For those who didn't understand, this is a reference to Orwell's novel.
this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2025
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All language is a mental model, shared between the speaker and the audience. Math without any context like this is just a language like any other, encoded for two or more parties to communicate something abstract.
If the speaker and the audience both believe two plus two equals five, then it is true.
"Five" might look like "4" and be called "Five" or perhaps "Two" is instead written "2.5", but the truth of the original statement is only actually dependent on the shared mental model of the speaker/audience.
There is no telling what the objective meaning could be, if there was ever an objective meaning at all. For example, the entire meme itself could be a password that means "buy Bitcoin".
Or for another example, two plus two is five if this is a shorthand for two 1.25lb baskets of strawberries plus two 1.25lb baskets of strawberries being equal to five 1lb baskets of strawberries.
You might say "Hey! That's adding outside context! Not fair, it's nonsense!" but consider that the original statement didn't specify any context for the numbers at all. What are the numbers in reality, without any context? They represent nothing but the concepts they represent until they relate to a physical context anyway, just like any other fragment of communication.