Quote:
Originally Posted by QuantumIguana
You can't infer either of those from what I wrote. It's pretty simple. If someone forwards a spurious quote, you can't infer that they don't care about the truth. People believed the claims about George Washington and the Cherry Tree for ages, but that doesn't mean they didn't care about the truth. You can assert they don't care about the truth, but say-so isn't evidence...
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I wasn't talking about other people's quotes, but was referring to what you claimed. I was interested what the truth was regarding your claim that:
Case dismissed. People don't spread spurious quotes because they don't care about the truth, but because they don't know what the truth is.
It turns out that there is ample evidence that people often do spread spurious quotes knowing them to be untrue; there are countless examples among the realms of activists, politicians, journalists, conspiracy theorists, etc. as most who have needed through necessity but not love to work with them will likely attest, and it is well established that the information (including quotations) promulgated by such groups is not seriously questioned, nor desired to be questioned by those who align themselves with the particular ideology, or whatever, that it relates to.
That being apparently so then hence my response to you of:
With your making that claim I am left wondering whether you do not care about the truth or whether you do not know what the truth actually is.
If you have such a high level of confidence in the honesty of your fellow beings you may like to investigate, for example, the results of surveys and the experiences of shop security specialists with respect to the proportion of the population that would shoplift if they knew that they would get away with it.