A lie by any name is still a lie...

[fastwalker]

"Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet and show my people their transgressions and . . . their sins." Isa. 58:1

Christ used parables (Mat. 13:11-17; Mk. 4:2, 33-34) so that those who were / are willing to learn, can, and those who aren't willing to learn, won't (vss. 11-15).

Some feel that rumors are beneficial, that accepting a rumor does no one any harm. Especially when the rumor can be verified or denied, because of some built in mechanism which acts as a expiration device.. a deadline for example.

As I’ve said before, I do love the sounds deadlines make, as they go whooshing by.

Some will say and call for a “common sense” approach to viewing rumors, that is, they say “it’s a rumor, so take it for what its worth.” Then in the very next sentence spin the rumor with their washing of a veracity claim to bolster the rumor..…I know such and such, he / she is a credible poster.”

By engaging in this veracity verification process, the author is attempting to take the rumor from the nebulous environment of “maybe,” directly into the realm of “hard factual data,” without any empirical data to support the transition.

Lets look at what rumors really are and attempt to place a recognizable name on them. Maybe we can simply stick to the commonly accepted trems we routinely see used, to minimize the severity and stigma associated with their usage.

Guess we could cal rumors Falsities, Deceptions, Doublespeak, Gobbledygook.

Wow, it is amazing the cleverness found within the English language to cal a Rose by another name. Sorry, I guess in this case we are looking to find a “softer” way for describing a lie?

Anyway, let’s look at these softer explanations for lies. I guess that many prefer these terms over the term a lie when accepting a rumor, maybe because most consider rumors as having possibly at their core, some semblance of truth.

"Falsity may exist in the perceiver or in the object perceived.” In the perceiver it arises from errors in sense interpretation, unconscious expectation and bias, and, ultimately, incorrect or partial reasoning to a conclusion. Objects, human activities and events and the like may bear false appearances, by intent or by accident.

Falsities may be employed in promises or in allegations concerning many things. In the case of CMKX, this condition is attributed to the other guys, the bad guys if you will that are keeping us from realizing our dream of wealth. Do you think that just maybe we are a bit overly-optimistic? Guess some will say that I’m overly-pessimistic and as such, just as bad, since both views tend not to allow the situation to run its normal course, but instead tend to maybe falsify the probable outcome anticipations.

In any event, we can classify falsities as with deception and view them as follows:

False claims
False confessions
False political evidence
Inappropriate assumptions
Abuse of health welfare benefits
Falsification of programmed evaluations
Propaganda
Historical forgery
Fraud
Hoaxes
Tokenism
Cheating
Betrayal
Living a lie
Mutual deceits
Self-deception
Medical deception
Denial of evidence
Front organizations
Political deception
Religious deception
Incorrect information
Deception in business
Deception in the media
Deception by management
Deception by government
Terminological deception
Withholding of information
Bogus public interest groups
Deceptive social science research
Fraudulent nature of inherited titles
False positive representation to authority
Misrepresentation of geographical information

Most will say, "we know rumors are not true, we are adults and understand what rumors are."

Really?

I would venture a guess here and say that having said that, those people are the ones who classify rumors as just little “white lies," you know harmless and or trivial lies statement that are not meant to hurt anyone.

Although a white lie may be a minor falsehood not meant to injure anyone, and is of little moral import, guys the accumulated effect of white lies may be confusion, misunderstandings and distress. White lies are rarely told just to be socially adept, they are rarely told in an isolated incidence, and they are rarely totally innocuous.

A common example is the giving of a false excuse so as not to hurt the feelings of someone making the request or giving an invitation. They may also include exaggerated compliments, embellishment of gossip, the substitution of a quick lie for a lengthy explanation, gratitude expressed for unwanted gifts, inflated letters of recommendation, and the like.

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[fastwalker]

Would it surprise you to learn, that among those who salledglly know, there is a notion that that women tell four white lies every 15 minutes to men's three.

Of course these figures take into account social courtesies like pretending to be amused by bad jokes.

Even though some people may defend the telling of white lies as being falsehoods not meant to hurt anyone and as being of little moral import, they are, regardless of their description, lies, and their cumulative consequences do harm."

Since we are coloring lies like Easter Eggs, lets look at Black lies which is defined as

Telling an untruth and attributing it to a false source." For using a single or multiple “source or fabricated quotations to support a contention of validity.

Of course we can move into dept here and explore the usage of the fallacious arguments which has been done repeadlty to promote rumors.

They may include, but are not limited to: fallacies of logic or syntax; arguments from authority; posing of an incorrect question; suppression of relevant information; utilization of ambiguous terms; omission of a relevant concomitant variable; use of biased samples; use of samples which are statistically too small to give meaningful results; misleading use of graphs and pictures; and dependence on erroneous presentations of statistical data.

Some would say that uch methods of argument may over-simplify, over-complicate, ignore the opposing position, accept the authoritative position too readily, accept the position because it is detailed in print, place excessive reliance upon some formal system or formula or reject such a system too readily."

