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FYI: Philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote the classic essay "On Bullshit", defining the concept. Unlike lying/fraud, where falsehood is instrumental, Frankfurt de

• clairity 6y ago
  i think i've read this at some point but taking a quick look to refesh myself, i was struck on the first page by the word procrustean, which apparently means something like "rigidly but arbitrarily specified"[0], possibly obliquely related to hard-shelled sea creatures. neat word. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes#Cultural_references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes#Cultural_references
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • salty_biscuits 6y ago
    It's from Procrustes, the guy who chopped your feet off to make you fit in the bed in greek myth. You find Procrustean analysis in mathematics, where you try and find the closest approximating matrix with a certain property to another given matrix (like it is a rotation matrix etc).
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      Procrustes was really one of the first slasher horror villains.
  • richk449 6y ago
    Try reading AntiFragile. You will be very sick of that word by the time you finish the book.
• ColanR 6y ago
  > where the truth simply wasn't important That's a criteria that should be agreed upon by both parties; otherwise to the person recieving the "bullshit" it's indistinguishable from a lie. Edit: where did I make a moral statement? Let's call a spade a spade: we're talking about "potentially false speech". If it's a false speech where the receiving party thinks the truth is important, then from their perspective they were lied to regardless of what the speaker thinks.
  • firethief 6y ago
    Not every useful distinction need be relevant to moral judgement.
  • jessriedel 6y ago
    Bullshit is different than lying, but that doesn't mean anyone is arguing that it's moral. The fact that the listener might be led to believe something false is just one negative aspect of bullshit.
  • GavinMcG 6y ago
    "Should" generally gets read as moral, especially when you bring in a comparison to lying, which is clearly a moral issue.
  • lesbireal 6y ago
    I think Hacker News needs to believe that bullshit and lying are different things.
    • pjc50 6y ago
      Why do you think that?
• bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  So what about the famous subtype of bullshit which is obviously false but which is accepted for its entertainment value.
  • beckingz 6y ago
    Management?
    • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      “Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!” ― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
      • bitwize 6y ago
        “I went camping with Brasky, his wife, and his daughter Debbie! Debbie Brasky. She’s 7-years-old, goes about 3’5″, 55 pounds. So, I’m in the back of a pickup with Bill Brasky and a live deer! Well, Brasky, he grabs the deer by the antlers, looks at it and says, ‘I’m Bill Brasky! Say it!’ Then he squeezes the deer in such a way that a sound comes out of its mouth – ‘Billbrasky!’ It wasn’t exactly it, but it was pretty good for a deer!”
        • bryanrasmussen 6y ago
          It's like you're narrating my dreams!
  • 6y ago
• uryga 6y ago
  > "potentially false speech where the truth simply wasn't important" i couldn't make sense of this, which motivated me to actually look at the essay, thanks :) i recommend the bit with Wittgenstein – it's what made the proposed distinction between "bullshit" and "lies" click for me. (at least i hope it did!) what i got from the essay is: bullshit may contain false statements. but their falseness is ultimately besides the point, because, unlike a lie, the bullshitter isn't trying to convince the bullshittee that those false statements are true; they're just props, parts of a scheme to convince you of something else. explaining it in the abstract gets kind of unreadable (the essay suffers from this a bit imho), so here's an example: --- say i'm doing a (bullshit) pitch for my new startup, "Uber for cats", and lead with one of these two sentences: • "Facebook kick-started the social media revolution." (probably true) • "Facebook created new jobs for marginalized communities." (probably false). i'm saying something like that because i'm trying to create an impression that: • I'm a visionary who aims to revolutionize stuff / cares about positive social change • My startup is, at least to some degree, worth comparing to Facebook and notice: it doesn't matter whether that opening sentence is true or false. either way i'm bullshitting – using that sentence to create an overinflated image of my startup. i might even build my bullshit out of entirely true things, arranged in a misleading way – anything works, as long as it gets you to invest in Uber for cats :)
  • antris 6y ago
    In your example the falseness is not besides the point. Even if you wouldn't technically lie, using deceptive language as a tool to raise capital is extremely unethical. You might be able to dodge lawsuits by this kind of deception, but ethically you are the same as a liar.
