The Polzer and Wright paper while innovative, has serious flaws that should give pause to the conclusion that can be drawn. The fact that it has more anti-realist responses compared to realist responses is a red flag, especially when you consider responses are a prior coded to fit either anti-realist or realist. It does not ask what people’s views are but instead gives a set of researcher questions and participants are made to pick. This is even more telling when a lot of the questions are current “culture war” and politically loaded questions in a very specific demographic and actual extreme cases were not provided. This doesn’t tell us much except “when Americans under 30 are given politically loaded moral questions with fixed responses they tend to lean towards subjectivism.
Bush, L. S. (2026). Why Training Paradigms Won’t Rescue Experimental Metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1-26.
I can say a bit about your critiques as well:
>>It does not ask what people’s views are but instead gives a set of researcher questions and participants are made to pick.
This is true, but this is what most studies do, so this isn't a distinctive problem with this study.
>>This is even more telling when a lot of the questions are current “culture war” and politically loaded questions in a very specific demographic and actual extreme cases were not provided.
I agree. While a few of their items appeared in earlier studies the particular set of concrete issues they use do appear to me to be more politically loaded overall, and I'm confident pretesting would confirm this. This is a very good point and not one I'd previously considered.
>>This doesn’t tell us much except “when Americans under 30 are given politically loaded moral questions with fixed responses they tend to lean towards subjectivism.
The study included both college students and workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The latter included participants older than 30. They report the average age and range, which went up to 64 years, so not all participants were under 30. It's only the average age that was 29.6, which is of course a little under 30. Most participants probably were under 30 but without the raw data it'd be hard to know what the exact proportion was.
Thanks for your response and the link to your paper. I'm just 20% through it now after seeing you reference it in your article.
Now let me share my thoughts on your responses:
>>This is true, but this is what most studies do, so this isn't a distinctive problem with this study.
Yeap, and all studies that have methodologies like this are poor and highly susceptible to researcher bias and should be interpreted as such. What could be done better is to allow participants to express their own thoughts and compile replies, code them with keywords used and map them.
>> I agree. While a few of their items appeared in earlier studies, the particular set of concrete issues they use do appear to me to be more politically loaded overall, and I'm confident pretesting would confirm this. This is a very good point and not one I'd previously considered.
I am not from the West, so I found the set of questions something I couldn't relate to much, since American politics can be pretty wild haha. That prompted sharing my thoughts with you. Making a demographic-specific study and then extrapolating data universally without proper samples should not be done IMO.
>> The study included both college students and workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The latter included participants older than 30. They report the average age and range, which went up to 64 years, so not all participants were under 30. It's only the average age that was 29.6, which is of course a little under 30. Most participants probably were under 30 but without the raw data it'd be hard to know what the exact proportion was.
I agree it's hard to know, but looking at the recruitment pattern with around 40% being college students, which likely means 40% are already 18-22. Let's go through the potential mean of this age range: the mean for MTurk would be 38, 37.5,37,36,35 (rounded to the nearest decimal of 0.5) for the college mean of 18,19,20,21,22.
So while it's hard to confirm the exact amount, it's highly likely the population age beyond 40 is severely underrepresented. And if we look at patterns of religiosity in the US, older Americans do have higher religious affiliations, which might predispose them to moral realism (my speculation), which would shift the data meaningfully if these demographics were equally represented.
>>What could be done better is to allow participants to express their own thoughts and compile replies, code them with keywords used and map them.
Ha! Well, you will be happy to hear about the poster I am presenting today at a conference. I argue that we should abandon the survey-based approach and what I call “top-down” methods. Top-down methods begin with substantive theoretical assumptions about how people think: assuming people must fit into particular categories defined in advance by researchers. I propose that we should instead employ qualitative, descriptive, and observational research, and more generally employ bottom-up approaches that minimize theoretical preconceptions about the structure of the data we should find.
I used a mixed-methods approach in my dissertation that involved asking participants how they interpreted stimuli and metaethical concepts as well, which roughly approximates your proposal that we allow people to express their own thoughts in their replies. I then coded these. You may appreciate the specific method I employed in the supplemental sections of my dissertation. I used an adapted form of thematic analysis to categorize open-ended responses based on what participants said.
>>Making a demographic-specific study and then extrapolating data universally without proper samples should not be done IMO.
I agree. Polzler has subsequently conducted cross-cultural research and I don’t think it uses these items.
