Your  argument about discounting or disregarding first hand testimony reminds 
me of  the following:

"If  I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be 
what it  is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, 
what is, it  wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?”  Alice’s 
Adventures in Wonderland by  Lewis Carroll (1928).




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