Agreed. Personally I think it depends on whether the projections are being made in good faith. Being wrong about something doesn't make you a liar unless you knew you were wrong when you made the statement in the first place.
This definition would seem to make it impossible to be mistaken without lying. If you're wrong, the thing you said isn't true, so it's a lie. That hardly seems like a reasonable definition.
I would bet that you say things all the time that you do not know with 100% certainty but which seem likely enough than you assume them to be true. I have never met someone who does not.
For example, have you ever told somebody that you were meeting somebody else when you were not looking right at them as you prepared to sit down for the meeting? What you actually mean is that you believe you will meet them based on your understanding of a conversation you had. You could have heard the wrong day, they could be right about to cancel, your car could break down — you get the idea.
Being wrong once on a date 5 years away isn't necessarily lying. Being many years wrong on frequent "by the end of the year" predictions in a way that happens to help you sell products is lying.
Okay, that is your view, it isn't mine. There isn't any reason to believe someone is going to be truthful or untruthful. For me, the best way is to develop your own detector. I don't have all the answers, so YMMV.
To the larger point, this isn't about absolute certainty - which is a red-herring and an unattainable ideal.
A lie is anti-correlated with the truth. Bullshit is uncorrelated with the truth. The problem with trusting a coin flip because it happened to be right this time is that now you trust the coin a source of information, when really its a source of entropy. The lie will be found out just as soon as the truth comes out, whereas the bullshitter might get enough lucky flips in a row that people start taking their advice seriously.
* handling the sheer amount of times that somebody says something is going to happen and then the complete opposite happens, because they lied/they didn't have information/they were projecting their desire/they are out of touch with reality
Lying implies intent, and knowing what the truth is. Saying something you believe to be true, but is wrong, is generally not considered a lie but a mistake.
A better description of what ChatGPT does is described well by one definition of bullshit:
> bullshit is speech intended to persuade without regard for truth. The liar cares about the truth and attempts to hide it; the bullshitter doesn't care if what they say is true or false
You're probably right, but it doesn't suddenly become OK to lie just because the truth is evident if you think about it. Especially when the average person does not have the knowledge needed to reach that conclusion.
> I wouldn't say lying as I think lying has a knowing quality to it (i.e., you have to know the statement you are making is incorrect).
Yeah, this is the difference between lies and bullshit. Lies are specifically not the truth (possibly selective truths instead) and bullshit doesn't care what's true.
I like your observation, but technically would this fall under bullshit or delusion?
I guess it's a matter of definition. Does bullshit require intentionally trying to bullshit someone, or is it sufficient to speak bullshit even if you actually believe what you are saying?
Is that not lying? When does it become lying, when you're 100% sure you're not saying the truth?
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