Now it's personal?

This is why I think a conversation of fundamental principles is needed.

I'll flip this one a little. Many people here believe Hillary to be the better qualified candidate that is much more likely to be a steadfast progressive. What if she ran a campaign like Obama's and actually stole delegates? Would that have been OK? I would say no. I've mentioned time and again that the sanctity of the process was more important than the players. If we accept the current system--cheating, stealing, media manipulation--we will end up solely choosing our nominee based on who the media deems worthy of the presidency and who can steal votes more efficiently. That is fundamentally bad.

Also, Kant 101 and his famous attempts to find a categorical imperative would be a useful discussion. I think we would have better answers for this question if we debated some more basic philosophical principles. This question has been hashed out a lot in anti-Utilitarian circles.

Not that PB2.0 has to be Kantian/deontological, but its a useful exercise to have these debates, IMO. And not some faux-intellectual debate that, to me, characterizes PB1.0 where we find some quote taken out of context from some ancient philosopher to make us look smart.

If everyone agrees that lies are acceptable, then nothing is trustworthy and all meaningful conversation, all exchange of ideas and positions, will be terminally corrupted. To accept that lies are an acceptable means of advancing an agenda is to accept defeat by the forces of evil; it denies us the ability to separate ourselves from those who would do us great harm. We become as they are, and opposition to the horror show ceases to be effective. Such a position deserves nothing less than absolute and unequivocal condemnation and rejection.

PS: Consistently wrong is not an admirable trait.

Your blog dude. Call out whomever you like.

You may get taught meanings of the word “Ouch” you didn’t think you knew.

WTF is that supposed to mean?

Or is that also not 'personal'?

The end justifies the means? If that's the case, then what makes us any different from those we rail against?

I'm sure Obama and PB1.0 think that everything they are doing is for "good ends" as well.

I may not be a complete philosophical skeptic, but the one think I am skeptical about is my--and other people's--infallibility.

Dude, I was the second commenter in the thread.

You tell me what I said.

is to describe reality.

he has a habit of describing the way the world, especially the political world, works.

i find that appealing -

and appealingly unmoralistic.

if a "truthy" statement would guarantee the passage of net neutrality would one not make that statement if one were a politician?

certainly, if one were a good politician one would.

and single-payer health care?

would a competent politician deign to make a truthy statement to get such a bill passed?

of course,

else he would not be a competent politician.

glad to see you back and sitting in first chair again.

your comments here, like amberglow's, are one's i value - for the acuity of their skepticism and their criticism.

will twist any argument made in opposition to your own, the more so when made by those who aren't your pals.

and, yes lambert,

to reiterate my argument,

if i were the speaker of the house and truthiness would pass net neutrality or single-payer i would use that device - as would any competent politician.

in fact, i would consider myself bound by my obligations to the public good to do just that.

Such a cruel question!

But you’re being far too kind again.

I prefer truth, upon which loyalty might be fostered.

Loyalty to truth.

So meta.

Did you miss that while you were writing this post?

Second comment in the thread.

Must I clarify the meaning of my words?

For one thing, it is not always black and white...it can be nuanced and politicians and their advisors take advantage of this. So often that it becomes a matter of course, habit. If you listen to Senate-speak, it is full of overwrought rhetoric tapdancing around "pure" truths. The pure truth does not get air time. (Look at Dennis Kucinich.)
Lying about one's opponent makes one a liar. Spinning the truth makes one a campaign consultant.

For another, all humans have lied at some point in their lives. We all know how to lie and how not to lie. Comics and storytellers and gossips spin the truth for entertainment value. The "news" media does likewise, because pure truth is not fun. Honorable and ethical, yes, but depressing and even destructive at times.

Less-than-truth in service of a cause? Could be a matter of degree. How far past pure truth is too far? Asking who gets hurt is a start. But then the justifying begins: "It's OK, because X is a robber baron who hates the poor." And I feel that is where we find ourselves today.

Is the incessant truthiness. I detest the stuff and don't want to be associated with it. Ever.

Do I get things wrong? Of course.

Do I rationalize? I try my best not to.

Do I believe in lying if the ends are just? Hell, no.

It fits better here.

