I did a course of mathematical logic at university, with a Hungarian tutor. To nobody’s great surprise, I failed miserably. I could understand, sort of, what it was about, but lacked the talent or the curiosity to get to grips with a textbook that seemingly consisted only of symbols which never resolved themselves into words I could understand.
I did learn one little word – which came allegedly from the Hungarian language*. The biggest little word in the world. Iff, meaning if and only if.
That f can make a big difference.
Consider the following:
If you smoke you will die before your time
If you take out the rubbish I will make you a cup of cocoa.
Some of us, labelled deniers or sceptics, are really just thinking about whether there is one f or two in all those statements about the reliability of models which demonstrate that global warming is man made or of what will happen if we do not change our ways.
*The OED says it is just an abbreviation; I prefer to believe my tutor
