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Sometimes a bullshitter consistently peddles untruths, but is unaware of it, and so isn't a liar, just mistaken. I grew up with an older brother like that. He r

Sometimes a bullshitter consistently peddles untruths, but is unaware of it, and so isn't a liar, just mistaken. I grew up with an older brother like that. He regularly spouted pure bullshit that to him was Truth. That became clear once when I was struggling with math homework. He looked at the problem, pronounced that he understood it and could solve it easily. So I handed him the pencil. He didn't know he was bullshitting so didn't make an excuse or acknowledge that I'd called a bluff. He took the pencil and sat down, then stared at the book and the problem for 20 minutes. Then shrugged, got up, and walked away. But he really thought he could do it so he did try. Since then he's made a living in a retail construction trade and hasn't changed. He'll visit a homeowner who will explain the problem. He'll confidently and convincingly explain how he can solve it, and get the job. Then he'll utterly fail and ignore the resulting problems, and not understand why the customer gets upset. His last name, and so mine, is dirt in the city where he works, which he seems to be unaware of. But another sucker is born every minute so he moves on. As a tradesman he is crap but as a salesman he's golden, largely because he honestly believes in his own competence. Growing up with that has inoculated me against this mode of bullshit so it's been a blessing. I suppose it's like the benefit of raising a kid in an environment that's not too clean.

everdrive 8y ago
I've previously encountered just this same sort personality. Being pretty paranoid, it took a long wrenching journey for me to discover that he wasn't being deceptive: he just didn't have a handle on the facts, or whether or not he was competent.
rramadass 8y ago
> Sometimes a bullshitter consistently peddles untruths, but is unaware of it, and so isn't a liar, just mistaken. No, i don't buy this. The world has a way of forcing people to face realities. It is just that they willfully turn themselves away from the cold hard fact and rely on "enablers" in the society to look the other way and help them "save face". Social norms and Diplomacy also play into this. As long as it is contained and doesn't have major repercussions we can overlook it. But when it becomes chronic and leads to self-harm we should speak up.
candiodari 8y ago
Maybe it's just me but in work I often encounter these sorts of things. People "plan an effort" or ... and then "work" for 6 months/1/2 years, usually with little communication or confrontation (e.g. MVP it, or actually put some real work into 10% of the program, none of that), and then they'll "declare success". Have some sort of dashboard or so. And then it disappears. But they'll have everything else. Great testing infrastructure. 100% coverage. Daily standups. KPIs. Extensive meetings detailing progress. Clear team structure. Team leader. Tech lead. Someone responsible for the build. Release schedule. And so on and so forth. And then you'll find a little detail: a permission on the system that their program doesn't actually have access to the database it supposedly uses, and therefore CAN'T work. Utterly, factually impossible. You check the permission history and you find it hasn't been changed for at least a year, and importantly, those people themselves ALSO don't have access. So not only does their program not work but they cannot EVER have tried to do this, or they would have noticed and changed it. Not once. Impossible. And yet everybody acquiesces to their claims, because it's a team and a manager. I have made the huge mistake of calling people out on this. I have made that mistake once. Never again, because immediately you get a huge negative, threatening reaction. People have called my manager in panic, and reported me to HR for this. I don't understand. I mean, there's the cynical: everybody's invested in their lies and would have to admit their own mistakes to expose them, but ... So not only did they not do anything, they are FULLY aware they were and are lying about it, and find taking personal actions to damage others' careers just perfectly acceptable to protect their lies. And the more you go up the ladder the more people are either complicit or "don't know don't wanna know". And nobody ever does anything. I mean, there's the odd manager that softly tries to get rid of them. But no more. This is the norm for projects where I work, despite this company having a very good reputation, and when I was a consultant it wasn't just the norm, that was the 99% case. And yet people really react negatively to me doing this and coming back "sorry, can't be reasonably done for X reason" after a week or two. That seems to sap people's trust in me. My approach is often the opposite. I'll run a project by having a 10/20% version running with zero test coverage, no design beyond a dataflow doc (which does not follow any template), ad-hoc releasing, ... proving to myself it works/can work before starting with all the "quality" stuff.

everdrive 8y ago

I've previously encountered just this same sort personality. Being pretty paranoid, it took a long wrenching journey for me to discover that he wasn't being deceptive: he just didn't have a handle on the facts, or whether or not he was competent.

rramadass 8y ago

> Sometimes a bullshitter consistently peddles untruths, but is unaware of it, and so isn't a liar, just mistaken. No, i don't buy this. The world has a way of forcing people to face realities. It is just that they willfully turn themselves away from the cold hard fact and rely on "enablers" in the society to look the other way and help them "save face". Social norms and Diplomacy also play into this. As long as it is contained and doesn't have major repercussions we can overlook it. But when it becomes chronic and leads to self-harm we should speak up.

candiodari 8y ago

Maybe it's just me but in work I often encounter these sorts of things. People "plan an effort" or ... and then "work" for 6 months/1/2 years, usually with little communication or confrontation (e.g. MVP it, or actually put some real work into 10% of the program, none of that), and then they'll "declare success". Have some sort of dashboard or so. And then it disappears. But they'll have everything else. Great testing infrastructure. 100% coverage. Daily standups. KPIs. Extensive meetings detailing progress. Clear team structure. Team leader. Tech lead. Someone responsible for the build. Release schedule. And so on and so forth. And then you'll find a little detail: a permission on the system that their program doesn't actually have access to the database it supposedly uses, and therefore CAN'T work. Utterly, factually impossible. You check the permission history and you find it hasn't been changed for at least a year, and importantly, those people themselves ALSO don't have access. So not only does their program not work but they cannot EVER have tried to do this, or they would have noticed and changed it. Not once. Impossible. And yet everybody acquiesces to their claims, because it's a team and a manager. I have made the huge mistake of calling people out on this. I have made that mistake once. Never again, because immediately you get a huge negative, threatening reaction. People have called my manager in panic, and reported me to HR for this. I don't understand. I mean, there's the cynical: everybody's invested in their lies and would have to admit their own mistakes to expose them, but ... So not only did they not do anything, they are FULLY aware they were and are lying about it, and find taking personal actions to damage others' careers just perfectly acceptable to protect their lies. And the more you go up the ladder the more people are either complicit or "don't know don't wanna know". And nobody ever does anything. I mean, there's the odd manager that softly tries to get rid of them. But no more. This is the norm for projects where I work, despite this company having a very good reputation, and when I was a consultant it wasn't just the norm, that was the 99% case. And yet people really react negatively to me doing this and coming back "sorry, can't be reasonably done for X reason" after a week or two. That seems to sap people's trust in me. My approach is often the opposite. I'll run a project by having a 10/20% version running with zero test coverage, no design beyond a dataflow doc (which does not follow any template), ad-hoc releasing, ... proving to myself it works/can work before starting with all the "quality" stuff.