I also agree with your point about the ages of participants: most likely most were under 30. A study from Beebe and Sackris found that nonrealist response rates peak in late teens through 20s so the sample may have distorted the antirealist response rates both due to the items and due to the age of the participants. You’re also not wrong that religiosity is positively correlated with giving realist responses, so your speculation about that is accurate. There may be other cohort effects influencing responses from older generations as well, e.g., fewer going to college.
Another issue is that other data shows that MTurkers are more likely to be atheists/agnostics than the general population, and these unsurprisingly correlate with giving antirealist responses. So I have considered the demographics of the studies and how they may have distorted results, but never focused on the items the way you have.
I won’t copy and paste your text because it’ll just make the replies super long.
But it’s nice to see that you’re actually doing something like this. I very much agree with using the mix methods approach you laid out and now I’m going to have to read your dissertation lol. May I know how I can access it?
if you don’t mind, please share your poster presentation as well?
I do a lot of qualitative science and one thing I’m always aware of and try avoid is asking “anchoring/suggestive” questions which made me evaluate that paper through that lens.
Nice to see someone else pushing back against the top down approach!
I don’t know characteristics about Mturks because it’s definitely not a thing in the east so thanks for the additional detail. I’m glad that we could exchange different perspectives on better research methods!
Gosh, I really managed to get inside your head, huh? That’s a lot of text! 😹 Well, well, when I have some time, I’ll see if I can spare you some more attention proportional that you did here.
I skimmed through the relevant parts, and I didn’t see much progress (this is just a first impression, however). I just wanted to draw attention to one central point that I did read: it is simply false that every lie is intentional, at least in the most relevant and natural sense of intentionality. As I said, there are things like self-deception, forced rationalization, cognitive dissonance, etc. A person can be lying in any of those cases without necessarily doing so in a fully conscious or intentional way. There are also disorders such as mythomania (a person by definition can't be doing it out of his/her will), and so on.
I think that point alone already undermines a substantial part of your case, but anyway, I’ll take a look at the rest later to not be accused of being uncharitable. Bye.
All you did was point out the mere possibility that Lance is under self-deception or some other form of cognitive delusion without providing a single shred of evidence to make it plausible. This doesn’t undermine anything.
Rian appears to be employing a motte-and-bailey by insinuation here, whether intentional or not. His accusations appear like very strong claims: Lance is intentionally trying to deceive us! But then he in other places remarks as though he's pointing out the modest possibility that perhaps I'm just so self-deceived I'm going around unintentionally saying false things.
Well, which is it? If he really thought the latter was the case, it'd be very strange to keep calling me a liar without qualification. This is not the behavior of a serious person. He's either extremely confused or up to no good.
>>I just wanted to draw attention to one central point that I did read: it is simply false that every lie is intentional
This is misleading or confused. Yes, every lie is intentional, given the conventional meaning of the term implied in the contexts in which you used it. The term "lie" has several definitions, and its primary definition includes intent as a necessary feature. There is a technical sense in which not every “lie” is intentional, but this is only true if you equivocate on the meaning of the term “lie” and include both those uses that require intent as part of the meaning and ones that don’t. But that would be a rather dubious thing to do, and might even imply dishonesty on the part of the person doing it. And you wouldn’t stoop so low as to do that, would you?
While the *term* "lie" can be used in contexts where the lie isn't intentional, you employed the term in contexts in which a reasonable person would infer that what was meant was something stated with the intent to deceive, since this is the conventional meaning of the term in the relevant, standard contexts. So while it's possible to use the term "lie" in contexts that don't imply intent, you used it in contexts that would imply intent. Now perhaps that's not what you intended to mean when you used the term, but anyone can always claim that they weren't using the term in accord with how a fluent speaker would interpret them in the relevant context.
In any instance in which a person publicly accuses another person of lying, the most reasonable, central interpretation of this is that the person is intentionally saying things that they believe are false for the purposes of deceiving others. These are standard definitions of the term:
"to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive"
"an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive"
When a person accuses another person of lying, this is the way most observers will interpret the remark. While it's certainly true that the term "lie" is polysemous and there are some usages that don't carry an implication of intent, this is usually conveyed by the context in which the term is used, or a person qualifies the remark so as to cancel the standard pragmatic implicature, which definitely does imply intent.
Nothing about the context in which you made the accusations would suggest you weren't implying intent, nor did you employ pragmatic cancellation across the various accusations you've made to clarify that you're not imputing intent. Given this, either you're profoundly confused about how language works and don't understand basic pragmatic implicature, you don't have a good grasp of how the term "lie" is used in English, or you are being intentionally malicious in presenting yourself in this conversation as having not intended to accuse me of intent to deceive.
