released in 1625. "Sicut ergo ut bis duo non sint quatuor ne a Deo quidem potest effici, ita ne hoc quidem, ut qoud intrinseca ratione malum est, malum non sit." (For instance then, as God himself cannot effect, that twice two should not be four; so neither can he, that what is intrinsically Evil should not be Evil.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.136.58.34 (talk) 13:41, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Ellis clarification

Free pdf downloads of Ellis's book (Are Capitalism, Objectivism, and Libertarianism Religions? Yes!) could be found by means of http://www.google.com/search?&q=Are+Capitalism,Objectivism,+And+Libertarianism+Religions?+Yes! at this time. Wikipedia forbids linking to lulu, so trying to Cite book |last=Ellis |first=Albert |authorlink=Albert Ellis |title=Are Capitalism, Objectivism, and Libertarianism Religions? Yes! |publisher=Walden Three |location=PO Box 3871, Santa Barbara, CA 93130 |chapter=8 Definitional and Fanatically Religious Thinking |page=155 got shot down because it included a lulu url, not included here, obviously. Have a nice day. - 67.224.51.189 (talk) 14:53, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Simply because a Google search reveals a free and legal PDF of a book means that it's disqualified from Wikipedia? I couldn't find any Wikipedia policy banning links to lulu. In fact, I couldn't even find a link to lulu in the article's history. Lastly, even if I am mistaken and there had been a link, why not simply remove the url? I'm restoring the Albert Ellis section. Lenschulwitz (talk) 08:48, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

"Ellis's clarification" is that 2 + 2 = 4 by definition. It seems a fairly odd definition to me. Every mathematician and schoolchild I met defines 4 as 4 = 3 + 1, or 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 depending on the axiom system. Following the clause "Here Rand falsely notes that two and two make four" with a colon (:) is also very unfortunate - but this seems to be attributable to sloppy writing. Despite the rest of the sentence being nonsense, I'm sure, as a psychologist, his views on the nobility of Rand's mind are very authoritative :) Dilaudid (talk) 09:24, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Link to itself

This page currently has a link to itself. Is this proper on Wikipedia? Earboxer (talk) 01:12, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

No. Where is said link? --Cybercobra (talk) 06:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

₪~2+2=4 not 5=

• -~~Cierra~~-* —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.71.66.60 (talk) 02:51, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Revert

Will you slow down with the reverting? I was right in the process of rewriting for clarity and adding the references!!! - Tenebris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.254.157.4 (talk) 03:00, 7 April 2011 (UTC)

Cult of Personality

I would just like to point out that the "1 + 1 = 3" line might not have anything to do with the article. 1 + 1 = 3 is also a common way to express the property of synergy, wherein two effects experienced at the same time are not just added, but magnified as well. Given the context of the song, the ambiguity of what the line really means isn't solved at all, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with this article. Just food for thought. --71.99.99.220 (talk) 02:13, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Incomplete sentence

Why does the History section end with an incomplete sentence?

"Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and

24.7.104.122 (talk) 01:28, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

 Fixed Deletion-related vandalism reverted. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:47, 29 July 2011 (UTC)