Parity of Zero(en.wikipedia.org) |
Parity of Zero(en.wikipedia.org) |
By your reasoning you could call all higher mathematics "contentious" because laypeople would come to wrong conclusions due to inexperience. It devalues the word.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/contentious "1. Marked by heated arguments or controversy." There are heated arguments about this (among laypeople). The people arguing heatedly happen to be wrong, but the dictionary doesn't say that the heated arguments must have merit, only that they happen.
BTW, your "There is literally no credible argument why 0 would be considered odd." suggests that you didn't read the linked Wikipedia page and didn't look at the results of the Mastodon poll. Take a look what actual laypeople self-report about their position on this issue.
And yes, this means that many laypeople are not effective at doing mathematics. Does this surprise you? If yes, then the linked article and Mastodon thread may be interesting to you. Which is why I submitted them.