Not the case. Someone may lie in a trivial way, e.g. 'Yes, I love your new hairstyle', which doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
This doesn't compare to 'I did not have sex with that woman!'
Actual cheating, in any context, is an instant tell.
Ask anyone who has caught their significant other at it, or who has played sports or games against a cheater. That cheater cannot be trusted again and anyone who trust them hasn't learned their lesson. There are even folk sayings about it.
@escargot – well, yes I think it is the case. You make a valid distinction between a trivial lie and a serious lie spoken to influence another person’s behavior, i.e., trust me.
To state that a cheater can never be trusted again is not addressing the point I was trying to make: that is, that one cannot prove, by currently known means, that Uri Geller cheats every single time.
If you choose to
assume that a known cheater will cheat every time for the rest of his or her life, that is fine, but that does not
prove that “he cheated all the time because he cheated sometimes.” It may even be a beneficial assumption, but that is not relevant to the issue of proof.
In your world, once a person has transgressed, that person is no longer capable of demonstrating believable remediated behavior. In my world, I have known more than one person who has permanently cleaned up his life and changed his behavior for the rest of his life. Of course, I can’t
prove it. But I have trusted it, cautiously, and have not regretted it.
I think you wrote somewhere that you had a criminal behavior or justice degree. In all that body of work, did you never run across someone who changed his behavior permanently? If so, I find that remarkable. We are drifting away from the topic of Uri Geller, but I wanted to explain why I disagree with your reasoning.
