Mary Yugo <maryyu...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I don't find this interesting. I think it pointless. You know nothing >> about Rossi's business, so this is mere empty speculation, gossip, and >> snooping into other people's private business. >> > > You're entitled to your opinion but I think Rossi has made himself a > public figure. Also, catching him in obvious lies, such as that he is > entirely self funded, is legitimate. >
I agree. If you catch him in a lie, this will be newsworthy, and you should report it. However, you have not caught him in a lie. You have engaged in fatuous, groundless speculation about his business even though you know nothing about it. I find this uninteresting. I can't recall offhand but he's been caught in other various infelicities > if not outright lies as well. > About some things, but not others. The other thing you need to consider is that generally people either lie or > they don't. > That is incorrect. They often tell half-truths, or they see things in different ways. I think you say this because you have a bad habit of oversimplifying and seeing things in black in white which are actually in shades of grey. It often happens that people think they are telling the truth but other people think they are lying. It is often impossible to know, even years later when the full historical record is available -- even when the event is famous and well documented -- such as IBM's market decline in the 1980s, the discovery of the polio vaccine, the discovery of DNA and the role of Pauling and Franklin, or what happened in the Battle of Midway. Read two or three history books describing Midway, for example, and try to determine a critical question: whether the Admiral Nagumo was decisive or dithering; and after the decisive U.S. attacks whether he acted as if he were determined to win, or whether he in cowardly retreat, and led by the nose by Adm. Yamaguchi. Everyone there, on both sides, from his commanding officer Yamamoto on down, had different opinions. His own officers and friends said one thing; those who blamed him for the defeat said another. His actions and orders are preserved, but depending on who you read, his orders were lies, evasions, or the best response to an impossible situation imposed on him by Yamamoto. You can read a full description of this in the new book "Shattered Sword" which describes this and dozens of other well established "facts" that turn out to be questionable or myths. I guarantee you will be confused. You would need a time machine and the ability to read minds to know the answer. > If they do, it's because they don't mind doing it and they can lie about > any assertion which they make. Liars tend to be not reliable about > anything. > That depends on many things such as: what you ask them, whether they have some motivation to lie, whether it is in their best interests to tell the truth, and whether they are rational or irrational. Some people lie for a reason, some because they are delusional, some just for the fun of it. Some lie to help themselves and some feel a compulsion to lie even when telling the truth is in their best interest. People are complicated, and inscrutable. Most people that you suppose are lying turn out to be telling one aspect of the truth. The real truth is forever unknowable, because people are not omniscient. History books are never fully right, and seldom completely wrong. - Jed
