I have had this discussion before in this forum.. And actually reading one of these discussions was, why I wanted to return it back to the spotlight..

So, the topic is the concept of dishonesty.. More specifically, I have my own definition of dishonesty, which I wish to compare againt the traditional concept of lying..

-- The problems with the traditional concept of the lie

With the traditional idea, lying means presenting a claim, which is false, while knowing it is false.. For example, if you say that sky is blue, when you know it is violet, you are lying.. Still in traditional lying the grey area of lying typically favours the speaker.. So if you say donuts are important, while the real focus should be put on the apples, you are technically not lying, even if the donuts have relatively only marginal importance..

Also the traditional idea of lying passes claims of reality disquised as opinions.. For example, referring to the people on the streets believing 2+2 makes 5..

The traditional strict concept of lying makes it possible to represent biased and twisted overviews without technically lying.. For example you can film a documentary about Boohoostan showing only new hospitals, scycrapers and laughing children ~ all which transfers an image of a happy nation.. You can do this all in a very convincing manner without telling one lie, all while half of the population is dying of starvation and plague..

In another example, one can blame some random nation for possessing a threat on the basis this nation has terrifying weapons and has acted aggressively, while forgetting to mention that the state has practicly collapsed and the nation's goverment has pretty much ceased to exist..

In this way, the traditional concept for lying makes it possible to disinform via the following means:
1. By controlling the focus
2. Twisting the scales, magnitudes and probabilities
3. By offering opinions as facts

Overall, the offered world view is twisted by selecting very carefully the presented information.. The context of the event is forgotten and people are given a wrong impression of the magnitudes and backgrounds of the events.. And the overall story is composed only of hand picked half-truths..

And now the problem with the traditional concept of lying should be obvious.. If by these methods a person can create a completely twisted world of fantasy without saying one lie, then what is the worth of this definition of lying? The story's only purpose is to twist your world view and trick you to make conclusions not factual... How can it be, that while the lie should be considered as the act of dishonesty, this act of dishonesty is not considered as a lie?

What ever the case, neither the story or the teller has any credibility.. Instead, the teller of story might well have only malicious intentions and the act itself only consequences that are harmful to you and your interests..

-- Lying as an act of dishonesty

For these reason, I would prefer a definition for lying, which considers anything as lie that intentionally twists others' view of the world.. In this respect, if you trick another to believe that donuts is important, while you know they're not, you are lying.. Also, if you create an illusionary paradise of Boohoostan with you words, you are lying if you know the truth.. Even more, if you claim certainity of knowing something, while you are in doubt, you are lying..

Now, in the previous debates I have faced critic for definition on the basis that it would be somehow subjective..

Still, it is not like the people's tendencies to build their world view from the provided information would be somehow subjective or unpredictable.. Also, when facing any descripition of reality, it shouln't be imposible to weight this description's objectivism or bias..

For me, when we face some presented overview of the reality it is only a technical issue to find the validness of this overview, not something theorethically problematic.. For me, the value of overviews is well measurable.. They can be compared against the reality and the observations of the reailty.. And even more, good overviews have prediction value and they can compared against the future and its events..

All what the measuring some overview needs is a neutral judge and some neutral sources of information.. And this is a condition, which should be easily fulfilled.. The neutral judge or a source of information is the one with no emotions or interests towards the focus of the overview... And if a single judgement isn't enough, a group of people can be used to perform the judgement.. And neither in this respect the absolution is necessary.. We don't need ideal people, but only ones with sufficient disinterest or disappearing emotional bias on the subject.. In this respect, a slight bias causes a slight error and a marginal bias causes a marginal error ~ an error of no importance..

And overall, by forming an objective meter by using neutral people we get rid of the subjectivity and we bring the problem to the technical level.. What will be left is uncertainity, but the uncertanity is something what we can control and live with.. Also the methology can be improved and if the problems are of technical nature, they often have technical solutions..

- BtD

__________________
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
[George Orwell, 1984]

I always thought that what you are saying was incorporated into the definition of lying. Giving an impression you know to be false by hiding contrary evidence is lying. However if you don't know about the evidence not being represented, you are not lying. The qualitative difference between lying and telling a mistruth needs to be kept, since we cannot ascribe purposive behavior to someone who believes he/she is being truthful.
The hard part is proving whether someone has lied or merely told a mistruth. But how much of a problem? Perhaps rather than worrying about blame, we should focus on transparency and refutation to get at the truth.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

I have had several battles about this subject with SS, who defended the idea of lie equivalent to my 'traditional' definition of lie..

At least one debate concerned (suprise, suprise!) the U.S. justification for the war.. And this is also a topic that often seem to contain the biggest word game.. In a thread in the Current Events forum, I saw person saying that 'administration did not lie, but intentionally misled', which - for me - sound exactly the same thing..

Also according to my definition pretty much all of the professional PR is low-intensity lying, since they all intend to give artifically positive impressions.. But well - for me the level of dishonesty is a continuous quantity ~ sometimes it is higher, somestimes lower.. Typically a small amount of bias is tolerable, but as the overviews become more unrealistic and the lying more systematic, then the problem the lying forms becomes more evident and more alarming..

