Alternate Universes

I ended up liking Ghost Town much more than I thought I would, and given how absurdly the amazing the cast as a whole in The Invention of Lying, Ricky Gervais's new comedy, looks to be, I'm pretty excited for that as well. But the movie, which centers around the idea of a world where no one is capable of lying, or even aware of the concept of an untruth, raises an interesting question for me: is it possible for us to get engrossed in an alternate universe that looks exactly like our own? The world in The Invention of Lying really is supposed to function differently from our own, even though it looks the same--no one dresses differently, drives flying cars, lives in surrealist architecture, or has unusual jobs. And so I wonder if the truths people tell constantly will seem like jarring aberrations every time they get too caustic or too funny, because we expect people to behave differently as a result of how they look? Or will we be able to accept the paradigm shift, and accept Gervais's character as an aberration, even though he's the character in the movie most like us?