A Glossary of Alternative Reality  #1


If you analyse deliberate disinformation deeply - and manage to retain your sanity - you tend to observe some fascinating nuances and psychological tricks.

A bonus in such analyses is the discovery of things which - expressed in deliberately non-scientific terms - are quite amusing.

In an alternate reality, you might find definitions like mine in a dictionary or glossary.

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Speed camera

        A scientific instrument for detecting the difference between

        30.000 000 m.p.h.    
        and
        30.000 001 m.p.h.

        usually in order to make enough money from fines to buy more cameras.


        See also: circular argument.


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Circular argument

        a.    John is telling lies, because Jane says so.

        b.    Jane is telling the truth, because John says so.

        Who is telling porkies?

        An observer states that this isn't an example of a circular argument, but a paradox.

        The observer's proof that statements a and b constitute a paradox shows that
        paradoxes consist of statements having the same logical construction as a and b.

        See also: circular argument.


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Clarity

        A lack of caliginous, fuliginous umbrated or tenebrous terms.
       
        The only man who ever made himself perfectly clear was The Invisible Man,
        and look what happened to him!  His eyes were invisible and so he couldn't look at what
        happened to himself. 

        He eventually found his way to a hospital, where he kept asking the receptionist: 
        "When can I see a doctor?", and she kept replying:
        "The doctor can't see you yet.""

        See also: dilemma.