"A half-truth is usually less than half of that"

A half-truth, by definition, appears to contain a portion of honesty; it is a statement that mixes fact and falsehood. At first glance, it may seem that sharing part of the truth is preferable to lying outright. The quote by Bern Williams challenges this notion, suggesting that what looks like half the truth is, in effect, much less than that. When an individual selects certain facts to present and deliberately omits others, or twists information for a specific purpose, the overall message can become misleading to the point where the essence of truth is lost.

The essence of a half-truth lies in its ability to deceive more subtly and insidiously than a total falsehood. It betrays trust while retaining plausible deniability. When someone hears something that is only partly true, they often unwittingly supply the missing information, drawing assumptions that may not align with reality. Half-truths can thus lead to greater misunderstanding and more manipulative outcomes than clear lies, which can often be more easily challenged and revealed.

What makes a half-truth "less than half" is not simply the proportion of factual versus fabricated content, but the distortion that omission and selective emphasis can create. The recipient of a half-truth may be more deeply misled than if they were confronted with a transparent lie, because the presence of some truth gives credibility to the overall statement. The harm lies in the context deliberately left out, skewed to fit an agenda, leaving the listener misinformed. Thus, conveying partial information as if it were the whole often results in a message further from the truth than a mere fraction would suggest.

Ultimately, half-truths undermine genuine communication and erode trust, because they disguise manipulation as honesty. What seems to be a compromise between truth and lying is, in reality, a greater betrayal of authenticity.