It seriously pisses me off that people think the law and rulings made by judges and juries are absurd without knowing anything about the cases or rulings in question. It seriously smacks of arrogance, because these people are your peers, so you are implicitly claiming that you are smarter than all of them. I assure you, that's probably not the case, and in that same situation, you probably would have reached the same conclusion.

There are always exceptions, but check your facts before assuming you're less of an idiot than others.

I.e. there might be a million cases where justice (correctly) deemed absurd to prosecute a parent for letting the kids play outside. But they'll never make the news.

It might piss you off, but there's a point to these stories. Italian's say "se non e vero, e ben trovato" (Even if it is not true, it is a good story).

This is not about it being an entertaining story -- it's about it expressing a real fault in the legal system and its attitude, despite doing it using a non-factual case.

In other words, the US legal system might not have THAT law, but the story remains true in a deeper level, in the sense that it is indeed the kind of system were such a law could be conceived or be remotely possible.

If you want to point out an actual flaw instead of a non-factual/non-existent flaw, then use facts not fables.

> In other words, the US legal system might not have THAT law, but the story remains true in a deeper level, in the sense that it is indeed the kind of system were such a law could be conceived or be remotely possible

Except you would need a factual argument to demonstrate this possibility. Your arguments so far do not qualify. The fact that you can imagine this possibility entails facts about you and your understanding of law, and does not entail anything about the law itself.

Facts are pertinent to real life. Fiction is not.

> how some things can be more complicated than the naive first order view (factually false = useless)

1. Facts are not first order, but applicable at arbitrarily higher orders as well.

2. Factually false claims aren't useless, they quite clearly identify the biases of the people who perpetuate them.

Do you have anything that can be considered an argument?

Because my point, that a story doesn't have to be factually correct to still be indicative of a larger truth (and vise versa: a factually correct story might just be an outlier that doesn't prove anything universal of what it suggests) has been known since time immemorial.

At the moment, American Politics is all F'd up because Mr. Trump and his Press Team (led by Huckabee Sanders at the moment) relies on this.

They plant false ideas like "The Crowd Size at the last rally was huge" into the American Public's mind, and then MAKE UP the larger truth in such a way that most benefits them.

False stories are the bread-and-butter of Mr. Trump's press strategy right now.

I really doubt that they rely on non-true but otherwise representative of the truth stories.

For one, they'll never admit those stories are not factually true.

And even if they did so, those stories would still have to be representative of a larger truth, which they're not.

So, no, false stories as pure lies are not the same as what I was talking about. We had those since the beginning of time too.

The latter case is the problem, and currently a large one.

I was pointing out that your translated quote might not resonate as you intend, today.

Sara(h) Huckabee Sanders used similar logic to defend the posting of known-false videos as evidence to support the policies and proclamations of her boss.

You can argue that some concepts require extrapolation to be persuasive. We're dealing with a lot of abuse of that right now, and I don't think it works here.

Re: the luxury of non-Americans to be unfamiliar with the absurdity represented by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, all I can say is "enjoy it!" ... but do take warning: these things have a way of propagating. :(

If something exists, it is useful in some way and to some people (useful being different than "doing good work") -- or, to be it better, it has some rational explanation for existing. If something is popular, it means even more so, that it serves some kind of purpose.

Now, sure one can have a knee-jerk a priori reaction that something true is always better than something false.

Is it so though?

As a utilitarian I prefer to see the effects (and not just the first order effects).

Instead of taking an "it's evil/bad/don't wanna know about it" moral stance, I prefer an investigative stance. What does such stories exist and what role to they serve? Could it even be a positive role? I don't feel there's anything "mind boggling" to asking those questions.

To get to the point, I believe that:

1) A factually untrue story could contain (and encapsulate nicely in story form) a larger truth about a situation. Most people will easily accept it for art, literature, movies, parables, etc ("this story is fictional, but it expresses what goes on very accurately"). Well, the same thing can happen with an untrue new story that people believe is true.

That (happening) depends more on the content of the story, not to whether it was promoted as art or as news. If a movie gives a very true to life picture of 50s racism, then it still gives that whether someone believes it a fictional hollywood story or mistakenly believes it to be based on true facts. So what would be the real difference to the latter case if it was an untrue news story being misperceived as true?

2) Conversely, a true story could be an outlier, used out of context, promoted for more that it amounts to, and thus serve to lie about a situation.

A true news story about a kind slave owner in the 1840s South would be less true in conveying the horror of what was going on at the time than a made-up story about a person that beat and raped their slaves.

Representativeness matters more than mere accuracy. That's why people, and especially politicians and advertisers, are able to mislead with otherwise real statistics and facts all the time.

And that's how a work of art can be truer than some straight-to-the-fact reported news story.

So, two ways my approach is not "mind boggling" is to look at it from a utilitarian perspective, and to look at it from a representativeness perspective.

As for the final question: "presenting false stories as true? How is that useful?".

First of all, I was not talking about consciously presenting them (e.g. knowing that they are not).

What I said is that such stories as they circulate can still capture a larger truth, and thus be beneficial to the cause of truth, even if untrue themselves. In other words, modern cultures still can make their myths and believe in them, and some of those (based on their representativeness and content) can be huge forces for change and progress. It's hardly the most difficult or first paradox in how societies function.

E.g. imagine a made-up news story about a very racist cop towards some immigrant family. This circulates widely (because its powerful) and ends up causing mass protests, and affecting real change.

Wouldn't that be a case where a false story being presented as true became useful? History is full of such examples.

(A false story presented as true could also, or even more possibly, be harmful. Hence what I said about representativeness being necessary. I didn't say "false news stories are great we should have more of them". I said that they can potentially do good.).

However, there is a difference between stories that are simply imprecise and stories that are fabricated. Similarly, there are differences between stories created to convey emotions, and stories that are fabricated to encite emotional responses.

Probably easier if I just said that I can understand the value of fiction. However, it is best presented as such. False narratives are not fiction if presented as true. Specifically, the story that prompted this thread is one where it only has value if it is a true narrative. Otherwise, might as well have a story about how a corporation convinced a susceptible population that they should dry their animals off in a microwave that was the size of a person. Because... stories that purport to originate from real events don't have to be true. Right?

Only if the false story was actually representative of some underlying truth, despite the specific details being untrue. You keep presenting your original post as representing some underlying truth, despite the specifics being untrue.

I think I clearly stated in my first reply that not only were the specifics untrue, but your underlying premise was also completely false despite having being commonly accepted. And this is where actual facts are needed to discern the actual truth, so make your case.

Well, if the underlying truth is: "the US has a crazily invasive legal system and is too litigicious", then I think the (untrue) story conveys that well.

Except you haven't established that underlying truth to begin with, hence why false stories are just hurting your case. In fact, I'd even say that truth is probably false.

False narratives like this move people from reasonable open mindedness to closed viewpoints. They do not help.