Safe swimming with elevated chlorine

[PoolDoc]

I don't challenge it at all, Ben. In I thought I had said almost the same thing.

OK.

I'm beginning to understand now. When I call someone a liar, in public discourse, I'm also saying that there's no more point talking to them, or listening to what they say.

You don't agree. I don't really understand how, or why, though.

From where I sit, there's no point talking to a known liar. If they say, "proved" or "science", you have to discount that by thinking to yourself, "most likely, yet another lie". Lying is not only usually immoral; perhaps more fundamentally, it is corrosive of meaning.

This is precisely the issue I have with the "natural" SWG and ionizer crowd: if they lie in some of their primary claims about their units, how am I or their customers to know that they aren't lying every time it's convenient for them.

From my point of view, once someone has been established to be a known, persistent and unrepentent liar . . . there's nothing more to say. Of all the things I value here on the forum, my reputation as a 'truth-teller', is what I value most. This is one reason I have the China Shop. Comfortable, or not, I'm committed to trying to acknowledge the truth whether it's what I thought be true or not.

If people on the forum can't trust me to acknowledge when I'm wrong, I cannot reasonably expect them to trust me when I say -- as I have said -- that I'm right in certain areas where almost everyone else in the pool industry is wrong.

Trust is earned only when the truth is told even when it's not convenient or comfortable. People who tell the truth only when it's convenient are, well, liars. The most their statements can do is suggest a locus for investigation; the fact that they are liars means that their statements themselves can never be trusted and never taken as evidence!

If I'm not willing to acknowledge proof that I'm wrong with respect to some (or all) of what I've said about pools, then I don't deserve the trust of the people here.

But, that which I apply to myself, I apply to environmentalists: if they won't support the liars in their midst; if they themselves will not acknowledge the lies themselves when confronted with the evidence . . . then to my mind they become liars themselves.

I can work with someone with whom I disagree, but I don't see how I can work easily with someone I know to be a liar.

So to get to the point, to demand orthodoxy on every single issue for intellectual or religious purity is an unrealistic violation of that classic maxim of of politics: Politics is the Art of Compromise.

Maybe. I grant that being truthful does not mean telling, in every situation, all the truths I could. Some things cannot be helpfully spoken, even if 'true'

But you've defined "Compromise" as acceptance of the public lies of your fellows. I will not accept that definition or your maxim, at least here.

I'll not debate ethics, philosophy, or religion; such things go too far to be considered here.

Rather, I'll simply say that this is my forum, and that, whatever you think outside the forum, the standard here is that statements must match reality, at least to the best of your knowledge.

I'm committed to this, and I've tried to behave in a way consistent with this. Maybe I've failed, but I've tried.

It's been very uncomfortable for me, and very embarrassing, to have posters describing publicly how I've screwed up PS234 kit shipments and the salt test. I *could* have buried those complaints easily enough, in a variety of ways. But the miserable truth is that I have screwed up PS234 kit shipments, and all those complaints posted here are valid (with a very few exceptions).

I believe that the truth matters.

So, whatever ethics people bring with them, nevertheless here, on this forum, when someone is proven to be a liar . . . there's hardly anything worse that can be said about them. If they are unable to accept, in their posts here, the standards here, then they cannot really participate in this community.

Here the standard must be that the truth rules, and that errors, embarrassing or not, must be acknowledged.

You write that I "cannot demand orthodoxy" . . . but I cannot see that I can demand anything less. The word simply means right (ortho) teaching (doxa). Right teaching means not only being right but also accepting correction when proven wrong. From the very beginning, right teaching, is precisely what PoolSolutions, and the PoolForum has been about.

Take that away, and as far as I'm concerned, nothing's left worth that's saving. At its very foundations, lying robs speech of all meaning. To tolerate it, much less to embrace it, is to accept the very destruction of all speaking and teaching.

If I do that here, then I allow the PoolForum to become yet another "Babel" of confusion and meaninglessness.


Sincerely,

Ben Powell