# @ HurricaneDitka, what is your opinion about "Truth isn't Truth"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981
**Category:** The BBQ Pit
**Created:** [August 21, 2018, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981 "2018-08-21T15:12:19Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/21 "2018-08-21T17:04:03Z")
> [@RitterSport](#):
>
> I’m disappointed that this thread is taking root here at the SDMB. I watched the whole interview and Giuliani just mishandled what he was trying to say. Tapper had asked why Trump is hesitant about talking to Mueller under oath. Giuliani used the example of Flynn – Comey said Trump said to lay off Flynn and Trump denies he said that. Giuliani asked, essentially, what is the truth there? And, will Mueller believe his pal Comey or the guy he has been investigating. With so much on the line (perjury charges, obstruction charges), Trump would be crazy to go into that interview, when this example is just he-said-he-said.
>
> He should have said, “how do we know which one is true?” rather than “truth is not truth”. He wasn’t saying that there are no true things anymore, rather he was saying that, how do you know what the truth is?
>
> Contrast that with Conway’s “alternative facts” which is bullshit from beginning to end.
>
> Taking Giuliani out of context here is total bullshit. And, he was just in an interview, where Cuomo, for example, was giving a speech.
>
> Now, I agree that Giuliani is a crazy person, but this particular “issue” is ridiculous. Even Krugman brought it up and I’m really disappointed.
In my view, yes, Giuliani is at worst merely guilty of blurting out a response without thinking through how it might sound, but that is not to say it has no significance. The chief spokesman for a President who has made his bones on the art of the terse, pithy putdown, essentially handed his enemies a soundbite for the ages. Fair or in context or not, who can resist quoting again and again three little words that so succinctly sum up Trump’s attitude toward public expression? This quote will live forever.
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/22 "2018-08-21T17:04:55Z")
> [@RitterSport](#):
>
> He should have said, “how do we know which one is true?” rather than “truth is not truth”.
He should have.
But, as noted above, “truth is truth” was the interviewer’s term, and the interviewer used that term in the specific context of saying “there’s no issue of determining objective truth”, so when Giuliani counter-asserted “truth is not truth”, he was contradicting the specific meaning with which the interviewer had imbued this phrase.
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### Author:  [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/23 "2018-08-21T17:05:56Z")
I need to know what ‘Is’ is. And if there is any ‘there’ there.
If truth is not truth, does that mean false is not false? Then yes is not yes and no is not no. A new world order. Oh joy.
“I am he, and you are me as we are me, and we are all together”
I am the Walrus, the Beatles.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/24 "2018-08-21T17:33:47Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#):
>
> Would you be referring to [“What difference does it make”](https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/may/08/context-hillary-clintons-what-difference-does-it-m/)?
No, it was a longish clause stripped from a sentence. I wish I’d made a note.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/25 "2018-08-21T17:36:47Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> It’s ironic that people who call for context when their guys say things like “America was never great” and so on ignore it when they seize on something out of context that they like.
What’s your position on Obama’s “You didn’t build that.” ?
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### Author:  [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/26 "2018-08-21T17:45:41Z")
> [@septimus](#):
>
> What’s your position on Obama’s “You didn’t build that.” ?
**F-P** : Context matters!
Also **F-P** : Context doesn’t matter!
I think we found Ghouliani’s SDMB account…
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/27 "2018-08-21T18:04:21Z")
It’s important to understand the context of FP’s analysis.
He’s dumb.
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### Author:  [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/28 "2018-08-21T18:04:42Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#):
>
> **F-P** : Context matters!
>
> Also **F-P** : Context doesn’t matter!
>
> I think we found Ghouliani’s SDMB account…
Probably. But **F-P** ’s little green light is on. Why doesn’t he answer? Is he Googling Hannity or Limbaugh to see what the party line is on this question?
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### Author:  [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/29 "2018-08-21T18:12:26Z")
> [@Chisquirrel](#):
>
> **F-P** : Context matters!
>
> Also **F-P** : Context doesn’t matter!
Context always matters. But sometimes context changes the meaning and sometimes context doesn’t change the meaning.
Waving the word “context” like some magic shield is a refuge for the simpleminded.
ETA: the Obama quote was raised in another current thread and I addressed it there.
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### Author:  [@Isosleepy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isosleepy)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/30 "2018-08-21T18:12:44Z")
Giuliani has lost much of whatever credibility he might ‘ve still had simply by becoming Trump’s attorney. But clearly, here he is trying to articulate that in a case like this, objective truth may be hard to find or define, and that therefore even if the president doesn’t lie, he could still expose himself to perjury charges. Especially since Trump is not as fantastic a master of the English language and all its nuances as one of his predecessors: remember “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”?
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### Author:  [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/31 "2018-08-21T19:50:46Z")
> [@El\_Kabong](#):
>
> In my view, yes, Giuliani is at worst merely guilty of blurting out a response without thinking through how it might sound, but that is not to say it has no significance. The chief spokesman for a President who has made his bones on the art of the terse, pithy putdown, essentially handed his enemies a soundbite for the ages. Fair or in context or not, who can resist quoting again and again three little words that so succinctly sum up Trump’s attitude toward public expression? This quote will live forever.
