A Sneaky Quiz with a Subversive Commentary 
 
 DIRECTIONS: The following quiz has been designed to undermine the unstated 
and often 
 unconscious assumptions that inflame most arguments or discussions about 
heretical ideas and 
 turn debate into heated quarrel. With no further explanation (at this point), 
I invite you to 
 jump in and measure your S.N.Q. (Semantic Naivety Quotient) by judging each 
of the following 
 assertions. 
 
 TRUE FALSE 
 
  1. Francis Bacon wrote Hamlet. 
  2. Ronald Reagan wrote Hamlet. 
  3. F=ma (Force equals mass times acceleration) 
  4. pq=qp 
  5. Water boils at 100 degrees Centigrade. 
  6. There is a tenth planet in our solar system beyond Pluto.
  7. All propositions are either true or false. 
  8. All propositions are true in some sense,false in some sense, true and 
  false in some sense, and neither true nor false in some sense. 
  9. When blessed by an ordained Catholic priest,a piece of bread becomes 
     the body of a Jew who died about 2000 years ago. 
  10. All gremlins eat red lemons.
  11. The Pope is infallible in matters of faith and morals.
  12. Charlie Manson was responsible for several murders. 
  13. A court found Charlie Manson responsible for several murders. 
  14. The Nazi government killed six million Jews. 
  15. The Federal Reserve Bank is controlled by the Bavarian Illuminati. 
  16. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. 
  17. The Smithsonian Institute has John Dillinger's legendary 23-inch penis    
  in a jar, but they only show it to friends of government officials and deny 
  its existence to people like you and me. 
  18. A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim. 
  19. Beethoven is a better composer than Mozart. 
  20. The electron is a wave. 
  21. The electron is a particle. 
  22. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a pornographic novel. 
  23. Lady Chatterley's Lover is a sexist novel.  
  24. All men are created equal. 
  25. All humans are created equal. 
  26. All entities are created equal. 
  27. God told me to tell you that what you want is sinful. 
  28. I became one with God. 
  29. The following sentence is false. 
  30. The previous sentence was true. 
  31. The Darwinian Theory of Evolution has been conclusively proven. 
  32. The Darwinian Theory of Evolution has been conclusively disproven. 
  33. UFOs exist. 
 
 
 Since techniques of judging the truth value of propositions are still in 
heated dispute 
 among logicians, mathematicians, scientists, and philosophers, I am not about 
to give 
 "correct" answers to this quiz. Instead, I will offer a commentary on why 
some uncertainty 
 attends all the preceding propositions and why the uncertainty about some of 
them is vast and 
 abysmal. 
 
 
 Proposition 1, "Francis Bacon wrote Hamlet," is believed by a small but 
vehement minority 
 and regarded as not only "false" but patently absurd by academic orthodoxy. 
No scientific way 
 exists to test such propositions, and, since historians frequently have 
disputes over what 
 constitutes "real" historical evidence, some doubt must attend a theory of 
this nature. I 
 would suggest that the amount of doubt should be greater than in the case of 
the proposition 
 "Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President of the United States from 1933 to 
1945," certainly 
 less than in the case of "Ronald Reagan wrote Hamlet," and might be perhaps 
equal to that in 
 the case of "Francis Bacon definitely did not write Hamlet." 
 Personally, I tend to believe Will Shakespeare of Stratford wrote Hamlet, but 
since I can't 
 prove it scientifically and am not an expert on Elizabethan conspiracies, I 
am not 100 percent 
 sure, and prefer to listen to the Baconians politely rather than arouse their 
(quickly 
 aroused) hostility by dogmatic denial of their Faith. 
 
 Proposition 2, "Ronald Reagan wrote Hamlet," only seems clearly false. We 
would only evade 
 a possible trap if we more carefully worded this as "Ronald Reagan wrote the 
version of Hamlet 
 usually attributed to Shakespeare." After all, Ronnie might have written his 
own version in 
 youth and prudently decided not to publish it . . . 
 
