counterfactual

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Contrary to known or agreed facts

   Contrary to known or agreed facts; untrue.

   • a leaderless disinformation campaign, with claims leaping from conspiracy theorists to state propagandists to alternative-media outlets and back—an ecosystem I call the Counterfactual Community.
2. 2

   Of or in comparison to a hypothetical state of the world.

   • What would have happened if those great Chinese voyages [by Zheng He] had continued? It's one of those questions in counter-factual history about which it is impossible to be sure.
   • The counterfactual 1982 of the novel plays variations on our historical record and contains clear allusions to the present.
3. 3

   A claim, hypothesis, or other belief that is contrary to the facts.

4. ›+ 2 more definitionsshow fewer

   1. 4

      A hypothetical state of the world, used to assess the impact of an action.

      • Just as counterfactuals employ too much imagination to qualify as historical works, alternate history often labors under too great a load of artificial "facts" to take flight as fiction.
      • We can spin out complicated counterfactuals that justify the Iraq invasion, and complicated counterfactuals that make it look even worse.
      • The implicit counterfactual — that these members would support gun control if not for the $1,000 they received from the NRA — seems unlikely to me.
   2. 5

      A conditional statement in which the conditional clause is false.

The neighborhood

• neighboralternate history
• neighboralternate universe
• neighboralternative fact
• neighborwhat if
• neighborwhat-if