My view:

Truthiness=dishonesty=not progressive=we are better than that=why propogate unsourced truthies when the sourcable TRUTHS are both more powerful and bad enough already = no reason for truthy to exist except to make people gloat = further no reason for truthy since it can also be relatively easily debunked = if you use the truthy rather than the truth, all the rest of your arguments and "evidence" are thrown into question regardless of how well-sourced or "true" they may be since the only thing you have that no one can ever take away but you can give away for nothing is your integrity.

I believe people who make truthy arguments are playing Russian roulette with their integrity. I don't want any part in it, but that is each individuals decision to make. For the most part I think people make truthY arguments is because they are too lazy or unskilled to make truthFULL arguments.

= Raise your game.

-----------------------------

Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

There you go again with the snark.

Did I say the letter was 1oo% without a doubt real?

Sure didn't, in fact, I think I repeated several times that I can't claim it is. (just as you can't claim it is 100% without a doubt fake)

Ah, nuance.

Did I say this "Monica" comment was in fact from the person who wrote the letter?

Why, no.

All I said was it's easy enough to dig a little deeper and try to find out. (you don't have the time!!!)

It all went downhill from there, and continues to.

There is no ambiguity left is there?

Now I'll ask a question:

Is not the question of whether this letter is real or fake the determining factor as to if we're dealing with 'truthiness' or not?

Lambert telling people they're 'better than that' without having actually done any 'sourcing' to back up his own opinion of the letter is how we got here. IMO.

Which is why I asked if he and amberglow were 'arguing over nothing'.

TO DEBUNK OR "PROVE FALSE" UNSOURCED, UNLIKELY, UNVERIFIED MATERIAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that is alot of exclamation marks: I mean every one of them.

Willy,

I am gobsmacked that you now seem to be trying to turn all common practice of sourcing, debunking, etc. on it's head by saying "prove it's false" to people who doubt the veracity of something that is anonymous and unsourced.

What part of "Judith Miller" do you not get?

The ORIGINAL POSTER has the onus on THEM NOT LAMBERT!

Jesus H. Sweating Christ!

-----------------------------

Around these parts we call cucumber slices circle bites

I mean, if I understand your argument correctly, we could run “Mickey Kaus fucks goats” stories as if they were legit,

Je repete...

At what point did Caro present it as legit?

No, my point is that Lambert doesn't know if it's a fake. Other than declaring it so.

It's his strong opinion that it is.

But a 'fact'? No.

And, if person X posts an admitted anonymous letter, person Y then claims it's a fake, how exactly is person X responsible for Y's complaints about it...

when Y doesn't offer up any evidence either?

Again...Caro didn't jump forward and yell "It's True, I Know It's True!!!" after Lambert's 'complaint'. The debate shifted towards 'truthiness' without verifying if what we're dealing with is in fact 'truthiness'.

If that makes sense?

And my question is...

if we don't know something is real or fake, at what point do we declare it 'truthiness'?

Is something automatically truthiness unless it can be reliably sourced 100%, and does that extend to things that are being presented as someone's anonymous opinion?

The original post critiques a defense of intentional truthiness.

Since a specific post (Caro's) is what this is about, is intent now the question?

Caro knowingly posted an anonymous letter in an attempt to reinforce a false meme damaging to Obama?

I'm 'people', and I'm done.

Just askin fuckin questions.

is directly related to what went down in the comment section of Caro's post...

I fail to see what's so striking about it.

herb drags up an old quote, simply to point out (I guess) that amberglow has some sort of 'problem' with truthiness, Lambert makes a whole separate post about THAT, and I'm being told what I can and cannot ask as it relates to the larger question?

Not a question of being linear...since I answered the fucking question Lambert posed upthread already.

but isn't truthiness a bit different from the simple lie. People lie. Progressives lie. Conservatives lie. When they teach chimps sign language, they lie. The idea that this can be stopped is like relying on abstinence-only sex education.

Lies are bad and shouldn't be told.* But they will be, especially by politicans for good and ill reasons.

An example of what I would call run of the mill lying is what was done on FISA - claiming the bill said X when it really said Y. Something you can easily verify or not by reading the bill.