Yup, its going right up there with “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. Which also made sense in context but so epitomized Bill’s weaselly handling of the Lewinski scandal that he will never be able to escape it.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/32 "2018-08-21T22:07:24Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#):
>
> Yup, its going right up there with “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”. Which also made sense in context but so epitomized Bill’s weaselly handling of the Lewinski scandal that he will never be able to escape it.
You know, I think Clinton DID manage to escape it after all. These days, I’m sure a lot of Americans dearly WISH the only presidential scandal was a blowjob in the Oval Office. By comparison, it’s practically a golden age.
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### Author:  [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/33 "2018-08-21T22:19:16Z")
> [@E-DUB](#):
>
> Truth is not truth. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. Time is money. Resistance is futile. Soylent Green is people.
Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best.
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### Author:  [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2018, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/34 "2018-08-21T22:55:18Z")
_Live_ music is better.
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### Author:  [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2018, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/35 "2018-08-22T00:22:34Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#):
>
> Out of context, it’s funny and mockable.
>
> In context? Fuck no it’s not better. It’s deeply pernicious. It is a claim that there is no such thing as objective truth, a claim that’s entirely in keeping with this administration’s frankly terrifying assault on facts, from “alternative facts” to “fake news” to the president’s thousands of lies.
>
> Giuliani is advancing the idea that whatever the president says is just as true as what anyone else says, but that Mueller will arbitrarily choose to believe someone else over the president, so the president shouldn’t testify–that’s some postmodernist deconstructionist bullshit, and we should all reject it, and that’s the truth.
While I won’t deny it can be abused, I’m gonna hold fast that no, “objective truth” does not exist.
Well, okay, let me backpedal. Objective truth exists, but we are soft, fleshy beings with limited, flawed perception and we don’t have access to that truth. The best we can hope for is a fuzzy, approximate, collective truth such as the one that things like science offers us. But even then, fundamentally a scientific paper is just an argument that observed phenomenon will be consistently observed again under certain conditions, and is affected by biases and our limited perception as much as anything else.
Our understanding of reality is notoriously flawed and subjective, and I feel like it’s a disservice to claim that anyone really “knows” objective reality. The best we can get is things that are very probably true, such that a lot of people can vouch that they too find the argument that it’s very probably true compelling.
(Yes, this is an insufferably post-modernist viewpoint, I’m guilty of that)
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### Author:  [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2018, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/36 "2018-08-22T01:02:35Z")
> [@Jragon](#):
>
> While I won’t deny it can be abused, I’m gonna hold fast that no, “objective truth” does not exist.
>
> Well, okay, let me backpedal. Objective truth exists, but we are soft, fleshy beings with limited, flawed perception and we don’t have access to that truth. The best we can hope for is a fuzzy, approximate, collective truth such as the one that things like science offers us. But even then, fundamentally a scientific paper is just an argument that observed phenomenon will be consistently observed again under certain conditions, and is affected by biases and our limited perception as much as anything else.
>
> Our understanding of reality is notoriously flawed and subjective, and I feel like it’s a disservice to claim that anyone really “knows” objective reality. The best we can get is things that are very probably true, such that a lot of people can vouch that they too find the argument that it’s very probably true compelling.
>
> (Yes, this is an insufferably post-modernist viewpoint, I’m guilty of that)
On the one hand, I absolutely agree with you. The quasiBuddhist position that all of this world is an illusion is unfalsifiable, and there’s no reason to think it’s any less accurate than the logical positivist position that objective reality may be somewhat reliably understood through our senses.
But the “no discernible objective truth” position leads to no reasonable social structures. Giuliani’s argument–that we can never know the truth, so we shouldn’t bother trying–is deeply, deeply pernicious.
And of course he doesn’t believe that. Of course he believes that prosecutors can examine conflicting testimony and conflicting evidence and arrive somewhere near the truth. He spent a great deal of his career doing exactly that.
But his mob boss now demands he baffle 'em with bullshit, so he’s doing this hand-fluttery “truth isn’t truth” song and dance to convince people to give up on figuring out what the truth really is.
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### Author:  [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)
#### Post date: [August 22, 2018, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/37 "2018-08-22T03:42:50Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#):
>
> The line was a counter to what the interviewer was saying. Giuliani’s point was that telling the truth wouldn’t necessarily help Trump avoid a perjury trap because other people could have a different version of events, and Mueller could decide to believe those other versions, which would mean that Trump was guilty of perjury. The interviewer objected that “truth is truth …” Giuliani’s response was that “truth is not truth”, meaning in context that from the per
That isn’t what perjury is.
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### Author:  [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2018, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/38 "2018-08-23T08:43:32Z")
Giuliani meant to posit a situation where one person lied and another told the truth. If everyone believed the lier, then the tables would turn and it would be the truthful person who would be viewed as a lier. So “truth would not be truth”.
This is not a concept that is difficult to understand. It just isn’t.
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### Author:  [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2018, 10:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/39 "2018-08-23T10:22:51Z")
It’s certainly not a concept of Giuliani’s that Giuliani can express coherently.
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### Author:  [@excavating\_for\_a\_mind](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/excavating_for_a_mind)
#### Post date: [August 23, 2018, 12:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hurricaneditka-what-is-your-opinion-about-truth-isnt-truth/819981/40 "2018-08-23T12:41:41Z")
Well, take a look at the quote:
“Truth isn’t truth”
which really is:
“Truth is not truth”
Clearly, the veracity of that statement depends on what the definition of is is.
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