'No one died when Clinton lied': Oh, really?
I think I would classify myself as politically liberal. I'm also quite a fan of former-president Bill Clinton. Keep that in mind as you read.
I was walking across the Rec parking lot a few days ago, when I stumbled onto something interesting: a car with a bumper-sticker that read, “No one died when Clinton lied.” I was shocked, I must admit—though not necessarily because I thought the phrase was obviously false, or even obviously true. No. I was stunned because I didn’t have a clue what it meant. And I don’t think the person who owns the car does either. Anyway, that’s what I’m going to suggest here.
So, once again: “No one died when Clinton lied.” To get a better idea of what’s going on, let’s unpack the phrase a bit. Basically, I think it’s saying something like this: “There was some time t in the past, such that at t (CL) Bill Clinton told a lie and (ND) no one died.” Now, as it stands, this is a very curious assertion. For one thing, it is framed in terms of temporality (indicated by the word “when”). In other words, it says that there was a time at which the two events I have labeled CL (“Clinton lied”) and ND (“No one died”) coincided.
Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, we make statements about temporal simultaneity all the time. I might say, for instance, “I was in class when the Twin Towers fell.” Or my grandfather might say, “I was working at such-and-such place when Kennedy was assassinated.” These are all fine statements, and they have a meaning that is more-or-less clear.
The problem, however, is that statements about temporal simultaneity (i.e., two events occurring at the same time) imply nothing beyond that—temporal simultaneity. More generally, to say that X and Y occurred at the same time says nothing at all about the relationship between X and Y. Specifically, it says nothing about the causal relationship between X and Y (i.e., either that X caused Y or that Y caused X). But if this is true, then our original statement “No one died when Clinton lied” is nothing more than an arbitrary observation about two events that happened to coincide at a single temporal juncture.
And, what’s more, on this interpretation, the original statement is almost certainly false. In fact, to falsify it, we would only have to specify the instant at which Clinton lied (perhaps the moment at which he said, “I did not have…”) and then determine whether any person died at that same instant. (Hospitals keep pretty good records these days, so it probably wouldn’t be that difficult.)
Or we could go about it statistically. Recent studies suggest that roughly 155,000 people die each day. That’s about one person every two seconds. So, supposing it took Clinton four seconds to utter those fateful words, it is statistically probable that at least one person died during that interval. But even if no one died at that moment, nothing much changes. Of course, the bumper sticker would now be true, but only trivially so. It might as well have read, “No one was wearing a pink spandex jumpsuit with Costa Rican bananas hanging from each ear when Clinton lied.”
But this is quite clearly not what my bumper-sticker-buying friend meant. Instead, he
wanted to say something like this following: “There was a time t, such that at t (i) Bill Clinton lied and (ii) Bill Clinton’s lying was not causally related to the death of any person.” Unfortunately, he didn’t. And, as it stands, his statement is either almost certainly false or only trivially true.
Now if you’ve continued reading up to this point (and I doubt most people have), you’re probably a little irritated. And rightly so. This has all been a bit of overkill. “You’re over-thinking it,” my roommate tells me. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’d all get along a little better if we dropped empty rhetoric and bumper-sticker nonsense and instead got down to the important business of deep, careful reflection. I mean thinking. Maybe even over-thinking.
I was walking across the Rec parking lot a few days ago, when I stumbled onto something interesting: a car with a bumper-sticker that read, “No one died when Clinton lied.” I was shocked, I must admit—though not necessarily because I thought the phrase was obviously false, or even obviously true. No. I was stunned because I didn’t have a clue what it meant. And I don’t think the person who owns the car does either. Anyway, that’s what I’m going to suggest here.
So, once again: “No one died when Clinton lied.” To get a better idea of what’s going on, let’s unpack the phrase a bit. Basically, I think it’s saying something like this: “There was some time t in the past, such that at t (CL) Bill Clinton told a lie and (ND) no one died.” Now, as it stands, this is a very curious assertion. For one thing, it is framed in terms of temporality (indicated by the word “when”). In other words, it says that there was a time at which the two events I have labeled CL (“Clinton lied”) and ND (“No one died”) coincided.
Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. After all, we make statements about temporal simultaneity all the time. I might say, for instance, “I was in class when the Twin Towers fell.” Or my grandfather might say, “I was working at such-and-such place when Kennedy was assassinated.” These are all fine statements, and they have a meaning that is more-or-less clear.
The problem, however, is that statements about temporal simultaneity (i.e., two events occurring at the same time) imply nothing beyond that—temporal simultaneity. More generally, to say that X and Y occurred at the same time says nothing at all about the relationship between X and Y. Specifically, it says nothing about the causal relationship between X and Y (i.e., either that X caused Y or that Y caused X). But if this is true, then our original statement “No one died when Clinton lied” is nothing more than an arbitrary observation about two events that happened to coincide at a single temporal juncture.
And, what’s more, on this interpretation, the original statement is almost certainly false. In fact, to falsify it, we would only have to specify the instant at which Clinton lied (perhaps the moment at which he said, “I did not have…”) and then determine whether any person died at that same instant. (Hospitals keep pretty good records these days, so it probably wouldn’t be that difficult.)
Or we could go about it statistically. Recent studies suggest that roughly 155,000 people die each day. That’s about one person every two seconds. So, supposing it took Clinton four seconds to utter those fateful words, it is statistically probable that at least one person died during that interval. But even if no one died at that moment, nothing much changes. Of course, the bumper sticker would now be true, but only trivially so. It might as well have read, “No one was wearing a pink spandex jumpsuit with Costa Rican bananas hanging from each ear when Clinton lied.”
But this is quite clearly not what my bumper-sticker-buying friend meant. Instead, he
wanted to say something like this following: “There was a time t, such that at t (i) Bill Clinton lied and (ii) Bill Clinton’s lying was not causally related to the death of any person.” Unfortunately, he didn’t. And, as it stands, his statement is either almost certainly false or only trivially true.
Now if you’ve continued reading up to this point (and I doubt most people have), you’re probably a little irritated. And rightly so. This has all been a bit of overkill. “You’re over-thinking it,” my roommate tells me. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe we’d all get along a little better if we dropped empty rhetoric and bumper-sticker nonsense and instead got down to the important business of deep, careful reflection. I mean thinking. Maybe even over-thinking.
posted by Adam at 10:13 PM
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