Quote:
Originally Posted by AnotherCat
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.
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This is a non sequitur and a straw man. I made no claims that people were so honest. I did not deny that there are people who create spurious quotations knowing them to be false, but they are forwarded by people who actually believe them to be true. Your position would require that the general public to be much more informed than they actually are - they would have to know what this person did and didn't say. Propaganda works by getting people to believe spurious information.
People passed along the story of George Washington and the Cherry Tree for ages. Would you assert that they actually knew the story to be false?