And lo on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 23:48:05 -0000, Patrick Elliott  
<sel### [at] rraznet> did spake, saying:

> In article <web.479b10cbe1d0580ad77696980@news.povray.org>,
> nam### [at] gmailcom says...
>> Tim Cook <z99### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> > Darren New wrote:
>> > > Then the answer would be "no", not "yes". :-) If the place doesn't
>> > > exist, then asking whether there's something at that place would be
>> > > answered "no". Do the taxi drivers on the moon accept tips? No.
>> >
>> > According to my philosophy 101 teacher at university, you can validly
>> > say anything about nonexistent things.  All unicorns are chartreuse,  
>> no
>> > harbl which has a frobotz is virpo, that kind of thing.  So the taxi
>> > drivers on the moon both do and do not accept tips.
>>
>> indeed.  Wu/Mu is the correct answer to such questions.
>>
>
> Actually, this reminds me of a blog entry I read today which talked
> about the difference between lies, bullshit and spin.
>
> Basically:
>
> Lies - Require you know the truth, so you can try to convince people
> that something else is true instead. This is easily refuted, since all
> someone has to do it prove that the truth is something else.

No, lying requires you to think you know the truth then claim something  
else. If I 'knew' the Moon was made of cheese then *I'd* be lying if I  
told you was it was just a lump of rock.

> Bullshit - Making things up, out of thin air, with no basis in truth at
> all, other than needed to convince someone that it *might* be somehow
> connected to the real world. This is damn hard to refute, since how do
> you prove that there *is* truth, as related to something that doesn't
> exist? How do you even prove that it didn't happen, didn't exist, etc.?

Again not quite. Bullshit is indeed fabrication from thin air, but like  
lying doesn't necessarily preclude the person hitting upon the truth; just  
that they wouldn't know it.

> Spin - Something between the two above. Its purpose is to lie where
> needed to imply that black is white, up is down, right is left, good is
> bad, etc., but with a large dribble of bullshit added in, which can't be
> easily refuted, disproven or tested. Thus, the lies get support from the
> stuff you can't examine, while the stuff you can't examine is made more
> probable by the suggestion that "if it exists/happened/etc.", the lies
> must be true. As a result, the nuts that believe the bullshit will
> believe both, and the people that fall for the lies are more easily led
> into also accepting the bullshit.

Like Darren I'd suggest spin is more the rearrangement of facts to point  
to the conclusion you want it to. No lies and no bullshit.

Robin Hood wasn't an outlaw he was fighting for the common man against a  
tyrannical system.
Robin Hood was an outlaw who robbed people of their hard-earned goods and  
killed men acting in their sworn duty to protect the country.

It would be amusing if they'd had both the Sun and the Daily Mail around  
in those days.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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