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Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

Whatever it is, we should all be able to agree that it's not "unambiguous".

If someone suffers from a psychotic episode, and you accuse him of something he does during that psychotic episode without mentioning anything about the fact that he was suffering from a psychotic episode, then that is unambiguously a lie by omission.

People who suffer from psychosis do not behave in a reasonable manner. A psychosis is a medical emergency. It's like complaining that someone caused a traffic accident without mentioning they had a heart attack.

(Disclaimer: I have never heard of deBoer before, and for the sake of discusion I am going to assume he did in fact suffer from a psychotic episode)

No, it's not unambiguously a lie by omission. You're just restating deBoer's premise. I don't agree with him; he doesn't get to set these terms. He's entitled to try to persuade people in a different direction; he's not entitled to call people who state basic facts about his past conduct "liars".

In my opinion people are absolutely entitled to call other people who state basic facts about their past while knowingly omitting relevant context a liar.

Is it unambiguously a lie if I were to say “Based off what I’ve read of this guy’s writing, this guy is a piece of shit racist who has openly admitted to being randomly abusive to strangers.”? Or am I morally obligated to say “He also appears from my perspective to leverage the language of mental illness to excuse himself and attack his critics.”?

What if I don’t believe his narrative _AT ALL_? Am I a liar then? All I’ve read here is a guy insisting that it’s unfair to dislike him. I certainly don’t trust his intellectual honesty, why on earth would I be compelled to believe his narrative simply because he insists that it’s hurting him that I don’t?

Love how nobody has interacted with this post at all.

What DeBoer describes is unambiguously a lie.

Whether some individual is actually doing what he describes has a lot more room for ambiguity.

Are you agreeing or disagreeing that someone who knowingly omits the context in this situation is being intentionally misleading?

>we should all be able to agree

If we were all able to agree, this conversation wouldn't be here.

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