In Merlin's words…

Jun 07, 2006 13:03

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zelazny, books, amber, poll

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Comments 8

ankaret June 7 2006, 12:14:51 UTC
I'll take detecting falsehood; I suspect discovering truth would lumber me with far too many of other peoples' secrets.

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enismirdal June 7 2006, 12:25:13 UTC
Truth? I'm not sure I can handle the truth sometimes.

Admittedly, as much as it might be useful at times to know when I'm being lied to, once again there are also times when I'd probably prefer not to know.

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ewx June 7 2006, 12:27:01 UTC
Doesn't the latter effectively imply the former?

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simont June 7 2006, 12:40:42 UTC
I thought that. Assuming "detect falsehood" means "know when someone talking to me is lying" whereas "discover truth" means "find out whatever I happen to want to know about", the latter is a strict superset of the former and hence clearly the more useful ability.

"Detect falsehood" might also be caught out by situations in which the person talking to me believes what they say (or indeed believes what they're saying the opposite of) but is incorrect in this belief, depending on how it's implemented. "Discover truth" will be able to tell me what the person believes if I ask it to, but more usefully still it can tell me what the real facts are.

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cartesiandaemon June 7 2006, 12:58:34 UTC
It made sense to me intuitively, and I tried to understand why. I think it might be that people's idea of detecting falsehood is instantaneous, but discovering truth might take concentration, so you can use discovering truth to tell when people are lying to you but it's not feasible to do so constantly.

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Mmm, want multiparenting for comments... :) senji June 7 2006, 14:49:58 UTC

edith_the_hutt June 7 2006, 13:17:18 UTC
"You want the truth? I can't remember the truth!

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