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Slider comments on Wrong however unnamed - Less Wrong
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It strikes me that you are taking what is supposed to be metaphorical as literally true. As in would you take a saying such as "an apple doesn't fall far from the apple tree" to be dysfuncitonal if "falling" is inadequately defined and "far" doesn't have any metric applied to it?
While "sum" has a technical meaning here it is used more of a standin for more loose category. For example in the same sense that "man + woman = man + woman + baby, ie 1+1=3". In a way even a childless family has pretty different properties than two singles considered as a group. But we don't need to go into concrete some kind of single defined "people sum" to appriciate this fact.
A funny thing is that my sister and I seem to have a sporadic third twin people keep insisting they know. We get to hear about how she's doing: married, smoking, had her hair cut just shorter than 'you' do, cheats on exams... I swear she has a more interesting life!
So I guess 1+1 can at times equal 3...
But the 1+1=3 situation has, thankfully, no continuation in the math course; the notion of synergism becomes itself a matter to understand afterwards.