Supplement: Don't dig yourself in deeper (Where in the world am I? [34])

Following up on that last post about the difficulty of getting a straight answer out here -

If you doubt the accuracy of an answer you have been given, what I say to you is 'Let it go.'

You brought this on yourself by ignoring my previous advice and asking closed questions. If you start trying to elicit fuller information now, once you've already been given the simple answer.... well, odds are that things are going to get bloody.

The initial misleading answer I try to be very tolerant of. I don't like to categorize it as an outright lie. I make all possible allowances for differences of language and culture, supposing that it may after all be a genuine mistake in understanding; or, more likely, that although it was to some extent knowingly misleading, it can still be excused as being prompted by an exaggerated desire to please or a misplaced embarrassment about revealing the real facts.

Ah, but if you question the misleading answer - well, that's when this whole obsession with 'saving face/losing face' can spiral badly out of control. If people here sense they may be about to be caught out in an untruth, their invariable defence mechanism is to DENY, DENY, DENY. And to back up their denial with the most elaborate (and the most transparent) tissue of supporting lies. Yep, people will lie their asses off rather than admit that your dry-cleaning is going to take two days longer than they originally told you. They lie with the desperate single-mindedness and the gauche naivety of small children. It is a wonder to behold.

But - unless you are an easy-going social anthropologist like me - it might get your back up. So don't provoke them. If you think somebody's given you a misleading answer about something, just.... LET IT GO.