More directly, can someone explain why "could be false" cannot be converted to "could be true." In plain speech it would seem that something that could be false could also be true.
Emil-Kunkinon May 11 at 03:48PM
The issue here are the edge cases, because you're right that when someone says something could be false, the overwhelming majority of the time it could be true as well.
Could be false includes the set of everything that does not have to be true. It could be true 90 percent of the time, 10 percent, or zero (must be false).
Could be true is everything that does not have to be false, from something that is unlikely but not impossible,not something likely, to something that actually must be true.
In practice this isn't going to come up much, but you should know that the difference is which of the two extremes they include. Something that must be false is in fact something that is not necessarily true, even if it's a weird way to say it.
