Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: The Political Lie, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Or in other words we create a lie and then go ahead and prove it is a lie and then we move on. If we do it well we eventually corral the truth inside a web of disproved lies.
Proof by contradiction was my favorite in maths too. Assume something, prove it's false, and thus the negation must be true.
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Hard News: The Political Lie, in reply to Alex Coleman,
I just don't see how Truth is relevant, or how we might change the system to make it so.
A web of lies is much more fragile than a web of truth. On lie unpicked in the right place can bring the whole thing down. Truth is extremely relevant, if a very long process in the building. When perception is the only glue, the thing is bound to fall, because perceptions always change.
I don't think there's any perfect system, we have to keep tinkering with it all the time.
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Hard News: The Political Lie, in reply to Alex Coleman,
What you say is true, but does not mean that no inroads in our understanding of what Truth is have ever been made. Lawyers will say different things, but not all of them are lying all of the time. Philosophers will say different things, but some of them can be right and some wrong. Scientists are famous for having discovered a lot of truth, usually by way of a great many speculative untruths.
In the simplest explanation, truth is a property of statements. An utterance is not a statement unless it can be true or false.
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Hard News: The Political Lie, in reply to Bart Janssen,
At some point it becomes a case of lying to each group. My guess is that for some politicians it becomes a habit.
I think the habit of never saying anything clear serves them much better. Lying is for amateurs.
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Hard News: The Political Lie, in reply to 3410,
Such as "we will not sell off assets"? Oh, look, now we're in big debt so we have to. That's were cunning caveats come into play "...in our first term".
Fortunately, people forget the caveats just as easily as they forget the lies.
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It seems a preposterously small victory -- but what do you do?
Celebrating those things are important. They're things that one can do, rather than feeling hopeless about the huge task ahead.
While I was writing this, my flatmate ran in, shouting with incoherent joy. We’ve just received the longed-for flyer from the council, informing us we can now use our toilet. Hallelujah. :-)
And things like that.
I have the crazy feeling that the devastation is less real than my memories.
Nicely put, and how awful.
And I think the need to go and look is made stronger by feeling so much that we just don't know what's going on.
That, at least, is something the government could and should address at very little cost.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to TracyMac,
I'd never really thought about it like that, but yes, quite likely an adrenalin rush is a natural consequence of being punctured for perfectly sensible biological reasons.
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OnPoint: Budget 2011: A Credible Path to…, in reply to Danyl Mclauchlan,
Don't worry! Treasury confidently predict 4.0% annual wage growth for six years! Which, as far as I can tell, has not happened in New Zealand in at least the last hundred years!
I can distinctly remember Mike Moore, when he was the Prime Minister, basing his projections for NZ on the exact same number, and Bolger had a field day with "How you going to do that, by snapping your fingers?", after which he snapped his fingers repeatedly, using the gimmick many times in the debate. It was quite effective, IIRC, made Moore look like a real dick.
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Hard News: Budget 2011: While you wait, in reply to Andrew E,
The point at which Labour stops keeping its powder dry (assuming that's their excuse at the moment) better be immediately after Bill English sits down this afternoon.
Well it would make good sense. National looks likely to finally be playing their long awaited card, so yes, this could be the turning of Labour's tide, finally something to sink their teeth into.
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Hard News: People Take Drugs, in reply to 3410,
Don't take air in if you mainline; you'll die.
Not even through your mouth?
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