To me, while truthiness (which Stephen Colbert has defined as truth "from the gut" instead of from books) is lying, it's a specific kind of lying. One that depends on the idea that it's okay to spread it because people "feel" it's true even though it's not. In other words, it find "truth" in emotions and not fact, which is more dangerous, IMO, than run of the mill lying ("I always supported ethanol, Mr. Iowa Farmer").

For example, saying Al Gore would do anything to be president or Hillary Clinton wanted Obama dead would by truthy because those are lies based on feelings about specific people - hatred for Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. It's closely related to the idea of the big lie. It's not lying about whether waterboarding is torture, it's repeatedly saying the U.S. doesn't torture (this also taps into a feeling, Americans want to believe this about our country). It's not enough to say Hillary Clinton lied about X issue, you have to make it a big lie that taps into the hatred some feel for her (and so they will shut down their critical thinking), you have to take it a step further to get to the big lie, like claiming she wished her opponent dead. Which leads to the truthy conclusion that Hillary Clinton is a monster (how nice that Samantha Power didn't bother with the anecdotal lies but jumped straight to the conclusion the Obama campaign was aiming for) or that Al Gore was a gigantic liar. Hey, it just feels true (because we've told you so many lies about them).

To me, this is what makes truthiness so dangerous, it taps into very deep emotions which make undoing the damage very difficult because people are so invested in believing the truthy version.

Truthiness, IMO, is completely anathema to not only progressive thought, but to any healthy political discourse. It's all about putting feelings, particularly deep-seated ones like hatred, above truth. No good come from that, IMO.

* This, of course, is itself a form of truthiness, something we want to believe is true even though it isn't. Sometimes lies should be told or arguably should be told - "that hat looks fantastic on you" or, to use an example above "no Mr. Killer, I haven't seen Ms. Victim anywhere" or "officer, I swear I was doing the speed limit."

and regarding what that Monica person wrote about or whoever it was, was not lies, but investigation and vetting and her determination of whether someone deserves her money and support--something totally absent this season to this country's detriment entirely.)

btw, you might want to investigate that letter and its author if you're so sure it's a fake. Or you could tell the person who posted it here not to do so, etc--unfortunately you decided not to do that and to jump on me for just commenting about it.

Greyness to me is human fallibility, incomplete information, and conflicting principles. Personally, I'd like at least a rudimentary way of approaching these problems before we get there instead of trying to justify our desired results at the time of conflict.

1.) Lambert has every right to 'question' Caro. His blog.

2.) I have every right to 'question' Lambert's opinion.

Isn’t that when we should be MOST critical rather than must gullible?

*ah holy crap the internet just went down*

*ah holy crap it's back*

I'll simply point to Lambert's recent post about that prayer note, and highlight that the same 'source' for that post, also sourced that wanking Obama pic.

PB 2.0

would be a very fine requirement for a functional PB 2.0.

just sayin'

Bad facts make bad law.

Seemed appropriate to bring this version of the saying up in light of what's being discussed. FWIW, in my experience, it's true.

those that might be considered extraordinary that lead to a ruling that is bad law because it's designed around the extraordinary facts.

An example - guy murdered 21 people and they found their bodies cut up under his basement. The search is iffy. A court is likely to find a way to say the search was good because it's not going to want to let a serial murderer go. As a result, the court may create bad law - that is a ruling that under a "better" set of facts (one that didn't involve a serial murderer), the court would never make. It does this because it's shaping its ruling to fit the facts rather than what's the right answer under the law. Then, of course, you're stuck with it in later cases where you're not dealing with a guy who cut up 21 people. The search standard applied to the murderer is going to now apply to everyone.

Bad facts = bad law.

Hopefully that's clear.

So, I backtraced the sourcing, just like I did the Israeli stories, and, unlike that case, found nothing.

I trust you Lambert. ;)

read:no you didn't.

I answered this is the last thread, so will repeat here:

"A win based on truthiness may deliver short-term gains, but will lock truthiness in as the proven best means to win. And nowadays, a cultural “lock-in” like this is nearly impossible to dislodge.

With this accomplished, NONE of our values, NONE of our most cherished objectives, can then be effectively achieved.

'If the truthiness relies upon the exclusion of some facts, does it become a lie?'

