Pi Is What We Say It Is

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I would file this one marked, ‘There is nothing new under the sun.” Our local newspaper offers an “On this date” column, and this morning I found there:

1897: The Indiana House of Representatives passed, 67-0, a measure offering a new (as well as hopelessly flawed) method for determining the area of a circle, which would have effectively redefined the value of pi as 3.2. (The bill died in the Indiana Senate.)

There is something laughable but also frightening about partisan attempts to legislate realities beyond human control. How can false mathematical outcomes (like the miscalculation of pi) be passed into law so that legally they become facts when they remain contrary to fact in reality? We are now in the 21st Century C.E., and partisans still want to legislate their own facts to ban certain scientific arguments from use in debate over policies. Now it’s climate change that is not be discussed scientifically or the biology of female human beings.

Our democracy is designed to protect minorities within our population from the tyranny of the majority.

Voting on facts is embarrassingly foolish and also dangerous, but it is not the only betrayal of reason and responsibility in which legislatures may engage. Another is putting to a public vote by referendum a matter of the rights of unpopular minorities or, in the case of women, a majority long regarded with condescension.

Our democracy is designed to protect minorities within our population from the tyranny of the majority. Think about it. If a hypothetical group consists of 90 green people and 10 blue people, what happens when a simple majority vote can privilege green people and deny the rights of blue people? The green can win every time, no matter how unfair and hurtful the outcome.

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