On Sat, 26 Nov 2011, Marc Riddell wrote:
Without knowledge, myths are born. With myths, fear is
born. With fear,
intolerance is born. With intolerance, ignorance is born. With ignorance,
nothing is born.
I recall a Scientific American article (I believe it was in Mathematical
Games or its successors) which showed that using a chain of synonyms about
as long as what you are using here it is possible to create a chain from
almost any word to its opposite.
One specific example they used was "reliable" being shown through a chain
of synonyms to be the same as "unreliable".
I can't Google paper, but this statement reminded me of that.