[Renall]

Originally Posted by rogerpepitone

I can accept the position that any scene described must be an accurate description of that scene. This is ruled out by the many magic scenes.

Agreed and agreed, for the very reason you stated. Even if the magic scenes describe what occurred, they are clearly not perfectly accurate.

I can accept the position that any scene described where the detective is present must be accurate; any scene when he is absent is to be ignored.

Disclaimed in ep5; one could narrow the statement to "is present and narrating," but this makes Erika's position as detective absolutely worthless because Erika almost never narrates in the first-person. There's also the problem that scenes the detective is not present for do not have to be false; Eva trying to pressure Nanjo when Battler isn't around most likely did happen in some fashion. Or the midnight meeting at the chapel in ep2; there's a very strong likelihood that this meeting actually did happen.

I can accept the position that those scenes which have an indication of a falsehood (presence of a meta-character or golden butterflies) should be ignored; all other scenes must be accurate.

Again problematic for the reason you stated, but I think there's also a problem with consistency here, and even then, indications of falsehood do not necessarily mean the falsehood is useless. However, they don't really tell us which falsehoods are useful. They also don't help us with falsehoods of omission, such as the Hideyoshi thing. To say the absence of a thing is a hint of falsehood, bar particular circumstances, leads us to the famous "Aragorn doesn't wear pants in The Lord of the Rings because he's never described as having any" argument.