So which is it: are you profoundly ignorant of how language works, are you ignorant of how the term "lie" works in English, or are you being intentionally malicious?
>> As I said, there are things like self-deception, forced rationalization, cognitive dissonance, etc. A person can be lying in any of those cases without necessarily doing so in a fully conscious or intentional way. There are also disorders such as mythomania (a person by definition can't be doing it out of his/her will), and so on.
You repeatedly accused me of lying in posts which provide no direct qualification or pragmatic cancellation within the post itself. You only brought up these other possibilities in another, separate post. If you call someone a "murderer" in one post where it was very clear to everyone you were implying they illegally took someone's life, then, then in some other post say "technically 'murder' doesn't necessarily mean they unlawfully took another person's life" every reasonable person would recognize that you're either lying yourself or that you don't have a very good grasp of language.
As far as notions of self-deception, forced rationalization, and cognitive dissonance, it's unclear whether any of these are inconsistent with the notion that the standard requirement for someone to lie is for them to intend to deceive. But that's largely irrelevant, because you don't make it clear when you accuse me of "lying" that what you mean is that I'm lying to myself, it's not clear whether it makes sense to say I'm both lying to myself and lying to others about the same thing at the same time, and even if you were saying that, that would be a much more difficult case for you to make, and you present no good evidence or reasons to think it's the case.
My response to you rests less on whether lies are intentional than on whether you have a legitimate basis for you accusing me of "lying" under any credible conception of what that would mean, so this rather pathetic attempt at an excuse rooted in pedantry wouldn't vindicate you, anyway: you don't have any evidence I'm subject to self-deception, cognitive dissonance, or rationalization, either, so your accusation would still be baseless to such an extent that you'd be culpably negligent and unethical.
>>I think that point alone already undermines a substantial part of your case, but anyway, I’ll take a look at the rest later to not be accused of being uncharitable. Bye.
Your conduct previously and your conduct here makes a mockery of any notion that you're being remotely charitable. You have got to be kidding. You come across as incredibly rude, uncharitable, condescending, unpleasant, and childish, and have continued with this behavior not just with me but with other people in the comments here, which I've been following. You truly don't deserve any of my time, and you are only adding to the considerable debt of apologies you owe to me for your behavior. This post will be added to that list as an utterly pathetic attempt to pedantically litigate a point that does little to vindicate anything you've said.
Here's a TL;DR: in the context of what you accused me of lying the only reasonable interpretation is that you were accusing me of intentionally intending to deceive. So either you didn't intend to mean that in which case you don't have a very good grasp of how to use the term appropriately or you did and you're bullshitting now.
Either way the fact that the term lie could be used in other contexts to not imply intentionality is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it would plausibly be interpreted to mean of the context in which you actually used it.
At this point I can't tell if you just have a very poor grasp of how language works or, are a malicious person who will try to exploit any pedantic point possible to try to evade accountability, or both.
"I’m curious why this happens, so if you have any thoughts, please share them."
If I may, I want to share a speculative hypothesis. I, of course, cannot read minds and am just guessing, but I think this guess may be beneficial for looking atvthis interactions from a different point of view. A quick note; I work as a psychotherapist and as a result have become accustomed to analyzing interactions on two semi-parallel levels (i.e. what is said and how it is said).
So, with that long intro, my speculation is that the reason this happened is due to meta communication issues, rather than the content of claim per se. To me, it seems that your initial tweet can be perceived as terse, inconsiderate of the other sides evidence t, and excessively oppositional. Not saying that it is an accurate interpretation, just that it's a possible one. And usually, when people perceive a communication as an attack, their responses would lean toward a less charitable interpretation of the other person's behavior in general. Hence, the accusation of lying
That seems reasonable. But why wouldn’t they just conclude I’m being terse, inconsiderate, etc. without concluding that I’m lying about my views? I would totally understand someone saying “This response seems terse and inconsiderate,” but that doesn’t quite account for why they’d infer dishonesty.
Well, again I cannot read minds and I cannot speak for them. Just as a speculation; I think people are not always aware of their interpretations of metacommunication factors and more importantly on how these impact their reactions.
