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Comment by nahuel0x | Hacker News Reader

In Argentina a military governor from our last dictatorship banned teaching Set theory because it was a "collectivist idea" and was "against the individual". You can learn more here (spanish): https://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=3404

Specifically, they banned the book "Conceptos básicos de matemática moderna" (Modern Maths Basic Concepts) / Hernández-Rojo-Rabuffetti

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This reminds me of the Indiana Pi Bill that tried to pass a legislation concerning the value of pi

Always fun when legislators try and get in the way of reason.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

It's a good thing no one ever told General Menendez[1] about how commonly arrows are reversed in category theory.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23907276

Heraclitus having come up with πάντα ῥεῖ, he'd probably be the first one to carry a banner saying "Down with Heraclitus!"

[1] No doubt the General would have disapproved of Bajofondo as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8SVYDvMVzY

Well, category theory is pure subversive stuff, just check the Lawvere-Hegel link or Grothendieck giving lectures at the Hanoi jungle to protest Vietnam War :)

If even Joan Baez's cousin John doesn't get the Hegelian Taco, it may take me a little while to work up to it.

Speaking of Hanoi, leg warmers were another item of pop culture found on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

"Hanoi" Jane vs. Liliya Sabitova

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg_VnsmATFE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_SXPbDPMVE

(bonus track: Hart, "Peace for Triple Piano" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcRW3FMuttY )

I suspect you are a GPT-3 bot :)

I'd like to send a shout out to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Engine, Borges' Library of Babel, and Mark V. Shaney...

Conservapedia’s math articles have a pretty amusing history:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Conservapedian_m...

Also on the topic of set theory:

https://boingboing.net/2012/08/07/what-do-christian-fundamen...

Wow. But come to think of it, set theory is subtle stuff compared with 1+1+1 = 1 (unless they're talking about characteristic 2?) or reading the old testament under a non-injective mapping (in particular, the Book of Ruth, a non-identity element, seems to be in their kernel?).

Q. what's an anagram of Banach-Tarski?

That is absolutely ridiculous. Wow!

To be fair, the "new math" of the 60s deserved that.

If you disliked the new math, you'll detest Linderholm, Mathematics Made Difficult

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3693042-mathematics-made...

I saw that a long time ago, it is hilarious.

Tom Lehrer thought New Math was weird enough that he wrote a song about how to subtract with it. (Verse 2 is in base 8!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6OaYPVueW4

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