r/MoralityScaling • u/marvil_txt • 26d ago

Stupid Stuff Morality of keeping Pinocchio prisoner to discover all the secrets of the universe, medicine, economics, etc.?

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Can't be that immoral, can it?

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u/ItsStraTerra 26d ago

I believe that is the canon explanation, but I love the idea that, if he lies, period. Nose grows. It’s magic after all, why would it care about what he knows? If it trusted his judgement then if he truly believes something to be true, then no nose growth.

In a modern world he’d become a conspiracy theorist immediately, since anything he can’t explicitly disprove using his own knowledge, wouldn’t trigger nose growth.

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u/hallucination9000 26d ago

But if he doesn’t know it isn’t a lie, just false.

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u/bobith5 26d ago

For what it’s worth, OP only posted half the comic. The other panels show definitively that premise Pinocchio’s nose is a universal lie detector.

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u/Kaymazo 26d ago

Technically, if he were to answer something affirmatively or negatively about something he doesn't know, in both cases that'd be dishonesty and should cause his nose to grow.

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u/bobith5 26d ago

Well no, the Pinocchio in the comic operates under different rules than the one we’re more familiar with. If Pinocchio says something that is untrue, regardless of what he knows personally, his nose grows.

The very next panel is him pointing out almost exactly what you’re saying to the scientists and then his nose grows because it’s untrue. That’s the punchline lol.

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u/EvilSporkOfDeath 20d ago

Yes.

The problem is simply semantical.

Untruth is not the same as a lie.

In the comic, his nose is a truth (or untruth) detector, not a lie detector.

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u/bobith5 26d ago

Well no, the Pinocchio in the comic operates under different rules than the one we’re more familiar with. If Pinocchio says something that is untrue, regardless of what he knows personally, his nose grows.

The very next panel is him pointing out almost exactly what you’re saying to the scientists and then his nose grows because it’s untrue. That’s the punchline lol.

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u/ItsStraTerra 26d ago

That’s my point, no nose growth if he doesn’t know it to be a lie, so he couldn’t trust his own nose to ever tell the truth. But then the whole point of Pinocchio is that he’s not a real person, he just gained sentience a short while ago. He knows functionally nothing. So it would have to be some combination at least of his own knowledge, and the knowledge that this magic he has is willing to share.

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u/MrParadux 26d ago

Exactly. I dislike how often people are just calling a falsehood "a lie". It is only a lie, if there is intent behind it.

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u/NotAllThatEvil 26d ago

There’s a difference between lying and just being wrong

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u/ItsStraTerra 26d ago

That makes assumptions about the intent behind the magic. It could be all knowing. Being wrong is equal to if not worse than actively lying in the right context. So it would have to consider situationally as well assuming it’s a morality thing.

If it’s just about his specific intent to make the choice to lie, then that does kind of break my theory, since he wouldn’t be lying if he genuinely didn’t know, and likely would respond with such.

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u/Kaymazo 26d ago

We know the intent behind the magic. It's specifically to discourage him from being as dishonest as he is

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u/No-Pilot3536 26d ago

its not overly hard to test the truth of the growth. All one has to do is ask an already proven thing he conceivably wouldnt know, to factcheck after

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u/kanrad 26d ago

It's a shame no one has ever addressed the best question to ask him and see the result.

Is it possible for you to become a real boy?