Isn’t it pretty widely understood that the whole truth means you can’t say “I was with Bob” if a lawyer asks you “Who were you with?” and you were actually with Bob and Cheryl?
How is there not a standard answer to “What does the whole truth mean?”? (man two question marks look weird there)
It’s said in every TV and movie courtroom scene ever. You’d think they’d have this nailed down.
Yes, but something can be true without being ‘the whole truth’, and what Musk says about the tree seemed a decent explanation of why.
I used to do drugs. I still do them. But I also used to do them too. But saying I used to do drugs is not the whole truth.
It seems pretty basic to me. I don’t understand how there’s not some boilerplate they spit out if anyone ever asks this question.
/credit Mitch Hedburg
Yes, but there are infinitely many true things at any point in time. From a pragmatic standpoint, it would be misleading to omit some relevant person’s presence or other material fact and would be perjury if done intentionally. This is typically handed by asking follow-up questions.
There’s nothing Musk can say that helps the lawyer or the deposition. At best he could offer some account of the nature of truth, language, and relevance.
Are you seriously a lawyer arguing that “the whole truth” is a vague and unknowable standard? How have you guys not already had this conversation amongst yourselves for the last 100 years?
GAHHHH lawyers
Not in my opinion. If somebody asks if “that’s a tree” just saying yes is indeed the whole truth, If somebody asks who you were with and you say Bob but you were with Bob and Cheryl then it’s obviously not the whole truth.
Musk was just being his usual dickhead self.
I’m not sure you understood what i meant, and issues with truth and language go back to plato and aristotle, it’s not just a 100 year old “problem”. And, as i said, if Musk intentionally omits material facts that’s perjury, whether Musk offers some babble about what constitutes the ‘whole truth’.
No the lawyer’s question was irrelevant and borderline abusive. Read the comments to the tweet, they explain the legal context. It’s probably clearer than my concerns which come more from philosophy.
Well the tree question example is bullshit. That I’m sure of.
Also, the issue as understood in law in terms of full and fair testimony goes back at least 500 years and probably more, but more in the context of lawyer philosophers like Bacon and Bentham than standard case law, though there’s probably plenty of discussion in the case law.
One problem is that perjury can get philosophical and it’s under punished. It’s very hard to get charged with perjury for testimony in a civil case, though it will piss off the judge and that side will probably lose.
The point is that while ‘the whole truth’ is the legal standard he was supposed to follow and is generally understood to mean something, the specific question had little to do with that and an honest answer to it is ‘no’.
I’ve posted about this before, but my mom was once a young girl playing in her backyard and a hunter took a potshot at her and broke a window. She was playing in her fucking backyard. Because I guess she looked like a deer or some shit. Then grandpa rushed in and beat him to within an inch of his life. These Midwestern “hunters” are largely just straight-up psychopathic monsters, they’re looking for an excuse to blast a human being. Murdering animals for sport is fucking deranged and plus look at how many hunting “accidents” there are out there.
Musk wasn’t asked about responses to questions, he was just asked if something is only true if it’s ‘the whole truth’.
I mean, the point of the oath mentioning the whole truth is precisely to catch that exception!
So is this perjury or not? I would have thought not, but now I’m not sure.
This sounds like a lot of lawyer speak. No offense. 
My point is really simple - every single idiot in America knows the phrase - “The the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.
The idea that everyone in the legal community has just taken this at face value for 100 years with no real understanding of what it actually means and not at least having a canned response ready in case anyone asks - until genius Elon blew the lid off the whole charade by asking what “the whole truth” actually means - strains credibility to me beyond words.
Either that lawyer is an idiot for not just giving the canned response, or Elon is an idiot for asking. Or something. I just cannot accept the option that Elon actually hit on some heretofore misunderstood deep concept wrt to “the whole truth”.
Is this related to something we’re discussing?
I estimate I cancel 1.67 posts for every one that sees the light of day.
Did I miss the announcement that it’s non-sequitur night?
Apparently you have me on ignore.
The lawyer tries to formulate a distinction between ‘the truth’ and ‘the whole truth’. IMO there is no distinction. One could offer a philosophical theory that reflects the distinction, but that’d be complex and would ultimately turn on questions of relevance and pragmatics and, more importantly, intent.