Million years? Citation needed.

Ok, I just told off a horny moron (where do these people come from to pollute and contanimate every discussion board meant for discussion? It never fails, in their mind, the world just NEEDS to know about what their penis thinks of the lead actress, as if it's the MOST interesting thought the world can know), and told them to write an original insight, observation or thought about this movie.

This means, I want to be a good example and do the same thing myself.

So here goes..

Fletcher says something like "Not in a million years!", when the annoying kid asks about becoming blind if he watches too much television.

Now, there are several problems with this answer. First of all, how is it NOT a lie, when Fletcher certainly can't have familiarized himself with the research data that doesn't exist about 'watching a TV for a million years in a row and its effects to the optical capabilities of the eyes'.

Obviously, televisions have existed for longer than a million years, cosmically speaking, but Fletcher most likely doesn't have access to other planets' data and interdimensional history of visual apparatus' on the more literally Universal scale, so we'll stick to this planet.

Fletcher, in other words, CAN NOT have access to, and definitely has NOT researched and examined the data from a thorough study about watching a television for a million years.

Furthermore, what qualifies 'a million years'? How many hours a day do you have to watch? What disqualifies it? What if you don't watch for a week during that time? Is it only chronological million years, OR does the television-watching accumulate hours and those are counted into million years (in which case, it might be way more than a million years - perhaps even ten million years or longer, chronologically speaking)?

What if you only watch every other day? Can you stop watching for the duration of weekends? Can you take holidays? None of this is specified, rendering the answer EXTREMELY vague!

Now, if vague non-true non-answers like this are allowed, or if enormous exaggerations are allowed as long as they follow the general core of 'being the truth', then couldn't Fletcher have used this particular loophole in his court case?

In any case, this is basically a lie, as he has no way of knowing if you actually WOULD go blind if you watch 997 819 years, but not before, or something.

Of course we have to then start thinking about the typical physical incarnation being usually limited to around hundred years or less, and how THAT fits into the equation - I mean, for the answer to make ANY sense, you would have to use the SAME EYES for that million-year duration. How are you going to do that, when one pair of eyes would definitely go blind way before that, IF you could keep the user's physical body alive that long, and..

..well, you can see what a figurative can of worms this opens - a lot of questions about how the heck this 'can't lie'-mechanism works, if it's suddenly THIS flexible about an answer THIS thoughtless, exaggerated and stupid.

The sheer mechanics of 'watching a TV for a million years' just render this kind of exaggeration completely unusable as a truthful answer.

So what gives? Why doesn't the 'mechanism' stop him from saying this, or why isn't it explained _HOW_ Fletcher can know this, or _HOW_ someone could even theoretically 'watch a TV (using the same pair of physical eyes)' for a million years?

Either he was allowed to lie, or he was allowed to exaggerate enormously, nonsensically and stupidly, and either way, he should've been able to do something similar with the court case.

Also, why isn't Fletcher more systematic about it? Now that he knows he was able to say something stupid and exaggerated that has a component in it that can be interpreted as a lie (he CAN'T KNOW what would happen in a million years as he has not tested it! And it would take million years to test it), he should start saying similar things, then gradually add more and more lying bits to them and so on, until he knows EXACTLY what he can and cannot say or write.

Then he could just work within those rules when building his court case and win easily.