alt Hacker News>Something can be simultaneously "misleading" and either true or false. Which category should something go in if it's "mostly false"?
Disagree. The definition of misleading is a true fact that is presented in a way to lead you to a false conclusion.
Example: "Most good engineers are male". It is true as a consequence of most engineers being male in general, but it leads the reader to a potential false implication that an average man is better than an average woman.
This does not invalid your point though. Things can be true and misleading.
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Isn't this still assuming we can even determine what is true or false?
Newtonian physics is false, but it works well enough we teach it in college. But our best models of physics are currently in disagreement, so can we even say they are true? Given the replication crisis, especially in social sciences, how many of peer reviewed findings can be called true? Even experimental results can be false (consider studies that found FTL neutrinos, which were rejected as an error in the experiment, and which was eventually confirmed but it took quite a lot of work and in a softer field than physics with a claim less absurd than FTL, would have likely long been accepted as a true finding).
Even in math, basic statements aren't really true or false, but more a question of "given these axioms, can we prove or disprove it" noting that we have different systems with different axioms. If we are talking basic sets, most people are using naive set theory which is inherently contradictory, which means that notions like true or false probably can't be considered well defined.
> but it leads the reader to a potential false implication that an average man is better than an average woman.
I think that's _you_ turning the statement into something much broader than intended. The claim is about engineers and you're jumping from "men are better than women in engineering" to "men are better overall."
To give a related example, "Most good NBA players are black." I don't think anyone would bother trying to couch this in a bunch of "well, for all we know that's just a function of more NBA players being black than white" arguments, nor would anyone be lead to think "the average black man is better than the average white man" as a result of that statement. I _do_ agree however that there are some people who see rather narrowly-defined statements and turn them into something they're not...
> The definition of misleading is a true fact that is presented in a way to lead you to a false conclusion.
According to Merriem-Webster, which defines "mislead" as the following:
Presenting a "true fact" is optional when misleading someone.