If Mozart had Died at Your Age: Psychologic Versus Statistical Interence

In an alternative world, Mozart lived to 65 and, as a result, neither World War nor the Holocaust happened. Two contemporary Germans in this world debate the implications of the counterfactual of Mozart dying young and cannot begin to conceive of the horrors of our twentieth century. A imaginary critic with a structural orientation reviews the story and challenges its premise. He denies that artistic changes could have far-reaching political implications and uses the laws of probability to show the vanishingly low likelihood of the alternate future described by the main character of the story. The author responds with a defense of his counterfactual as an exercise in psychologic, where credibility is achieved through vividness.