The Annals of Lu Buwei
Nobody lied and the sentence is still false
Passed along, white turns black: the distortion rides on the telling
The Annals of Lu Buwei, 'Examining What Is Transmitted', in the discourses on circumspect conduct
Everything reported to me is true and something is still wrong. This chapter says sentences deform in transit.
What actually happened?
A Ding family in Song had no well and kept one person permanently outside fetching water. When they finally dug one, the head of the house said: we dug a well and got one man. A hearer passed it on as the Dings dug a well and found a man in it. The whole state repeated it until it reached the ruler, who sent to ask. The family answered: we got the use of one man, not a man out of the well. Nobody along that road lied.
The distortion rides on the telling
What you are told must be examined, because passed along often enough white becomes black. The mechanism is given as a chain: a dog resembles a macaque, a macaque a monkey, a monkey a man, and a man is nothing like a dog.
Four people later, only the most striking half of the sentence survives.
Unexamined, better not to have heard it
Heard and examined it is a blessing; heard and unexamined, better unheard. Duke Huan of Qi and King Zhuang of Chu both checked the men recommended to them, and led their age. The King of Wu and Zhi Bo did not, and lost state and life.
The thirty seconds before you forward it decide that message's whole later life.
Much of what is false is one character misread
Zixia, passing through Wei, heard someone read out that the Jin army crossed the river with three pigs. He said it was the jihai day: the graphs for three and ji are close, and pig and hai are alike. In Jin they confirmed it. Nobody meant to deceive.
That figure looks absurd, so go back and check the unit first.
How to check: against the thing, and against people
The remedy is not to chase every claim back to its source. It is to reason from the nature of the thing and the nature of people. A man dug out of a well fits neither; one man's labour saved fits both.
When a sentence sounds strange, ask first whether it is even possible.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: only good news comes up the line, you are always last to hear of trouble, and you cannot find who is hiding it.
Ask first: how many people did this sentence pass through before me - past two, stop asking who lied and go get the original wording.
Where it goes wrong: read as a rule that everything must be traced to its source. It asks for sorting, not for verifying everything: check what is strange, much handled, or convenient to somebody, and hear the rest as usual.
Lines to keep
White becomes black with no liar anywhere, just hands.
Heard and unexamined is worse than never hearing it.
Reason it out first, then go looking for who said it.
Same situation, other people are asking
By the time it reaches me, three people have smoothed it.Nobody lied to me and it still reached me wrong.The higher I climb, the less I hear.They aren't ignorant. They just don't know how to say it to me.Nobody tells me the bad news · all 4 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.