Parallel universe

What might have been — and might yet be — but wasn’t, and won’t be.

The sort of beard you grow when Occam’s razor is blunt.

Your last desperate hope, when even your dearest philosophy has failed you, of spiritual or intellectual redemption.

If you resort to hypothesising a parallel universe — be it one where unobserved but necessary space-time dimensions manifest themselves, one whence your mortal soul will go when from its earthly coil it shuffles, or one where leaving the most successful free-trade organisation in the history of the world will improve your prospects of overseas trade — whatever argument you are having at the time, you have surely lost.