 Proposition 3, about force being mathematically equal to mass times 
acceleration, seems 
 absolutely true to everybody-except a few very philosophical scientists. 
Nobel laureate P.W. 
 Bridgman, for instance, held the position that such scientific laws should 
better be 
 considered "useful" than "true," and that what appears "useful" will change 
with time as 
 knowledge increases. Logician Anatole Rapoport (and many others) would 
describe such "laws" as 
 valid rather than "true," on the grounds that we can prove their mathematical 
consistency 
 (inner validity) but can only observe that they seem to work experimentally 
thus far and can't 
 know they will always work. Sir Karl Popper, philosopher-physicist, offers 
the most 
 devastating criticism of all, arguing that no scientific law has ever been 
proven, but some 
 have been disproven. Popper's argument is that it would take an infinite 
number of experiments 
 to prove a law strictly, and we haven't had that much time yet, so 
science actually advances 
 by disproving inadequate theories and pragmatically "making do" with the ones 
that have thus 
 far resisted disproof. 
 I do not aver that the criticisms of Bridgman, Rapoport, Popper, and others 
of that ilk 
 have been conclusive, but only that many learned persons share such views and 
the matter of 
 scientific "truth" still remains in dispute. Some minds cling to certitude, 
not because it can 
 be clearly justified, but evidently because such minds have an emotional need 
for certitude. 
 
 Proposition 4, "pq = qp," again appears to belong to mathematical validity 
rather than 
 demonstrable certainty. It is, in fact, a rule of commutative algebra, and, 
however useful you 
 may find it in the grocery store, there are alternative algebras, one of 
which, known as 
 Hamiltonian or non-commutative algebra, is just as valid (internally 
consistent) and has been 
 found as useful in quantum mechanics as ordinary algebra is in shopping. The 
Hamiltonian 
 algebra holds that pq is not equal to qp. 
 Examples like this (and the co-existence of Euclidian, non-Euclidian, and 
Fullerian 
 geometries) demonstrate why many mathematicians do not any longer assert 
"truth" or "falsity" 
 for mathematical systems, but only "validity" or "nonvalidity." 
 
 Proposition 5, "Water boils at 100~ Centigrade," appears true on this planet, 
to people 
 living at sea-level. Even on this planet, it appears clearly and demonstrably 
false to people 
 living or doing research in the Rocky Mountains, the Alps, the Himalayas, 
etc. 
 The Cosmological Principle holds that scientific laws should be true 
everywhere in space-time, but we do not know if any of our current "laws" are 
cosmological in that sense. We only 
 know that they seem to work thus far in the spacetime we have explored thus 
far. When we 
 and/or our instruments probe further, many cosmological laws will probably be 
disproven and 
 replaced by different "laws" (better approximations). 
 
 Proposition 6, about the planet beyond Pluto, is believed by many astronomers 
on the basis 
 of strong inference, but such a planet has not been observed yet. Dr. 
Rapoport would class 
 such assertions as "indeterminate," rather than true or false, until actual 
observations are 
 reported and repeatedly confirmed. 
 Incidentally, would you care to guess how many of your favorite religious, 
political, or 
 economic beliefs would be classed as "indeterminate" by the Rapoport 
standard? 
 
 Proposition 7, "All propositions are either true or false," is still 
valiantly defended by 
 the Jesuits, Martin Gardner, the disciples of Ann Rand, and ideologists of 
all schools of 
 political frenzy, but is increasingly doubted by modem logicians and 
scientists. One reason 
 for this increasing doubt is that many propositions appear "indeterminate" in 
Rapoport's 
 sense, and we will confront other reasons as we advance. For now, it is 
enough to note that 
 the Formalist school of mathematicians regard all logical-mathematical 
systems as being more 
 like Game Rules than scientific "laws," and, in this case, we should consider 
"All 
 propositions are either true or false" as a Game Rule of Aristotelian logic. 
(Alfred 
 
       Korzybski, G. Spencer Brown, and John von Neumann, among others, have 
invented non-Aristotelian logics that are as valid as non-Euclidian 
geometries.) 
 
