Guest columnist: Beware the Sophists

In the ancient world there were philosophers that searched for truth, and Sophists (paid teachers) that educated youth. The philosopher Plato criticized the Sophists for using rhetoric to deceive rather than to discover truth, accusing them of using deceptive reasoning just to win arguments. Deception does not always imply lying, as the truth can be deceiving when presented deceptively. Where philosophers use reason to discover truth, rhetoricians use language meant to sound impressive or dramat