My observation as an engineer, is that numbers are anything but subjective. They represent something outside of the person, and are not dependent on the individual. My Mexican friend may call them something else, but we both need to be referring to the same thing. I often do unit conversions or in a programmable controllers it may simply be a count representation of a number (which is really just changing units). One could argue that 25.4 mm equals 1 inch. But those numbers are not merely abstractions, which can change based on the subject. You can't have a different truth for you, than me, and be talking about reality.
work with numbers all the time, and if they where subjective I couldn't do my job. When working with numbers, there is also the matter of precision and accuracy. So when talking about 4 vs 4.000 we are talking about precision. The latter is more accurate, but they are equal. (you could also look at this as different units) Perhaps this is different in academia, and they don't deal with reality. However you can usually tell a green engineer, that has no experience outside of the class room. Their stuff often doesn't work. There is the argument, that any unit of measure is just a convention, an inch could refer to something else, and we agreed, to call an inch a certain distance defined by a standard. However when referring to a quantity of that standard length, it doesn't and cannot change from person to person. My Spanish speaking friend may call a pulgada; but, we are still talking about the same thing, that exists outside of either one of us.
If I was teaching and someone was arguing for numbers being subjective, I would give them a failing grade, and watch how quickly they switch to arguing that numbers are objective, and that they didn't get the grade I gave them. This reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode, where part of the of the breaking down of Picard was to get him to say that there where a different number of lights, than their actually was.
work with numbers all the time, and if they where subjective I couldn't do my job. When working with numbers, there is also the matter of precision and accuracy. So when talking about 4 vs 4.000 we are talking about precision. The latter is more accurate, but they are equal. (you could also look at this as different units) Perhaps this is different in academia, and they don't deal with reality. However you can usually tell a green engineer, that has no experience outside of the class room. Their stuff often doesn't work. There is the argument, that any unit of measure is just a convention, an inch could refer to something else, and we agreed, to call an inch a certain distance defined by a standard. However when referring to a quantity of that standard length, it doesn't and cannot change from person to person. My Spanish speaking friend may call a pulgada; but, we are still talking about the same thing, that exists outside of either one of us.
If I was teaching and someone was arguing for numbers being subjective, I would give them a failing grade, and watch how quickly they switch to arguing that numbers are objective, and that they didn't get the grade I gave them. This reminds me of the Star Trek TNG episode, where part of the of the breaking down of Picard was to get him to say that there where a different number of lights, than their actually was.
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. - Alexander Vilenkin
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther
If I am shown my error, I will be the first to throw my books into the fire. - Martin Luther