Yes. Indubitably, yes. Ethicists would be unanimous on this point."

i'm more comfortable with bd blues's line of thinking. it gives me hope of sunshine.

"truthiness", i'll hazard,is a kind of sneaky use of language to imply a statement about reality without saying that statement outright. it is designed to exploit the ignorance or the gullibility of the other person(s).

one engages in truthy speech in an effort to either deceive another or to manipulate another by making a statement(s) that is not necessarily true but gives the appearance of being true and is likely to be thought true by the other person.

note: truthy statements do not HAVE to be false - just designed primarily to deceive or manipulate, rather than convey "truthful" statements.

1) if i employ truthinss to deceive, then, for example, i might use it to protect myself, as in:

"thank you aunt gladys, i had two piece of pie and they were exceptional."

(the piece i cut, which i cut as small as i could make it, fell in two. the taste was exceptionally gross.)

2) truthiness used to manipulate might be exemplified by

- prez g.w. saying "sad hussesin may have weapons of mass destruction. if he does have wmd, and if he employs them, he might be able to attack and kill xxxx of my fellow americans."

note this set of statements are not true-or-false statements. in fact, all are conditional statements.

this kind of statement would have been DESIGNED to arouse security fears in others - to encourage those others to use their imaginations to make into simple true/false statements what was originally just a very sly set of conjectures.

i'm told that in teevee sitcom writing there is something called like-a-joke.

truthiness is a twin of like-a-joke, e.g., like-the-truth.

when employing the device of like-a-joke, writers write a scene with a non-joke that appears close enough to a joke to be considered one (they would do so because a real joke eludes them).

the actors do their lines as if the script contained a joke.

the idea, i presume, is that the audience will laugh as if something funny had been said or done, though neither the writers nor the actors intended to convey an actual joke.

Your sourcing for that original post was as anonymous as that of the letter.

An 'unnamed' Obama representative is who Ma'ariv sourced, and the 'spokesperson' for Ma'ariv is also not named in the article.

With a third, uninvolved paper as cannonfire's source.

You barely walked it back in that 'update' of yours.

You have your 'opinion' and I have mine.

Two separate stories, different quotes, same substance, in newspapers

Two quotes from the same anonymous source, Lambert.

Proof of what exactly? Both papers are supposedly quoting the same person.

To your other 'point'... your anonymous sourcing > Caro's anonymous sourcing?

Now I Got it.

i cannot follow your thinking here, except to say that it reminds me of a politician deflecting attention.

chronology:

at 18:40 i wrote:

[what is this "truthiness" of which you speak.
Submitted by orionATL on Thu, 2008-07-31 18:40.

i’m more comfortable with bd blues’s line of thinking. it gives me hope of sunshine...]

at 18:42, lambert wrote:

[ your comfort, Orion, will always be our first concern.
Submitted by lambert on Thu, 2008-07-31 18:42.

Not.

You say I twist your words when I restate them, but never explain why.

Standard tactic: Lose a point, ignore it, throw out a new one, move on. I must say I’ve seen the tactic more elegantly practiced than on this thread by the truthiness brigade...]

why, lambert, did you respond to my post of two minutes earlier by ignoring it completely

while dragging in a reference to an exchange you and i had had at four hours earlier - at 14:17 and 14:25.

you had plenty of time in the interim to address that earlier matter.

why did you ignore my comment at 18:40.

increasingly, lambert, i observe you employing rhetorical tricks to avoid directly arguing with your commenters, while accusing them of missing the point or refusing to address the issue at hand.

somethings a miss in all this, lambert. only you know what it is.

but what i know for a fact is that yours is not the behavior i expect of an intellectual leader.

why, in your comment of 18:42, did you ignore my comment at 18:40?

why, lambert, did you respond to my post of two minutes earlier by ignoring it completely,

while dragging in a reference to an exchange you and i had had at four hours earlier - at 14:17 and 14:25?

you had had plenty of time in the interim to address that earlier matter.

this seems like evasion - and political ducking and dodging - to me.

your quiver, lambert, seems only to include sarcasm.

sarcasm can be amusing and clever,

but you don't seem to understand that it is not a substitute for sound argument.

where is your sound argument,lambert?