 Similarly, 8, "All propositions are true in some sense, false in some sense, 
true and false 
 in some sense, and neither true nor false in some sense," can be considered a 
Game Rule in 
 Mahayana Buddhism (and in some philosophical interpretations of quantum 
mechanics, it seems). 
 
 9, about bread becoming flesh during a magical ritual, is fervently believed 
by Roman 
 Catholics, denied by Rationalists, and considered "meaningless" by Logical 
Positivists. The 
 grounds for considering such propositions meaningless are that no event in 
space-time (no act, 
 no sense impression, no scientific measurement) can prove or disprove such 
allegations. For 
 example, one could say that the ritual actually turns the bread into the hide 
of the Easter 
 Bunny, and even though Catholics would probably join Rationalists in 
rejecting such a 
 statement, it is on par with the idea that the ritual turns the bread into 
human flesh. When 
 propositions do not refer to existential events that humans may encounter and 
endure in space-time, it seems that the Logical Positivists have some 
reasonable grounds for employing the 
 label "meaningless." (Finding technical problems in this label, Bridgman 
suggested the alternative and obviously colloquial term, "footless 
propositions.") 
 
 10, about gremlins and red lemons, seems also "meaningless" by this Logical 
Positivist (and 
 Operationalist) standard. (But how about statements about "the National 
Debt?") 
 
       
 11, about Papal infallibility, appears false to Rationalists, but at this 
point some may 
 prefer the label "meaningless," since there is no operation to test the 
Pope's omniscience. Or 
 is Papal Infallibility best considered a Game Rule of Catholicism, like "the 
umpire's decision 
 is binding" is considered a Game Rule of baseball? 
 
 12, about Manson's guilt, would be considered "legally true" by lawyers, 
since a jury, a 
 judge, and a higher court all found Charlie guilty. However, since even the 
American Bar 
 Association admits that around five percent of all convicted "criminals" are 
innocent, it 
 appears that legal truth does not guarantee absolute factual truth. That's 
why there are books 
 challenging the court verdict in almost all the famous trials of history, and 
one can safely 
 guess there will someday be books challenging the court's decision on Manson. 
 
 13, "A court found Charlie Manson guilty of several murders," seems safer 
than 12. It will 
 be challenged only by those who are also willing to assert that all (or most) 
documents 
 relevant to the trial are forgeries created by some enormous conspiracy . . . 
 
 14, concerning the Holocaust, confronts us with exactly that problem, alas. 
Some people 
 claim all the evidence of murder in 6,000,000 cases has been faked by a huge 
conspiracy. I 
 will explain below why I think that instead of simply calling such all-
embracing conspiracy 
 theories "false," we might more profitably label them "Strange Loops." For 
now, I merely 
 observe that a conspiracy that can deceive us about 6,000,000 deaths 
can deceive us about 
 anything, and that it takes a great leap of faith for Holocaust Revisionists 
to believe World 
 War 11 happened at all, or that Franklin Roosevelt did serve as President 
from 1933 to 1945, 
 or that Marilyn Monroe was more "real" than King Kong or Donald Duck. 
 
 15, Illuminati control of banks, also creates a Strange Loop. If we believe 
in a conspiracy 
 of that size, we cannot fully believe in anything else, including the 
evidence that led us to 
 believe in such a conspiracy. 
 
 16, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," seems to be a classic 
"meaningless" statement 
 in the Logical Positivist sense, since we cannot hope to encounter colorless 
green ideas or 
 observe their sleeping habits. However, this proposition is not meaningless 
in another sense. 
 It comes from Noam Chomsky and has meaning in linguistics, because it 
demonstrates that we can 
 recognize a correct grammatical structure without knowing what the sentence 
containing it is 
 asserting. This is one reason for doubting that the Logical Positivist label 
of "meaningless" 
 is going to solve all hard cases for 
 us . . . 
 
