No Stupid Questions
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
view the rest of the comments
It's a social more, nothing more ;)
In other words, it doesn't matter what you swear by, it's the open swearing that matters in terms of legality. See, the oath is what makes perjury prosecution "acceptable". When a witness is sworn in, the process isn't so much about them actually promising to tell the truth as it is a warning to them that truth is expected and will be enforced.
Yeah, historically, there's more to it than that, but it boils down to everyone involved knowing that truth is expected, and lying comes with consequences (well, if you get caught at it, and can't avoid those consequences in some way. The system ain't perfect at its best, and is rarely at its best).
Swearing on a bible is just tradition based on centuries of christians and christianity being in power. You can opt to "affirm" instead, giving an non religious oath that is just a binding.
But, in any real terms, an oath isn't necessary to begin with. When the system/state/government/people have the power to punish you for lying, they don't even really have to notify you that lying will come with consequences. Doing so is a nicety that at least prevents anyone from being able to say they didn't know they couldn't lie. Not that trying it in the absence of an oath would be worth spit, but it saves time.
But having an expectation of truth under duress is a cultural thing. And it can be a form of duress. You can be compelled to appear and give testimony, with consequences got refusing. In other situations, being under duress can be a defense against a charge, though the standard for what degree of threat serves to meet that criteria is pretty steep. But it's an understood thing that you aren't supposed to lie during legal proceedings. It doesn't have to be that way, but it certainly does make it easier to have a degree of conformity to the truth among people that might otherwise lie.