    • jacoblambda 6y ago
      The thing in my eyes that separates bullshitting someone from lying to them is that when you lie, you know what you are saying is probably or definitely false but when you are bullshitting someone, you just don't know if it's definitively true. Provided a chance to prepare a proper response, one should never bullshit anyone and doing so is quite disrespectful however when put on the spot, sometimes it does more damage to just say "I have no idea" than it does to make an argument based on assumptions. A piece of advice that I received when I was younger that I've since taken to heart is this: Never say cop out phrases such as "I think", "maybe", "possibly", and "I hope". The only purpose they serve is to shield you from the consequences of what you say if you are wrong. If you don't want to deal with those consequences, don't be wrong. If you can't answer with a reasonable level of accuracy, the only valid response is something to the effect of "I will find out". This advice easily was some of the most useful advice I'd received for being able to hold my ground in a professional environment. If you know the answer, say it. If you are willing to bet the answer is true, say it. In all other cases, find out and get back to them. Very few people will press you if you can't answer something and will in most cases see you with more credibility. Nobody has all the answers so why should you have to pretend you do. In this sense, bullshitting isn't so much about lying, it's just guessing that you are right. Should you do it often? Probably not, but if it's ultimately of low consequence and you believe you are mostly correct, it is only slightly worse than saying something incorrect on accident.
• vanadium 6y ago
  I have this in hardcover; it’s tiny, but eminently useful and a conversation piece on my desk at work.
• grawprog 6y ago
  I've always thought of bullshit as being more about what you don't say than what you say. It's a lot easier to get away with bullshit when your bullshit consists of truths with a healthy dose of leaving important details that affect the implications of your statements out. Such as something like, 'we've seen a dramatic increase in revenue' while leaving out the dramatic increase in expenditures and downplaying that profit hasn't really changed. Or the kind of bullshit large companies use with the environment or social issues. Things like, our company uses 75% recycled products and cares about diversity, while leaving out that they destroy thousands of hectares of natural ecosystems, pollute land and water, oppress developing nations and murder their protesting citizens in the jungle while employing their children as slave labour. Meanwhile, they tell you how much they care about your rich, empty, disconnected technocrat concerns about the world and make you believe you're making a difference by buying their garbage and investing in their company.
  • mtreis86 6y ago
    That's not the type of BS the author means, what you're referring to is called "falseness" by the author, eg. deliberate misleading statement. BS is more like sitting around with people telling stories and embellishing with some details that are irrelevant, or in the more useful case, discussing an idea that is incomplete without fear of the potential falsehoods impacting the creative process of exploring that idea. Say you're unsure of which car to buy, you could BS it in some story about your cousin buying that car (cousin actually bought a truck but that isn't the point of the story) and see how the people around you respond to it. Everyone who hates that car, while BS'ing with you is free to state it, but when you own that car already they have to hedge their opinions.
  • lscharen 6y ago
    There's a kind of limbo zone where non-bullshitters internalize bullshitting as the normal pattern of communication and that's where the damage can really happen vis a vis genuine competence. A manager might sit down with their team and say something like, "We are targeting 10% growth in our department revenue for next year." Someone raises the question on how that 10% growth will be achieved; what is going to be done differently next year than now. There's a big difference between a person that can whip out their 10-page growth plan with concrete marketing and operational plans to explain how their proposed changes will lead to the desired growth versus one that simply states, "10% growth is a reasonable target for our division". The latter is just parroting superficial, general information and (critically) thinks this is a sufficient or even desirable way to set goals (set a target and let the team hit it!). The former lets their quantitative conclusion "10% growth" follow from the actual work of building out a plan.
• jeffmcmahan 6y ago
  GA Cohen wrote "Deeper into Bullshit" as a sort-of reply to Frankfurt, which drew attention to what I find the more interesting kind of bullshit, namely pseudo-academic and/or pseudo-technical bullshit. This, Cohen sensitively observes, is always found to have the property of "unclarifiability" - which is just exactly on the money. Very much worth the read. Frankfurt published a reply to it, as well, as I recall. http://www.professorsapp.com/cohen--further-into-bullshi.pdf http://www.professorsapp.com/cohen--further-into-bullshi.pdf
  • jessriedel 6y ago
    Thanks! Here is a longer/complete version of Cohen's article, along with Frankfurt's reply. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/592b5bbfd482e9898c67fd98/t/5cf95d58f9fec1000139c9d6/1559846232847/deeperintobullshit.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/592b5bbfd482e9898c67f...