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Truthiness 


Truthiness is a quality characterizing a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or because it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. (Source http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness)

Other meanings of the word date as far back as 1824.

With respect to books, and media articles, fiction need only be truthy while memoire, biography, study, research report, etc indicate that one may take any and all the factual content as known to be trueeither as historical occurrences or as experimental facts or their implications. Content produced, overtly or covertly, with hortative intent (advertisements, sermons, political tracts and the like), add another level of complexity.

(A memoire straddles the line a bit in the sense that it may include material which the author merely honestly remembers as being an historical occurrence.)

A book that is truthy but substantially untrue does not inform its readers: it is crafted by the author to confirm the readers' prejudices. A non-fiction book that has inaccuracies not quickly and credibly addressed (with errata sheets, revised editions, ...) is a cipher.


Of the many concrete instances of truthiness versus truth, see more on these:







More writing in the abstract on truthiness versus truth:



If you're still up for more, you might browse the directory containing this page and click some other material on truthiness.





This page assembled by: Frederick N. Chase