How Bad is a Lie?

There is a difference between volunteering information and answering a  
question, and there is a difference whether the asker has a right to the  
information. Volunteering information that is wrong is a lie, and it is  
bad. Intentionally answering a question wrong is also a lie, but it is bad  
only when the person asking the question has the right to know the correct  
answer.

On the Impossibility of that which did not happen

There is a theorem in geology that all events which occurred must be  
possible. It comes up occasionally -- someone says something is impossible  
when in fact it happened.

My converse of this is that all events which did not occur were, in one  
way or another, impossible.

It seems odd to say that it was impossible for it to have rained on  
Tuesday. But given the weather conditions that day, rain was impossible.

Or, suppose that you dump a pail of water on your driveway. The water  
takes a particular path down the driveway. Were the other paths  
impossible? If you had dumped the water in a different location, or in a  
different way, or had dumped a different amount of water, or if your  
driveway was different, then yes, the water might have travelled  
differently. But given how you dumped the water, and where, and all the  
other facts about the water and your driveway, the water had to go in the  
direction it went.

Could I have gone running on Tuesday? I had the time. But apparently I did  
not have the willpower. Could I have gotten the willpower? Maybe not, but  
if I could have done something to increase my willpower, perhaps I was not  
able to think of that, or perhaps I did not want to do that. Could I have  
changed what I wanted? Apparently not. Or I didn't want to. Etc.

For my theorem to be true, all I need to assume is a deterministic  
universe. What I want to do is like water going down a driveway.

Needless to say, the converse is more controversial. And impossible to  
prove true or false. So maybe it depends on how you want to see the world.  
Or, maybe, it is a useful way of temporarily seeing the world.

Add this to my page. THis is a test.