- BtD

__________________
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
[George Orwell, 1984]

I'm with you.
Intentional misleading = lying.
"Marketing" is essentially a euphanism for lying, in my opinion.
If something is really the right thing or at least a contender, other truths shouldn't need to be hidden and facts shouldn't need any embellishing- nice wording isn't necessarily lying, but misleading wording is.
In scholarly papers, one is required to at least mention opposing viewpoints and evidence that one has come across. That's not true for the political and business marketers out there.

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That information is classified and to be given only on a need-to-know basis...

And I do not need to know.

Deliberately giving facts you know are false = lying.

Everything else is subjective. What may be a "lie" to one person might be true to another...unless you are talking about facts, there is no way to be sure.

"Misleading" is not independently definable. It is a matter of opinion.

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My Political Blog (Most recent update Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

Who gets to decide if something is "nice wording" or is actually misleading?

With that kind of loose definition you could call anyone a liar.

Facts however can be verified and remain facts regardless of your point of view.

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My Political Blog (Most recent update Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

people on the far ends of either spectrum feel entitled to redefine words as it suits them.

BTD: the traditional definition of lying is both widely accepted and UNDERSTOOD to mean a specific thing. If you want to find a word to fit a new concept you've created, coin a new word. Don't try to shift an existing word over into your paradigm.

Doing so is intellectually dishonest and relies upon the fallacy of prejudicial language in which you use an emotionally charged word to give your argument greater emotional validity. It's knowingly engaging in falsehood. AKA: Logical lying.

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I'll get nicer when you get smarter.

Well, we have had discussion before.. Typically we might have claims with the following components:

1. Decsription of reality
2. Interests/Morals/heuristics
3. Decisions

Of these three, the case 1) has a clear definition for validity.. We might have a description considering some entity.. There are clear qualitative differences between different descriptions.. This the quality of description depends of certainly of the context and the ultimate purpose for the information.. One description of a football might hold different value for a football player or a collector of historical footballs.. Still, typically the context is known when information is transferred...

Overalll, we should all be able to agree that on this situation, the quality of descriptions is measurable..

Then let's consider interests or morals.. In this case I see that an overview describing one's motivation is equivalent for the description of any earthly object.. We may describe other people's personalities or interests as we might describe a tree or a cloud.. If I say Montgomerry Burns is creedy, I mean that his interest for money appears to be in important or dominant role in his personality.. The validity of my claim can be judged against mr. Burns behaviour in the real life..

Now, when we have items with value or actions, which might be morally questionable, they are relative only to interests in the case values or morals in the case of actions.. In a way, the value or the meaning of objects is only relative to the interests measuring them.. In this way, the only thing that is required to make item's values or moral condemnation unambigious is the declarations of the interest or the point of view..

So again - I claim - that the meaning or values of objects can be described in unambigious way.. The relativeness of meaning is simply removed by stating the point of view, which the meaning is related to.. In this way, the descriptions of values becames non-subjective.. When we have claims, which says that food is valuable or that killing people is wrong, we make the descriptions objective by pointing out the people loving food or the moral code condemning the killing..

The third case was the case of decisions, which are similarly relative to the interest or the point of view.. When we face options of doing A and doing B, we can refer to the good of state, moral or the law when deciding the right action..

And in this way, we have a way of making all the possible claims unambigious.. Even in the claims, which concern relative things as moral, but which miss the direct referencing to the moral code, we can typically derive the right moral code from the context of the speech/text..

And if we have a way of making claims unambigious, we can also measure their validity in umabigious way.. And if we can measure the claim' validity, we can measure the level of dishonesty..

- BtD

__________________
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
[George Orwell, 1984]

And the conclusion we came to was those things always come down to someone's interpretation. Facts do not require the same interpretation.

That doesnt mean everyone will agree that Mr Burns is greedy. It is an interpretation. An opinion.

Unambiguous to who? Only to the people that agree with your interpretation.

You have not shown me that your variables can be measured absolutely. There is always a chance your interpretation is wrong.

In America, we give people the benefit of the doubt (innocent until proven guilty...or in this case, not a liar by default). Perhaps it is different in Finland.

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My Political Blog (Most recent update Oct 3rd) - Which Flame Warrior are you?

Believe me, I don't want to redefine words just for some random political goals.. For me it simply seems weird, that the 'traditional' lie covers only one corner of the dishonesty..

But well.. Now - when reconsidering it - I suppose you are right, when you suggest I redefine words to give things greater emotional value.. Yeah, I guess you got me.. Nothing really to be proud of..

I guess the word 'misled' is exist to cover the rest of this pie of dishonesty.. Still the word misled is lacking the emotional weight.. I have difficulties understanding, why this is the case.. Whether I mislead you or lie to you, if the consequence is that you will lose one of your legs, the destructiveness and thus the immorality of this action is exactly the same.. It somehow seems that there is a section of dishonesty, which is socially acceptable, if still able to do equal harm and mischief as lying..

But, yes, you asked me to come with a word to cover the whole pie for the acts of
dishonesty ~ so to include both lying and misleading.. I have came out with the word 'misinform', which is not exactly a new word, but which I believe to do its job.. I have a feeling that it neither has the same emotional weight as the lying does.. Instead it seems to be extremely neutral term free of any moral or condemnation.. Hmm..

Maybe, before playing with words, I should concentrate on convincing people that any kind of disinforming in its all forms is wrong.. Or something..

- BtD

__________________
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
[George Orwell, 1984]