The Polzer and Wright paper while innovative, has serious flaws that should give pause to the conclusion that can be drawn. The fact that it has more anti-realist responses compared to realist responses is a red flag, especially when you consider responses are a prior coded to fit either anti-realist or realist. It does not ask what people’s views are but instead gives a set of researcher questions and participants are made to pick. This is even more telling when a lot of the questions are current “culture war” and politically loaded questions in a very specific demographic and actual extreme cases were not provided. This doesn’t tell us much except “when Americans under 30 are given politically loaded moral questions with fixed responses they tend to lean towards subjectivism.
Hi Kedric, thanks for sharing this perspective. My most recent article is actually a critique specifically of the Polzler and Wright paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13164-026-00827-x
Bush, L. S. (2026). Why Training Paradigms Won’t Rescue Experimental Metaethics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1-26.
I can say a bit about your critiques as well:
>>It does not ask what people’s views are but instead gives a set of researcher questions and participants are made to pick.
This is true, but this is what most studies do, so this isn't a distinctive problem with this study.
>>This is even more telling when a lot of the questions are current “culture war” and politically loaded questions in a very specific demographic and actual extreme cases were not provided.
I agree. While a few of their items appeared in earlier studies the particular set of concrete issues they use do appear to me to be more politically loaded overall, and I'm confident pretesting would confirm this. This is a very good point and not one I'd previously considered.
>>This doesn’t tell us much except “when Americans under 30 are given politically loaded moral questions with fixed responses they tend to lean towards subjectivism.
The study included both college students and workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The latter included participants older than 30. They report the average age and range, which went up to 64 years, so not all participants were under 30. It's only the average age that was 29.6, which is of course a little under 30. Most participants probably were under 30 but without the raw data it'd be hard to know what the exact proportion was.
Thanks for your response and the link to your paper. I'm just 20% through it now after seeing you reference it in your article.
Now let me share my thoughts on your responses:
>>This is true, but this is what most studies do, so this isn't a distinctive problem with this study.
Yeap, and all studies that have methodologies like this are poor and highly susceptible to researcher bias and should be interpreted as such. What could be done better is to allow participants to express their own thoughts and compile replies, code them with keywords used and map them.
>> I agree. While a few of their items appeared in earlier studies, the particular set of concrete issues they use do appear to me to be more politically loaded overall, and I'm confident pretesting would confirm this. This is a very good point and not one I'd previously considered.
I am not from the West, so I found the set of questions something I couldn't relate to much, since American politics can be pretty wild haha. That prompted sharing my thoughts with you. Making a demographic-specific study and then extrapolating data universally without proper samples should not be done IMO.
>> The study included both college students and workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. The latter included participants older than 30. They report the average age and range, which went up to 64 years, so not all participants were under 30. It's only the average age that was 29.6, which is of course a little under 30. Most participants probably were under 30 but without the raw data it'd be hard to know what the exact proportion was.
I agree it's hard to know, but looking at the recruitment pattern with around 40% being college students, which likely means 40% are already 18-22. Let's go through the potential mean of this age range: the mean for MTurk would be 38, 37.5,37,36,35 (rounded to the nearest decimal of 0.5) for the college mean of 18,19,20,21,22.
So while it's hard to confirm the exact amount, it's highly likely the population age beyond 40 is severely underrepresented. And if we look at patterns of religiosity in the US, older Americans do have higher religious affiliations, which might predispose them to moral realism (my speculation), which would shift the data meaningfully if these demographics were equally represented.
>>What could be done better is to allow participants to express their own thoughts and compile replies, code them with keywords used and map them.
Ha! Well, you will be happy to hear about the poster I am presenting today at a conference. I argue that we should abandon the survey-based approach and what I call “top-down” methods. Top-down methods begin with substantive theoretical assumptions about how people think: assuming people must fit into particular categories defined in advance by researchers. I propose that we should instead employ qualitative, descriptive, and observational research, and more generally employ bottom-up approaches that minimize theoretical preconceptions about the structure of the data we should find.
I used a mixed-methods approach in my dissertation that involved asking participants how they interpreted stimuli and metaethical concepts as well, which roughly approximates your proposal that we allow people to express their own thoughts in their replies. I then coded these. You may appreciate the specific method I employed in the supplemental sections of my dissertation. I used an adapted form of thematic analysis to categorize open-ended responses based on what participants said.
>>Making a demographic-specific study and then extrapolating data universally without proper samples should not be done IMO.
I agree. Polzler has subsequently conducted cross-cultural research and I don’t think it uses these items.