 17, the Dillinger penis in the Smithsonian, I would classify as purely 
meaningless in the 
 Logical Positivist sense. The proposition indeed is carefully worded to tell 
us that any 
 attempt to prove or disprove it will lead us to be deceived, and hence like 
all mega-
 conspiracy theories this verges over from meaningless into a total 
Strange Loop. 
 
 18, "A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim," certainly appears 
meaningless by 
 almost any criteria, but it was evidently urgently meaningful to the 
gentleman who said it. He 
 was Dutch Shultz, and he had a bullet in him and a high fever (due to the 
bullet), and he was 
 doing the best he could, under the circumstances, to tell the police what had 
happened. We 
 will have to consider this "failed communication" unless we are bold enough 
to call it Great 
 Poetry. 
 
 19, Beethoven's "superiority" to Mozart, also seems meaningless by strict 
Positivist 
 standards. I would prefer to call it self-reflexive, on the grounds that it 
refers to the 
 nervous system of the speaker and is a clumsy formulation of the more 
accurate report 
 "Beethoven seems better than Mozart to me, at the current stage of my musical 
knowledge and 
 ignorance." 
 
 20, "The electron is a wave," once seemed "true," but now quantum physicists 
tend to regard 
 it as instrumentally self-reflexive. That is, it should be considered a bad 
formulation of the 
 more accurate report "Using certain instruments we constrain the electron to 
appear as a 
 wave." 
 
 21, "The electron is a particle," similarly should be considered a bad 
formulation of the 
 accurate report "Using other instruments we constrain the electron to 
behave like a particle." 
 
 22, about the "pornography" of D.H. Lawrence's best-known novel, was once 
legally "true" 
 and is currently legally "false." I suggest that such statements 
  should be considered self-reflexive in the sense explained above. One set of 
judges, using 
 the only instruments they had (their nervous systems), registered pornography; 
a later set of 
 judges, with other instruments (nervous systems), did not register 
pornography. 
 
 23, about the "sexism" of the same novel, also seems self-reflexive to me; I 
think it 
 describes events in the nervous system of the speaker. However, many people, 
who will agree 
 that statements about musical merit or pornography "are" self-reflexive, 
still insist that 
 statements about sexism "are" as objective as statements about the number of 
apples in a 
 barrel. I therefore continue to suggest only and do not insist on anything. 
Maybe somebody 
 will invent a Smutometer or Chauvinoscope someday and we will be able to 
measure "pornography" 
 or "sexism" . . . 
 
 24, "All men are created equal," once seemed true (Jefferson thought he was 
writing an 
 anthropological law), and is currently not only indeterminate but sounds a 
bit reactionary to 
 most of us. I suggest we call it a Game Rule of Jeffersonian Democracy.

 25, "All humans are created equal," thus appears a Game Rule of current 
post Jeffersonian 
 Democracy, just as Papal Infallibility appears a Game Rule of preJeffersonian 
Autocracy. 
 
 26, "All entities are created equal," appears to be a Game Rule of Buddhism, 
and is 
 becoming a Game Rule of Moral Ecology (as distinguished from scientific 
ecology). 
 
 27, "God told me to tell you that what you want is sinful," appears true to 
many devout 
 fans of Fundamentalist Evangelism, and is regarded as imposture by scoffers 
and skeptics. I 
 personally regard it as impertinence, but, anyway, it might best be called a 
bad formulation 
 of the instrumentally self-reflexive report "I have had such an astounding 
experience that the 
 only terms I know that can describe it are to assert that God told me to go 
out and correct 
 the rest of you bastards." This does not contradict the fact that other 
people have other 
 terms for the experience, including paranoia and megalomania. 
 
 
 28, "I became one with God," similarly seems to me a sloppy formulation of 
the report "I 
 had such an astounding experience that the only model I know that describes 
it is to say God 
 and I are one." This does not contradict the fact that other people have 
other models, 
 including "I and the universe became one" and "myright brain hemisphere began 
to merge with my 
 left brain hemisphere" (and others). 
 
