Yes, deception vs. truth is just one axis, but perhaps the most significant one? Your skilled orator is lying. He is telling parts of the truth in a way that he knows will mislead some of his audience into thinking that A is better than B, and some of them will purchase A when they might've benefitted more from owning B. We know he's doing this, quite intentionally, but we can't prove it; he has deniability. But he is lying: seeking to mislead his audience with negative intent.LuckyR wrote: ↑June 7th, 2022, 8:13 am Notice that deception vs truthfulness is only one axis. It is thus too small of a goal to declare "lies are evil and should be avoided". A skilled orator can convince an audience that A is better than B, while the transcript of his coversation points out several problems with A and various benefits of B. The information already exists, separate from the speaker and the listener, the speaker has the HUGE advantage of packaging the information in his own particular way to (potentially) change the understanding of the information, without technically changing the information itself.
The entire marketing, sales and advertising industries (among others) are built on this reality.
If there were not laws that forbid him from saying, simply, that A is better than B, he would do that too. All advertisers seek to lie as much as existing laws permit. This 'reality' is one of the main reasons why I oppose lying, as I do here. Our world is filled with liars, and there is no good reason that I can see why we should do this (aside from personal gain within a world defined by American Predatory Capitalism, and I wouldn't describe this as a 'good' reason), or allow it.