Skepticism, Science & Pseudoscience

I did, and became totally horrified at what he assumed would take place. That the total inability to lie about anything at all is nothing but a good thing. The single biggest flaw in the truth machine is that it would not be able to tell an actual untruth from a truth. So if you really believe what you're saying, you are not lying. At least not so far as the machine could detect. I don't know about you, but it's not that uncommon for me to have some fact wrong. Example: recently I got into a discussion with my sister as to exactly which town in Ireland our grandmother was from. I had it wrong. But I was completely convinced I had it right. So I was not lying as such.

In some ways, it might be nice to have a perfect lie detector. But the underlying Libertarian sentiments of the book are quite bothersome to me.

Same with The First Immortal. He touches briefly on economic conditions in the Third World being a whole lot worse than they are not, but doesn't seem to think it matters all that much to the First World characters in the novel. Indeed, as I recall they solve the problem of their discomfort by never again visiting those lesser parts of the planet. Again, the Libertarian underpinnings are disturbing.

Not to mention the thing about someone's wife who dies in a fire. To say anything more would be a plot spoiler of the worst rank, but suffice it to say how he develops that particular sub-plot was extremely disturbing in more than one way.