 29, "The following sentence is false,"appears neither true, nor false, 
nor indeterminate, 
 nor meaningless, but incomplete. We cannot judge it at all until we can judge 
the system of 
 which it is part.(Most theological and political arguments are about such 
incomplete 
 statements,which are discussed as if they had true-false ratings, or 
"meaning," outside the 
 system which contains them.) 
 
 30, "The previous sentence was true," completes the incomplete system, which 
now can be 
 judged. As is immediately obvious, this system is true if and only if it is 
false, and it's 
 false if and only if it's true. Douglas Hofstadter calls such systems Strange 
Loops, and 
 (without using 
 that term) anthropologist Gregory Bateson has demonstrated that the Game 
Rules of many 
 societies and sub-cultures cause believers to appear like lunatics when seen 
from outside the 
 system. Before judging any proposition as true or false, you should not only 
ask if it might 
 better be called indeterminate or meaningless or self-reflexive or a "local" 
Game Rule, but 
 also if it is part of a Strange Loop that may make you appear crazy if you 
try to live with 
 it. All conspiracy theories beyond the local and temporary-for example, "The 
city council was 
 bribed by the oil company" tend to produce Strange Loops because they create 
the possibility 
 that no data is untainted by conspiratorial manipulation, and the larger an 
alleged conspiracy 
 is supposed to be, the greater is the ten- dency of believers to enter the 
Strange Loop of 
 paranoid schizophrenia. 
 
 31 and 32, asserting that Darwinian evolutionary theory has been proven 
or disproven, I 
 personally would classify as None Of The Above. I regard such assertions as 
propaganda in the 
 Cold War between Darwinians and Creationists. The Darwinian theory has more 
or less stood up 
 for over a hundred years, has flaws which most biologists now admit, and may 
need considerable 
 revision in the near future, but remains, as Popper has often argued, not in 
the same ball 
 park at all as the "laws" of sciences like mathematical physics. (Personally, 
I don't see any 
 better biological model around than Darwin's, but considering the criticisms 
recently raised 
 within biology I strongly suspect a better model will arrive shortly -and 
will probably be 
 equally offensive to Creationists . . .) 
 
 33, "UFOs exist," seems to me the trickiest proposition on the list. I regard 
it as a 
 simple empirical observation, as "true" and/or "false" as any other sense 
impression. People 
 are always seeing things in the sky that they can't identify; right now, it 
is fashionable to 
 call such glitches "unidentified flying objects." But people also are forever 
seeing things on 
 the ground that they can't identify; should we call them "unidentified 
terrestrial objects?" 
 
 	This last example simply illustrates that when a feud lasts long enough, 
people lose 
 track of what they are arguing about. "UFOs exist" does not assert the same 
thing as "Alien 
 spaceships exist"; it is merely the heat of intellectual warfare that causes 
both sides to 
 frequently lose sight of that simple distinction. It would be miraculous if 
no unidentified 
 flying objects existed; that could only indicate a sudden evolutionary 
quantum jump in which 
 human perception and reasoning both increased to near perfection. 
Personally, I often 
 encounter unidentified   objects in my own closet . . . and sometimes my wife 
doesn't know 
 what they are or where they came from, either. 
 
 	It is a wonderful convenience when we can reduce an argument to simple "true 
or false," 
 without fudging the data or conveniently "forgetting" ambiguities and 
uncertainties. In such 
 cases, Aristotelian-Boolean logic quickly solves the question. The main 
reason so many issues 
 in science, philosophy, religion, and politics are still in dispute, however, 
is not that 
 everybody is "unreasonable" except for you and your friends, but that, at any 
given time, most 
 theories remain merely internally valid or phenomenologically indeterminate 
or meaningless, or 
 are merely self-reflexive or are local Game Rules or contain paradox-and-
paranoia-engendering 
 Strange Loops. Or else, in many cases, we simply haven't yet collected enough 
data to settle 
 the matter.