Why 1+1 isn't 2

Potassium_E's explanation for why 1+1 isn't 2.

tl;dr:  Proof? 

The Allegory of the Cave (Mr. BaldSlur Referencnecnencennence)

There was once this one really incredibly smart guy. His name was Plato, you may have heard of him. He came up with this theorem, and wrote a little story around it. Now Plato's a pretty pretentious guy, and so he left the story's true meaning open ended, in order to provide for theorizing and conversation hundreds of years down the line. It obviously worked, because here I am talking about it. Like most ancient philosophy, the allegory of the cave was really wordy, but I'll try my best to summarize. Essentially, there were these guys in a cave. All they could see of the world, their entire life was just the shadows cast by objects onto a stone wall. That was all they knew all their life. One day, one of the guys was set free, and he went to go wander the world. At first he didn't understand anything. The sun hurt his eyes, everything was confusing, it really sucked for him. But after a while he got used to this way of seeing the world. He enjoys this newfound interpretation of life, and existence; it was deeply enlightening. And so, he decided to return to the cave to tell his homies what was lit, yo. Then they killed him because he was different.

The Wojiskisiiskiskikdjikskiski Sisters

FORTNITE

So this little cave story was very well known, and very influential. Something a little bit more well known, and a little bit more influential, is the movie trilogy (the fourth one doesn't count), The Matrix. I've found that exploring philosophy through the lens of art and film is especially effective, since we can ground complex concepts in something universal. So that's what I'm gonna do. If you watch the Matrix, aside from the allegory for transgenderism it provides, it has a lot of Plato-esque ideologies. It tackles epistemology and Subjectivity in a very interesting way. There's a lot of parallels to that of The Allegory of the Cave, the biggest one that I can think of being the scene when Neo (Keanu Reeves) first emerges from the matrix, and his eyes don't work good. (JUST LIKE THE GUY FROM THE CAVE!!!) There's a character in the matrix, I can't remember his name and I don't feel like googling it, but he's a bit of a traitor. In the film, there's a bunch of rebels who go around the wasteland that exists outside the titular matrix, and they're aboard a ship called the Nebuchadnezzar. Ultimately, their goal is to find "The One", who turns out to be Neo. Then once they find Neo Lawrence Fishburne gets captured, and they have to go save him. But Oops, that traitor guy I mentioned is a traitor, and helps out the AI. Turns out, Mr. Traitor made a deal with the robots, so that he could get his mind wiped and put back into the matrix, just because of how painful knowledge can be. (JUST LIKE THE OTHER GUYS FROM THE CAVE!!!!) You can't reasonably blame him for this decision either. If you had your entire world stripped from you, in favor of something sucky and lame and gray and boring, you would be pissed too. Something the movie kind of alludes to is that they don't know if the outside world is an illusion too. By that logic, can we ever know what's real?

General Ramblings from my Brain

It doesn't matter how unlikely it is. We could be in a simulation. That's a fact. We could be a boltzmann brain. It could all be a lie, and we would be none the wiser. But if you peel back that layer, what if there's another simulation there too? You can never truly know what's real, because there could always be another simulation. All we can know for certain, is our observation of the world around us. So let me ask you, does it matter if it's real?

My Red is not your Red

There's a conspiracy theory that I'm quite fond of. It doesn't have very much proof or evidence, but I think the thought process behind it is really compelling. It's the idea that I perceive color differently than you do. Not in that either of us are color blind, we still have full range of sight, but that my red is not the same as yours. Maybe my idea of red, is what blue is to you, and we would never know because we can't perceive things the way someone else does. You can never truly walk in someone else's shoes. Sure, we can ask an eye scientist and they'll tell you I'm full of shit probably, but I think the sentiment, that we can never know if what we're perceiving is correct, is infinitely valuable. 

What does all this mean?

Well, first off, it means that we know nothing and that we will never know anything for sure. Does it matter? probably not. Life will move on, you still have to listen to the law, and you still can't fly or anything. But we have to understand that we can't know anything. I like to think Friedrich Nietzsche (the goat) would like this idea. Maybe, just maybe, he'd find it freeing.

Absurdism 

There's a philosophical doctrine called absurdism. It really ties together all of philosophy. Ultimately, in life, you search for answers you will never find. Especially in philosophy, you keep looking for objective truth, where everything is subjective. But There was once is guy named Albert Camus who said "One must imagine sisyphus happy". What he meant is that we should find beauty in the process, not the end result. Sisyphus only knows to push the rock up the hill, over and over again. He doesn't care if he'll get anywhere with it, he just finds meaning in the process. 

Summary

Most of this was probably incoherent and made no sense. But I think 1 + 1 doesn't equal 2. I think we oughta find out what it does equal though. It's probably 42.

For the record, anyone who actually knows anything about epistemology could maybe debunk everything I just wrote, but F word that

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