I also agree with your point about the ages of participants: most likely most were under 30. A study from Beebe and Sackris found that nonrealist response rates peak in late teens through 20s so the sample may have distorted the antirealist response rates both due to the items and due to the age of the participants. You’re also not wrong that religiosity is positively correlated with giving realist responses, so your speculation about that is accurate. There may be other cohort effects influencing responses from older generations as well, e.g., fewer going to college.
Another issue is that other data shows that MTurkers are more likely to be atheists/agnostics than the general population, and these unsurprisingly correlate with giving antirealist responses. So I have considered the demographics of the studies and how they may have distorted results, but never focused on the items the way you have.
I won’t copy and paste your text because it’ll just make the replies super long.
But it’s nice to see that you’re actually doing something like this. I very much agree with using the mix methods approach you laid out and now I’m going to have to read your dissertation lol. May I know how I can access it?
if you don’t mind, please share your poster presentation as well?
I do a lot of qualitative science and one thing I’m always aware of and try avoid is asking “anchoring/suggestive” questions which made me evaluate that paper through that lens.
Nice to see someone else pushing back against the top down approach!
I don’t know characteristics about Mturks because it’s definitely not a thing in the east so thanks for the additional detail. I’m glad that we could exchange different perspectives on better research methods!
Gosh, I really managed to get inside your head, huh? That’s a lot of text! 😹 Well, well, when I have some time, I’ll see if I can spare you some more attention proportional that you did here.
I skimmed through the relevant parts, and I didn’t see much progress (this is just a first impression, however). I just wanted to draw attention to one central point that I did read: it is simply false that every lie is intentional, at least in the most relevant and natural sense of intentionality. As I said, there are things like self-deception, forced rationalization, cognitive dissonance, etc. A person can be lying in any of those cases without necessarily doing so in a fully conscious or intentional way. There are also disorders such as mythomania (a person by definition can't be doing it out of his/her will), and so on.
I think that point alone already undermines a substantial part of your case, but anyway, I’ll take a look at the rest later to not be accused of being uncharitable. Bye.
Thanks for the cringepost
All you did was point out the mere possibility that Lance is under self-deception or some other form of cognitive delusion without providing a single shred of evidence to make it plausible. This doesn’t undermine anything.
Rian appears to be employing a motte-and-bailey by insinuation here, whether intentional or not. His accusations appear like very strong claims: Lance is intentionally trying to deceive us! But then he in other places remarks as though he's pointing out the modest possibility that perhaps I'm just so self-deceived I'm going around unintentionally saying false things.
Well, which is it? If he really thought the latter was the case, it'd be very strange to keep calling me a liar without qualification. This is not the behavior of a serious person. He's either extremely confused or up to no good.
>>I just wanted to draw attention to one central point that I did read: it is simply false that every lie is intentional
This is misleading or confused. Yes, every lie is intentional, given the conventional meaning of the term implied in the contexts in which you used it. The term "lie" has several definitions, and its primary definition includes intent as a necessary feature. There is a technical sense in which not every “lie” is intentional, but this is only true if you equivocate on the meaning of the term “lie” and include both those uses that require intent as part of the meaning and ones that don’t. But that would be a rather dubious thing to do, and might even imply dishonesty on the part of the person doing it. And you wouldn’t stoop so low as to do that, would you?
While the *term* "lie" can be used in contexts where the lie isn't intentional, you employed the term in contexts in which a reasonable person would infer that what was meant was something stated with the intent to deceive, since this is the conventional meaning of the term in the relevant, standard contexts. So while it's possible to use the term "lie" in contexts that don't imply intent, you used it in contexts that would imply intent. Now perhaps that's not what you intended to mean when you used the term, but anyone can always claim that they weren't using the term in accord with how a fluent speaker would interpret them in the relevant context.
In any instance in which a person publicly accuses another person of lying, the most reasonable, central interpretation of this is that the person is intentionally saying things that they believe are false for the purposes of deceiving others. These are standard definitions of the term:
"to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive"
"an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker or writer to be untrue with intent to deceive"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lie#dictionary-entry-3
When a person accuses another person of lying, this is the way most observers will interpret the remark. While it's certainly true that the term "lie" is polysemous and there are some usages that don't carry an implication of intent, this is usually conveyed by the context in which the term is used, or a person qualifies the remark so as to cancel the standard pragmatic implicature, which definitely does imply intent.
