"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner.
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This last semester, my students and I were reading about the psychology behind "the dress" and one of the articles noted the dozens of processes that take place before you become aware of the color. The idea was that it's not even a decision. The brains of people who worked outside saw it one way and those whose brains compensated for artificial light saw it another way. Baseline understanding of concepts are similarly filtered, apparently....
So, following from that, there are a lot of notions, ideas, and predispositions that filter what gets assigned the feeling of "obviously and inarguably true." That said, I am inclined to agree with you.
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@janjko @vrandecic Her answer was false but she wasn't lying; she was simply wrong. It's only lying when you knowingly make a false statement.
If you claim something is true when you know that you don’t know if it is true or not, then that’s a lie, even if it turns out to be true. @vrandecic @irina @janjko
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"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic I think there is a question to be asked about the relationship between Tom and Maria:
Is it a strong or weak relationship?If it is a strong, high-trust relationship:
=> Maria's answer was trueIf it is a weak, low-trust relationship:
=> Maria's answer was neither true nor false, because she doesn't really care about truthIt's the same with media: If an untrusted media site publishes bullshit and Maria cites that bullshit, is she telling the truth or does she simply not care?
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@vrandecic I think there is a question to be asked about the relationship between Tom and Maria:
Is it a strong or weak relationship?If it is a strong, high-trust relationship:
=> Maria's answer was trueIf it is a weak, low-trust relationship:
=> Maria's answer was neither true nor false, because she doesn't really care about truthIt's the same with media: If an untrusted media site publishes bullshit and Maria cites that bullshit, is she telling the truth or does she simply not care?
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@vrandecic Another view angle:
Passing of time and what we know at a certain point in time:
Sometimes we collectively say something is true until we've found evidence that it is not (because of better research etc.).
So in that case, I'd say Maria says the truth, because at that point in time this was her state of knowledge at that time.
Yeah, it's complicated!
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@vrandecic I think there is a question to be asked about the relationship between Tom and Maria:
Is it a strong or weak relationship?If it is a strong, high-trust relationship:
=> Maria's answer was trueIf it is a weak, low-trust relationship:
=> Maria's answer was neither true nor false, because she doesn't really care about truthIt's the same with media: If an untrusted media site publishes bullshit and Maria cites that bullshit, is she telling the truth or does she simply not care?
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"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic
Like many in the comments, I believe her answer was false not true. Her statement was factually false. I also believe that she told the truth as she knew it - she did not lie.
@Leefromphilly -
"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic You would do well to learn more about "Indian logic". There's true, false, neither true nor false, and both true and false.
In this case, the statement is inaccurate. It's neither true nor false. -
"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic The disagreement here is revealing something deep: conflating *fact-condition* (was Tom there) with *assertion-appropriateness* (should Maria have said it).
Maria failed on both. She wasn't positioned to assert fact, just relay intention. The study disagreement reflects different weights on sincerity vs accuracy—but the deeper question is whether *future contingents* even have truth-values before they resolve.
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@janjko yeah, I have the same problem. I would say Maria never lied. But for me, that doesn't mean what she said is true.
@vrandecic @janjko Yes. Is this not a common interpretation?
A false statement in good faith doesn't fall into the same category as lying, for me. Maria did make her statement too definitive based on, essentially, hearsay. But not exactly a lie.
I would have replied, as far as I know, yes. -
A new study shows that there is much, much less agreement on the answer to this question than I would have expected. Even after reading about the study, I still expect people in my bubble to have the same answer as I do. Let's see. But this probably means that the meaning of truth, in the general population, is simply different from what I would have assumed. And explains a number of public discourses.
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The surprising divide over what counts as true
A new study finds that what people think about facts, authenticity, or coherent beliefs explains why they disagree about what is true.
Reason.com (reason.com)
@vrandecic Could there be a language issue here? As in, is this result not because people disagree about the nature of truth, but because people interpret the word "True" differently, perhaps because English is their second language and they've been taught to associate the word with a concept from their own language which doesn't exactly match?
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A new study shows that there is much, much less agreement on the answer to this question than I would have expected. Even after reading about the study, I still expect people in my bubble to have the same answer as I do. Let's see. But this probably means that the meaning of truth, in the general population, is simply different from what I would have assumed. And explains a number of public discourses.
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The surprising divide over what counts as true
A new study finds that what people think about facts, authenticity, or coherent beliefs explains why they disagree about what is true.
Reason.com (reason.com)
@vrandecic Reminds me of Gettier problem.
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"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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it's neither true nor false, but if i had to pick one, i'd say true, because she believed it to be true at the time based on information she was given in good faith.
more accurate though would've been for her to say that tom said he'd be there.
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I agree. What she should have said is that he said he would be at the party. Then it wouldn’t be false either way.
@pomegranate_stew @vrandecic @janjko I find people often express frustration when I use conditional statements, but I find it frustrating that it's apparently a social norm to express unwarranted certainty.
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"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic it's really wild to me how people will think her statement was true just because she believed it to be at the time? that doesn't make any sense. people can be wrong, especially when they make overly confident statements of fact.
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"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic I'd say that the question that is asked following this case shouldn't have been formulated like that. Maria's statement belongs to another category of reality or truthfulness.
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@vrandecic it's really wild to me how people will think her statement was true just because she believed it to be at the time? that doesn't make any sense. people can be wrong, especially when they make overly confident statements of fact.
@vrandecic this study kinda explains a lot about how we're in the situation we are in.
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If you claim something is true when you know that you don’t know if it is true or not, then that’s a lie, even if it turns out to be true. @vrandecic @irina @janjko
@BenAveling @vrandecic @janjko Yes; you need to qualify it with "I think X" or "I'm practically sure that X"
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"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"
(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)
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@vrandecic @vrandecic The insight: Maria's statement doesn't have a fixed meaning. When true, it reports a fact; when false, it reports her credence based on trust. Same sentence, different truth-conditions.
Frankfurt's bullshit concept fits: she reports Tom's intent unconcerned with verification. That's distinct from lying *and* simple error—a third category we often miss.
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@vrandecic @janjko Yes. Is this not a common interpretation?
A false statement in good faith doesn't fall into the same category as lying, for me. Maria did make her statement too definitive based on, essentially, hearsay. But not exactly a lie.
I would have replied, as far as I know, yes.@GinevraCat @vrandecic @janjko I'd say she makes her statement on more than hearsay. Tom said he'd be at the party. Unless Tom had a track record of changing his mind or lying, she had enough information to expect him to be there.
Now, if Peter was an attorney about to start questioning a witness, she might want to be more explicit, but she was having dinner before a party...
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@GinevraCat @vrandecic @janjko I'd say she makes her statement on more than hearsay. Tom said he'd be at the party. Unless Tom had a track record of changing his mind or lying, she had enough information to expect him to be there.
Now, if Peter was an attorney about to start questioning a witness, she might want to be more explicit, but she was having dinner before a party...
