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The information about a PDVSA default spread by the enemies of the fatherland is totally false <-- there should be a word for "A denial which is phrased in such
by patio11 10y ago
The information about a PDVSA default spread by the enemies of the fatherland is totally false <-- there should be a word for "A denial which is phrased in such a fashion as to make listening observers think it is more likely, not less likely, that the thing being denied actually happened."
- matheist 10y agoRelated: conjunction fallacy
- patio11 10y agoThat's not an example of the conjunction fallacy, as far as I can tell. You've got a cat in a box. It was killed or not based on the outcome of a fair coin flip. Your prior for the cat being alive should be 50%. If you hear meowing and your prior stays at 50%, you are not very good at applying logic to contrived scenarios. We have a complex financial transaction in a black box. My prior on there being a technical fudging on at least one term of it is, hmm, maybe 5%. If you tell me "A reputable observer says there was no impropriety", that goes down. If you tell me "A socialist says, while fulminating about imperialists, that there was no impropriety", my new estimate is high-nineties. The box is meowing, loudly.
- matheist 10y agoGotcha, agreed. My first comment was based on a surface reading of your comment. Retract. (slight quibble about your example: a fulminating socialist could just as well make that statement in the absence of impropriety. the additional information that that's the best possible report would indeed make it sound like a meow.)
- tropo 10y agoThis reminds me of Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, the Iraqi Information Minister, widely known as Baghdad Bob and Comical Ali.
- MarkMc 10y agoSometimes it is simply the act of denial - think Richard Nixon's, "I'm not a crook"
- gohrt 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much,_methinks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_lady_doth_protest_too_much...
- Legogris 10y agohttp://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpecificDenial http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SuspiciouslySpeci...