Comments Posted By Jack Foster
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THE TOTAL WITLESSNESS OF OBAMA APOLOGISTS
McCarthyism LIVES!!! ;)
Comment Posted By Jack Foster On 25.04.2008 @ 19:50
By your metric, everybody in the damn world is "an easy liar". Nobody has as a auto-fact-check system biologically attached to their brains! The question comes down to general reliability, the relative importance of the statement, and of course the intent to deceive. If a friend tells me that he worked out for an hour, and I come back with a surveillance video from the exercise club showing that he left 55 minutes after he arrived, I can accurately (I guess) call him an "easy liar". On the other hand, I haven't shown that he has a blatant disregard for the truth, and in fact the friend would remain trustworthy. He may have technically missed the truth, but still there was no intention to deceive, and in fact most people would judge that he had indeed told the truth in this instance.
But let's say my fried was in fact with a mistress. He could still potentially claim that he had not lied about "working out for an hour". Still his statement was misleading, and my trust in him upon learning the truth would be diminished. Most people would consider that he had indeed lied.
Trustworthiness can only be judged on a relative scale. Everyone tells the occasional white-lie, exaggerates, and intentionally misleads every so often. We judge people to be liars when their statements are consistently not reliable, when there is intent, when there is importance, and when the lie contradicts the truth to the extreme: that which is known as a "bald-faced" lie. So using my metric, which indeed is the common one, Barack Obama and John McCain are not liars. Hillary on the other hand, has reduced her credibility so much with a complete disregard for the truth, that she indeed can be accurately called . . . a liar.
cheers,
Comment Posted By Jack Foster On 7.04.2008 @ 12:24
