"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner.
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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?"
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@vrandecic She misrepresented her reasonable confidence level. That is a false statement for a purpose where contextually the confidence level was a vital part of the answer. In a context where confidence level was less vital, a best-guess answer could have been true. Whether it's false or true depends on the meaning of the asked question more than on anything else.
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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?"
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@vrandecic I would not describe her answer as either true or false. In fact, I feel that the 50/50 (within margins of error) split seen in the study is the expected outcome from making people categorize this (relatively commonplace, but poorly characterized by both words) scenario as one or the other.
Her statement was clearly within the bounds of "wrong", and outside the bounds of "lying". That's a much more defensible way to put it.
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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?"
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@vrandecic would have liked this to have multiple choice answers!
Because in my view it was true and untrue at the same time.
When she answered, she answered truthfully based on the information available to her.
When they arrived the facts had changed and her answer wasn't true any more.
So really, it depends on which point in time you choose to judge whether it was true - and from whose perspective you look at it.
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