Denny Vrandečić6d ago

"Maria and Peter are students and meet up for a late dinner. Peter asks Maria whether Tom is at the party that they intend to go to after dinner. Maria answers that Tom is at the party. After all, Tom had told her that he would be at the party. When they arrive at the party, it turns out that Tom had changed his plans, and is not at the party. Was Maria's answer true or false?"

#truth #philosophy #cognition

(please spread for visibility, I would like this to be as wide as possible)

1/2

Maria's answer was true
Maria's answer was false
Poll ends at .
Show threadDenny Vrandečić6d ago

A new study shows that there is much, much less agreement on the answer to this question than I would have expected. Even after reading about the study, I still expect people in my bubble to have the same answer as I do. Let's see. But this probably means that the meaning of truth, in the general population, is simply different from what I would have assumed. And explains a number of public discourses.

2/2

https://reason.com/2026/05/15/the-surprising-divide-over-what-counts-as-true/

New study investigates why people disagree about what's true

A new study finds that what people think about facts, authenticity, or coherent beliefs explains why they disagree about what is true.

Reason.com
Show threadjanjko6d ago
@vrandecic so some people equate someone lying to someone's statement being false? Then they should have a different word for someone being unintentionally wrong?
Show threadIrina6d ago
@janjko @vrandecic Her answer was false but she wasn't lying; she was simply wrong. It's only lying when you knowingly make a false statement.
Show threadDenny Vrandečić
@irina @janjko That's also how I understand the terms.
May 20 at 4:26pmWeb
Show threadJakob Voß6d ago
@vrandecic @irina @janjko if Maria had said yes or no without knowing about Tom, this would neither have been a lie, but bullshit.
Show threadBrad Rosenheim6d ago

@nichtich
Bullshit does indeed have a formal philosophical definition that seems to work here. https://philosophywithoutbullshit.com/2026/04/20/what-the-hell-bullshit-is-revising-frankfurts-definition/

@vrandecic @irina @janjko

What the Hell Bullshit Is: Revising Frankfurt’s Definition

Difficulty: What the hell In his work On Bullshit, Harry Frankfurt famously defined bullshit as, roughly, a product of a speaker who is indifferent to the truth. Note that bullshitting is different…

Philosophy without Bullshit
Show threadRodrigo Santamaría6d ago
@vrandecic @irina @janjko that's how it is. The fact that it seems debatable is the symptom of so many things