Comment on Is the damsel in distress trope just independent?
jannaultheal@lemmy.world 4 days agoI mean in the same way that the continuum hypothesis is independent of ZFC. Godel constructed a model of ZFC where it’s true, and Cohen constructed a model where it’s false. We now have two models, both equally valid and satisfying all the axioms of ZFC, but in one, CH is true and in the other, CH is false, proving that CH is independent of ZFC.
Likewise, we can find one woman who enjoys the damsel in distress trope and think it’s harmless fun, and we can find another women who thinks it perpetuates sexist stereotypes against women. Just like in the case above, we have two women, whose views are equally valid, but coming to opposite conclusions. Therefore, we can conclude, just like Godel and Cohen did, that the statement about damsels in distress is independent of the axioms.
woop_woop@lemmy.world 4 days ago
As a layman who had to look up half that bullshit, I think you’re coming across something much simpler that cant and shouldn’t be solved by one of your theorems: people are different and think different things. With beliefs, there are many truths.
jannaultheal@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I think it goes deeper than that. There are people who disagree with the axiom of choice, finitists who disagree with the axiom of infinity, etc. But it’s a proven theorem (not independent) that ZFC proves the existence of uncountably infinite sets, non-measurable sets, etc. On the other hand, ZFC doesn’t prove nor disprove CH.
So it’s much deeper than merely “people are different and think different things”.
woop_woop@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I think you’ve got that backwards. “People are different and think different things” is the constant and the rest of what’s you’re drilling into is an attempt to discover the pattern in it.
So let’s go Socratic: why are you asking this?
jannaultheal@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I want to understand why some women seem to enjoy movies and video games that use the damsel in distress trope, despite knowing that in feminist theory it’s often considered harmful. I realized that Godel and Cohen proved a very similar result and wonder if their techniques can be applied here as well
Actually, now that I think of it, we can add axioms to ZFC that decide CH. For example, V=L implies it’s true, and proper forcing axioms imply that it’s false. Can we also add additional axioms to decide whether or not the damsel in distress trope is harmless fun, or sexist against women?