😳Plain Speaking

The Plain is a two-dimensional place, inhabited by round people and square people.

There is not much to do in the Plain, so its inhabitants argue over whether the pentagon is a circular disc with five thorns on it or a square with one corner squashed flat and the four sides pushed out slightly by that squashing.

In the three-dimensional space around the Plain, a cylindrical person called Cyril has been watching them arguing, and he decides to give them something else to think about.

As he passes through the Plain, Cyril can look like a round person or a square person, because his height is the same length as the diameter of his circular cross-section, so he pauses at various places in the Plain—sometimes looking like a round person, sometimes a square one—and says very loudly, “I am Cyril.”

The round people take the Cyrils to be a race of round and square people who can flip over to this side of the Plain from the other side. But the square people assume that “Cyril” names a single person. The square people deduce that Cyril is a round square person who is usually somewhere impossible, when he is not visiting them. And they suppose that he is visiting them now in order to show them that they were made in his image.

Should I let them know that it was me who made them all up? A square person called Martin appears and says, “I made the Plain and everyone in it.” But the other square people take him to be Cyril, and they think that he is telling them that they are right. They set out to correct the round people.

I blame myself.