Guess we could then classify these conditions as inappropriate arguments which would nclude:

Fallacious arguments
Spurious arguments
Cheap argument
Bad arguments
Improper forms of debate
Fatuous reasoning
Flaky arguments
Polarizing rhetoric
Obfuscatory arguments
Misuse of plausible arguments to conceal nefarious benefits
Oversimplification
Defective reasoning
Terminological ambiguities
Misconceived moral equivalence
Overreliance on proximate explanations
Failure to distinguish between opinion and fact

Of course when speaking of rumors and lies, and their usage,one of my favorite vehicles is the use of Doublespeak.

That language used by those who need to hide their actions and veracity from the public at large. So these people pretend to communicate viable sounding answers to questions., which we hear, if we listen closely, as doublespeak, which essentially doesn't address anything other than hiding the truth.

But hey, doublespeak is fast becoming a standard. Its usage is becoming very popular because it is a language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable, when in fact, doublespeak is simply a made up condtion in which language used is desgined specifically to avoid or shift responsibility.

It is clearly a language that is at variance with its real or purported meaning. It is language that conceals or prevents thought; rather than extending thought.

My other favorite vehicle where rumor discussions are concerned is Gobbledygook, which is simply the usage of incomprehensibly specialized jargon

"Awkward, contorted syntax and the use of unfamiliar technical terms impede the communication of specialized knowledge, both to specialists in other disciplines and to the general public. You know, that language which essential cuts off people from the obtaining the knowledge indigenous to a specialized are…marketplace, banking, economy, mining, etc.

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[fastwalker]

The usage of Gobbledygook has created a myth that only experts and intelligentsia can understand and use the wisdom of the humanities. People feel victimized by their lack of knowledge of 'in-group' terminology, believing that such wisdom is forever impossible for them to attain.

The situation is further compounded by those specialists who do not want to 'distort' their discipline through popularization.

As an exasperated legal correspondent once exclaimed,
"Let the classics scholars argue in Latin and Greek, but let us get on with language of the people".

I prefer to take a simplsitic approach that if I do not understand a particular word in a piece of technical writing, simply ignore it. Often the piece will make perfect sense without it."

Well regardless how you define it and I have only touched on a few examples, rumors are lies.

I would be remiss if I didn’t concede one common temptation used to define a lie, which is a lie is a statement that isn’t true.

Thi s, as I have attempted to demontrate is necessarily the entire argument.

Upon a little reflection, I'm sure that some will produce evidence that will show that things are more complicated than what I have sytated herein.

To that end I will make some concessions regarding lies, but nor rumors.

Telling stories or jokes is not lying, even when falsehoods are involved, at least when the audience knows them for what they are.

The same holds for exaggerations that are readily seen to be such.

So, we might say that lying is the telling of falsehoods to people who don’t know that what one is saying is false.

This is closer, but is still too broad because it leaves out an important qualification.

One can say something false because one is mistaken or otherwise confused and the result is not a lie, but simply an error.

Or suppose one says something untrue to check whether a microphone or tape recorder is working, and the remark happens to be overheard.

What’s left out so far is the fact that lying is intentional,
it is done specifically to get someone else to believe something that is false.

The intent to deceive is crucial, as can be seen when one final wrinkle is considered.

Imagine someone who says something to another, believing it to be false, though it happens to be true.

Suppose that not wanting you to know where I put the keys to my car, I tell you that they’re in my desk when I in fact put them on the coffee table, but unbeknownst to me my wife put them in my desk while tidying up the living room.

In such a case one lies even though what is said is in fact true.

The importance of such (admittedly rare) cases is that they show that strictly speaking truth and falsity is not the issue. Rather, the intent to deceive is what is crucial.

So lying is, on standard definitions, saying something one believes to be false with the intent to deceive."
Deception includes the range of means such as the internet, whereby people may be misled.

The most evident of these is lying by group consensus, or withholding real or viable information which the person might find of immediate significance, as well as misleading people into some alternative belief, or reinforcing such a belief.

Then there are the more marginal forms of deception, such as evasion, euphemism and exaggeration; and the often unconscious forms of deception, such as the subtle changes of subject, the disguises, the gestures leading astray, and silence and inaction.

Individuals differ greatly in the relationship with deception in their lives. Some may declare their preference for honesty but be ignorant about deception and its alternatives, or lack any awareness of the presence of a moral problem in the first place; others are beyond caring.

There are differences in the power of individuals to live a life without deceit given their environment. Many lack sufficient freedoms and security from repercussions should they challenge deeply-rooted habits of duplicity.

The stress on individualism and competition generate intense pressures to cut corners and produces motives which may impel many to participate in forms of deception they might otherwise resist.

Dishonesty, including lying, is one of the major obstacles to appropriate relationships in society and is currently reaching epidemic proportions. It is not only practiced in personal relationships but as a routine at work, in religious life, and especially in politics.

When people are unable to trust each other, the fabric of society is weakened and instability, chaos and violence often result."

Regardless of how you state it, classify it or use, abuse it, rumors are lies and lies we know are situations wherein one or more individuals make an untrue statement with intent to deceive, in order to create a false or misleading impression

In all fairness though, given the confession of Zorba the Greek and his lies in conjunction with other making similar assertions, I will ask that you consider this when viewing a rumor......

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity''.


BTW, If in fact we receive a payout of $1.47, the Chinese are involved, CIM IPOs, etc, etc, I will retract my statements about rumors and head out onto the road in my brand new RV....