Nothing about the context in which you made the accusations would suggest you weren't implying intent, nor did you employ pragmatic cancellation across the various accusations you've made to clarify that you're not imputing intent. Given this, either you're profoundly confused about how language works and don't understand basic pragmatic implicature, you don't have a good grasp of how the term "lie" is used in English, or you are being intentionally malicious in presenting yourself in this conversation as having not intended to accuse me of intent to deceive.
So which is it: are you profoundly ignorant of how language works, are you ignorant of how the term "lie" works in English, or are you being intentionally malicious?
>> As I said, there are things like self-deception, forced rationalization, cognitive dissonance, etc. A person can be lying in any of those cases without necessarily doing so in a fully conscious or intentional way. There are also disorders such as mythomania (a person by definition can't be doing it out of his/her will), and so on.
You repeatedly accused me of lying in posts which provide no direct qualification or pragmatic cancellation within the post itself. You only brought up these other possibilities in another, separate post. If you call someone a "murderer" in one post where it was very clear to everyone you were implying they illegally took someone's life, then, then in some other post say "technically 'murder' doesn't necessarily mean they unlawfully took another person's life" every reasonable person would recognize that you're either lying yourself or that you don't have a very good grasp of language.
As far as notions of self-deception, forced rationalization, and cognitive dissonance, it's unclear whether any of these are inconsistent with the notion that the standard requirement for someone to lie is for them to intend to deceive. But that's largely irrelevant, because you don't make it clear when you accuse me of "lying" that what you mean is that I'm lying to myself, it's not clear whether it makes sense to say I'm both lying to myself and lying to others about the same thing at the same time, and even if you were saying that, that would be a much more difficult case for you to make, and you present no good evidence or reasons to think it's the case.
My response to you rests less on whether lies are intentional than on whether you have a legitimate basis for you accusing me of "lying" under any credible conception of what that would mean, so this rather pathetic attempt at an excuse rooted in pedantry wouldn't vindicate you, anyway: you don't have any evidence I'm subject to self-deception, cognitive dissonance, or rationalization, either, so your accusation would still be baseless to such an extent that you'd be culpably negligent and unethical.
>>I think that point alone already undermines a substantial part of your case, but anyway, I’ll take a look at the rest later to not be accused of being uncharitable. Bye.
Your conduct previously and your conduct here makes a mockery of any notion that you're being remotely charitable. You have got to be kidding. You come across as incredibly rude, uncharitable, condescending, unpleasant, and childish, and have continued with this behavior not just with me but with other people in the comments here, which I've been following. You truly don't deserve any of my time, and you are only adding to the considerable debt of apologies you owe to me for your behavior. This post will be added to that list as an utterly pathetic attempt to pedantically litigate a point that does little to vindicate anything you've said.
Here's a TL;DR: in the context of what you accused me of lying the only reasonable interpretation is that you were accusing me of intentionally intending to deceive. So either you didn't intend to mean that in which case you don't have a very good grasp of how to use the term appropriately or you did and you're bullshitting now.
Either way the fact that the term lie could be used in other contexts to not imply intentionality is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it would plausibly be interpreted to mean of the context in which you actually used it.
At this point I can't tell if you just have a very poor grasp of how language works or, are a malicious person who will try to exploit any pedantic point possible to try to evade accountability, or both.
"I’m curious why this happens, so if you have any thoughts, please share them."
If I may, I want to share a speculative hypothesis. I, of course, cannot read minds and am just guessing, but I think this guess may be beneficial for looking atvthis interactions from a different point of view. A quick note; I work as a psychotherapist and as a result have become accustomed to analyzing interactions on two semi-parallel levels (i.e. what is said and how it is said).
So, with that long intro, my speculation is that the reason this happened is due to meta communication issues, rather than the content of claim per se. To me, it seems that your initial tweet can be perceived as terse, inconsiderate of the other sides evidence t, and excessively oppositional. Not saying that it is an accurate interpretation, just that it's a possible one. And usually, when people perceive a communication as an attack, their responses would lean toward a less charitable interpretation of the other person's behavior in general. Hence, the accusation of lying
That seems reasonable. But why wouldn’t they just conclude I’m being terse, inconsiderate, etc. without concluding that I’m lying about my views? I would totally understand someone saying “This response seems terse and inconsiderate,” but that doesn’t quite account for why they’d infer dishonesty.
Well, again I cannot read minds and I cannot speak for them. Just as a speculation; I think people are not always aware of their interpretations of metacommunication factors and more importantly on how these impact their reactions.