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Aeon has an interesting article on bullshit:
We live in the age of information, which means that we also live in the age of misinformation. Indeed, you have likely come across more bullshit so far this week than a normal person living 1,000 years ago would in their entire lifetime. If we were to add up every word in every scholarly piece of work published prior to the Enlightenment, this number would still pale in comparison with the number of words used to promulgate bullshit on the internet in the 21st century alone.
If you find your head nodding, start shaking it. I’m bullshitting you.
Ha! I knew it!
How could I possibly know how much bullshit you have come across this week? What if you’re reading this on a Sunday? Who is a ‘normal’ person living 1,000 years ago? And how could I know how much bullshit they had to deal with?
It was very easy to construct this bullshit. Once I set out to impress rather than inform, a burden was lifted from my shoulders and placed onto yours. My opening statements could very well be true, but we have no way of knowing. Their truth or falsity were irrelevant to me, the bullshitter.
[...] In his book, On Bullshit (2005), Frankfurt noted that ‘most people are rather confident of their ability to recognise bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it’. However, more than 98 per cent of our participants rated at least one item in our bullshit receptivity scales to be at least somewhat profound. We are not nearly as good at detecting bullshit as we think.
So, how might you – the reader – vaccinate yourself against it? For a non-spiritualist, it might be relatively easy to recognise when Chopra or Oz are concerned less with the truth than selling books or entertaining viewers. But think back to my opening paragraph. Bullshit is much harder to detect when we want to agree with it. The first and most important step is to recognise the limits of our own cognition. We must be humble about our ability to justify our own beliefs. These are the keys to adopting a critical mindset – which is our only hope in a world so full of bullshit.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday July 20 2018, @04:37AM (9 children)
No, TFA is not bullshit. It's just shit.
As in -- an unnuanced naive attempt at discussing an important issue without the slightest attempt at real engagement or thoughtfulness. Aristarchus in his original submission recommended this treatment over Frankfurt's (also cursory) article. (And no, it's NOT a book -- it's a 20-page rambling article some publisher had the genius to re-typeset as a tiny stocking stuffer size "book" with a "naughty" title.)
But I cannot for the life of me understand why our resident ancient Greek dude would think TFA is at all worthwhile. It conflates a huge set of categories that are really separate phenomena. For example, TFA's interest in "pseudo-profound BS" (based on a previous study I remember reading a while back) is quite different from the kind of BS used by, say, Trump.
The former is just a vague collection of buzzwords, not really intended to have any specific meaning -- but the vagueness and buzzwords together cause many people to assume specific meaning (especially "deep") must be there. The latter, however, is basically reckless disregard for truth, often deliberately incorporating falsity -- which itself skirts the category of whether it can be BS vs. outright lying. (Ironically, reckless disregard for truth is one legal standard for libel, something Trump has many times accused others of.)
Anyhow, there are other reasonably distinct categories in TFA too, but there's no attempt to delineate them or discuss nuance. About the only interesting bit of TFA (not mentioned in summary) is the empirical study showing that the more random the buzzwords in the "pseudo-profound" version of BS, the more "profound" people seem to think it is... Which indicates that audiences try to find meaning in vagueness (not a particularly insightful discovery, but probably not applied to this exact category in this way before the author's prior research article).
Anyhow, that research question may have some vague overlap or connection to the types of BS seen in current political discourse, but it's not explored in anything resembling an intelligent way in TFA.
Not surprisingly, though, that doesn't matter here for discussion in comments, where there's plenty of BS of all sorts of varieties. Too bad TFA didn't offer any meaningful way to discuss that sort of thing...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @05:03AM (7 children)
And... you'd like to open a discussion on this topic by thumping on the S/N "table" one whole metric tone from the "ontology of bullshit"?
You reckon it will be helpful?
Conversely, what damage the publishing of this shit has done on S/N?
By all means, AK, be my guest!
Now that the door has been opened by a camel... ummm... tail, bring in the nose as well!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @09:30AM (3 children)
That's obviously a sound unit. ;-)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @09:36AM (2 children)
And a major one, yes. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @10:35AM (1 child)
Or a minor one. Or a diminished seventh. But up above somewhere, an AC seems to think this issue is olfactory. (Interesting factoid: Pure Bullshit is odorless; a distinctive smell is added to aid in detecting bullshit leaks, and possible bullshit explosions.)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @04:02PM
Nah, a metric tone is always major by weight.
