Definition of ‘Act of Deceptive Communication’ too narrow?

[gregfowlerphd]

The definition reads:

Ac Act of Communication intended to mislead the audience by distortion or falsification of evidence and induce a reaction that is prejudicial to the interests of the audience.

While the first condition seems basically right, I worry about the second. Consider the case of the Pacific Northwest tree octopus hoax. In positing the website, the creator might well have intended to mislead the audience. Let’s assume he did. It’s doubtful, however, that he intended to induce a prejudicial reaction of the relevant sort. (How could believing in such an octopus be harmful to the audience’s interests?) Nonetheless, it would seem he engaged in an act of deceptive communication.

(Minor second issue: The definition begins with ‘Ac’ rather than ‘An’.)

[cameronmore]

Perhaps there is a deceptive act of communication and a (new) subclass might just include the second condition.

[gregfowlerphd]

That might work.

As far as the judgment that there's an act of deceptive communication goes, I'm basing it on the assumption that the words in the label 'act of deceptive communication' are to be interpreted as having their standard English meanings (i.e., that 'act of deceptive communication' isn't supposed to be a technical term). If that assumption's correct, then an act of deceptive communication would simply be an act of communication that 'causes [someone] to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid'. (See the Merriam-Webster entry for 'deceive' here: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deceive.)

[cameronmore]

I think the second condition ("induce a reaction that is prejudicial to the interests of the audience") should be added as a note (rdfs:comment or skos:scopeNote) to this class and removed from the definition. That condition may be an outcome, or intended outcome, but there are cases where it is not as you pointed out. Can you make the change and pr?

[gregfowlerphd]

@cameronmore: I can do that. However, I'm a bit worried because the definition, revised along these lines, will still contain the word 'audience', which @swartik had concerns about. (See his comment on my #301.) Might still be worth revising at this point, since doing so would fix one problem with the definition and concerns about 'audience' can be addressed later. What do you think?

[cameronmore]

we can change to recipient as well since that term is mentioned in the object properties receives/has_recipient

[swartik]

One way to address my concerns is to declare a specific dictionary as the definitional source for words used in CCO annotations. I check the Oxford English Dictionary first, but I know many, particularly on this side of the Atlantic, favor Merriam-Webster. If the CCO specification stated which of these (or some other dictionary) to consult, we could save a lot of back-and-forth discussion about what a word means in a definition.

[cameronmore]

If 'recipient' addresses this term's issue, I think we should commit the change and open a new issue or discussion post to explore that idea.

[gregfowlerphd]

@cameronmore: Your suggestion to replace 'audience' with 'recipient' is a good one, and I think it might help with Steve's general worry.

I do think we'll have to do some other tweaks here though. If we simply remove the second condition from the ADC definition and do the 'audience'/'recipient' switch, we end up with the following:

Act of Deceptive Communication: An Act of Communication intended to mislead the recipient by distortion or falsification of evidence.

But 'the recipient' suggests uniqueness--i.e., that an ADC can have only one recipient--which is incorrect.

In response, one might propose replacing 'the recipient' with 'its recipient(s)'. However, an ADC needn't be intended to mislead all of its recipients (since some of its recipients might be in on the lie), so this doesn't work.

I think it might work to replace 'the recipient' with 'its recipient or one of its recipients' or with 'at least one of its recipients'. Alternatively, perhaps we could get away with not mentioning an audience or recipient at all here, as follows:

Act of Deceptive Communication: An Act of Communication intended to mislead by distortion or falsification of evidence.

Although I'm not sure that's explicit enough.

What do you think?

[cameronmore]

@gregfowlerphd Being that the parent class already has a notion of transferring information from one Agent to another ("A Planned Act in which some Information Content Entity is transferred from some Agent to Another"), we may drop it altogether as you suggest.

[gregfowlerphd]

@cameronmore: PR created.

As far as using 'recipient' to address Steve's general worry about 'audience' (as well as my worry about a number of the definitions using 'hearer'), do you think it's worth opening a new issue or discussion post about that proposal? Or should we instead put it in a comment on discussion post 369 (the discussion post my #301 was converted into)?

[cameronmore]

I think a new discussion post is best for the broader question @swartik raises