Two Plus Two Makes Crazy

"Two Plus Two Makes Crazy" by Walter J. Sheldon is a short, funny story from the 1950s that looks closely at what happens when people trust technology too much. The story happens in a world where a giant computer system controls pretty much everything, and a man named Krayton is in charge of explaining how it all works to the public. Some people are worried that the computer has too much power, and when a regular guy named Mr. Tanter starts asking simple but tricky math questions, like whether "two plus two" is the same as "three plus one," chaos results. The computer completely freaks out, showing that depending only on math and machines instead of common sense can cause some really crazy things to happen, suggesting that blindly trusting in technology can take society down an absurd and irrational route where logic is lost.