counterfactual

adj

1. (not-comparable)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. (not-comparable)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.”

noun

1. A claim, hypothesis, or other belief that is contrary to the facts.
2. 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.”

   “Roese also says counterfactuals can serve emotional purposes. You can think about how things could have been worse, and so feel better about yourself, and grateful for where you are.”

   “Imagine a counterfactual in which we started relaxing restrictions at an even earlier time, just as the cases began to trend downward.”

3. A conditional statement in which the conditional clause is false.