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Comment by legacynl | Hacker News Reader

thats a nice play on words, but fact and truth are synonymous. I think you're looking for the phrase: "factual but not informative"

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Fact and truth aren't synonymous. The connotation in English is different. A fact implies a verifiable statement with no grey area."A man died from falling". The truth implies you have the full picture and relevant context. "A man was murdered by being pushed off a building". Murder of course can't be 100% proven, it's a legal concept that involves intent and pre-planning and your location etc. Our fictional friend may be able to get a technicality that makes purposely pushing a man off a building not legally murder. But the truth would still be he murdered him.

"A man died from falling" is still truthful, though?

This is why courts have you commit not just to tell the truth, but the whole truth.

“The man did not die from the fall” is another example here. (He died from the impact, not the fall.)

I think that one is false, though? All of the following can be true:

* The man died from massive internal bleeding

* The man died from hitting the ground really hard

* The man died from falling off a building

* The man died from being pushed off a building

I guess there is a reason they settled on the phrase "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

This article is truth, but not the whole truth.

Knowing some facts and knowing the truth are different things. I'd say "factual but not truthful" is rigorous enough for a quip.

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