If you see a bull in the exercise of producing this shit, I guarantee you it will be auditory and visual too.
Regarding that AC... well, what can I say? After all, it may well be a matter of personal taste... and de gustibus non disputandum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday July 20 2018, @02:03PM (2 children)
Well, I believe I already offered some distinctions about BS myself that went beyond TFA's cursory treatment. Feel free to continue too, rather than just offering metacommentary. (Are you claiming your post was more helpful to the discussion than mine??)
My comment about Aristarchus (whom I actually profoundly respect, which you can see in my interactions with him), is that he bizarrely dismissed Frankfurt in his original submission while praising TFA. I really don't understand his justification for that perspective, and I was hopeful he might chime in to explain. (I also think Frankfurt's stuff was lacking, but it at least had a but more nuance than TFA.)
By the way, where did I say it did "damage" to this site to publish this? No, I was just pointing out the substantial flaws of TFA (a bit tongue in cheek at the outset). A lot of stuff that gets published online has substantial flaws. That doesn't mean it can't be the opening for productive discussion.
I think you're confusing me with someone else -- perhaps someone who is anti-Aristarchus or who is annoyed by his submissions. I'm not. (Though admittedly, I wish he'd sometimes tone it down a bit, because I think he submits a lot of interesting things, but creates problems for editors who have to tame his unnecessary rhetoric to create a usable post.)
I was just calling out the problems with an article. Try reading what I wrote rather than assuming I have some sort of other agenda.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 20 2018, @03:54PM
Agreed.
However, your reply was quite passionately negative towards TFA, I couldn't detect how far you were willing to go into... ummm... "trashing it into dismission" so to say.
---
Just in case you would have had the intention to dismiss it entirely on the grounds of "hodgepodge about bullshit", my post was a counter-weight on the line of "Don't slide into Nirvana fallacy: something can have value even when far from perfect".
Specifically in this case, tabling some evidence bullshit is not innocuous (not a laughing matter) and perhaps more pervasive than we think we are able to detect.
---
Let me try to slightly adjust his form, maybe you'll see another possible interpretation?
You see, the magister has this magisterial habit of quite often behaving like he sees himself ex cathedra, well above the level of the average Soylentil (say ain't so, magister - grin).
---
I wasn't.
Ok, will do.
I'll invite you to do the same and, perhaps, admit that your "But I cannot for the life of me understand why our resident ancient Greek dude would think TFA is at all worthwhile." does allow for the interpretation of "Is so bad, one can dismiss it and lose nothing".
Not the only interpretation possible, true, but still a possible one. This is why my intervention, "just in case".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday July 20 2018, @09:26PM
You are quite correct, my dear Athanasius, that Frankfurt's "book" was a publisher's stunt. As I recall, after the publication it became almost impossible to find the original academic article. For any philosophy to become so mercenary is, quite simply, bullshit, in one usage of the word.
As for Frankfort's position, he maintains that the bullshitter does more harm, since the liar acknowledges the truth in trying to misrepresent it. This is just wrong. And the crucial distinction is motivation. A lie, as Kant says, is a falsiloquium stated with intent to deceive, and dependent upon the victim's trust in the liar, an act of perfidy.
I spent quite some time in the American West, in recent history. I have seen (and heard) master bullshit artists at close range. Frankfort is an Easterner. The point of bullshit is not to assassinate the truth, it is to stretch it, to see how far you can go before your audience realize it is "bullshit"! The purpose of bullshit is to entertain! Take for example Jim Bridger. Great guy, claimed to have discovered a "petrified forest", and people were skeptical.
Where you do not culminate the bullshit, when you do not help your audience to see how gullible they were, you are not bullshitting, you are either lying, or selling something, which actually are the same things. Trust me.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 20 2018, @08:03PM
There is nothing to indicate that he does think that. Ari slings shit around, knowing that it muddies things, obscures things, and confuses people.