Mu

Definitions

1. The correct answer to a question whose premises are false, meaning roughly 'un-ask the question'. Borrowed from the Zen koan tradition and popularised among hackers by Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach, mu is offered when neither yes nor no can be given without endorsing a mistaken assumption, as in the classic 'have you stopped corrupting the database?'. In technical discussion it is a precise and useful move: it rejects the framing rather than the answer, and signals that the questioner needs to revise their model before an answer can mean anything.