Numbers

“Words are open to interpretation, you know.”

“I understand that you could have heard me wrong, but that’s not the point here. If there’s no shared meaning of words, how are we able to communicate at all?”

“Who says we ever meet on the same page? Maybe it’s like colors – when I say the grass is ‘green’ I may be seeing a totally different color than what you call ‘green.’”

“Oh that’s ridiculous. Color is a wavelength. It’s scientific.”

“As scientific as psychology can be. Why is it that five witnesses can observe the same crime and have five different stories? The input of the event is ‘scientific,’ yet each person interprets it differently.”

“Well only one person is right. Or they’re all wrong. But just because it’s interpreted differently doesn’t mean the facts change.”
“But what are facts other than observable, recorded events? We can only understand the world through our observations.”

“Now look here, when I take two apples and add two apples, there are four apples. If some loony says there’s five, that doesn’t change the fact that there’s four.”

“Ah, but life is more complicated than adding and taking away apples, isn’t it?”