Bullshit

http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/

by 6cxs2hd6 • 12 years ago

49 33 12 years ago

stoa.org.uk

Aoyagi2• 12 years ago

Advertising, Public relations, Political propaganda, Education, Love, sex and romance, News media, Technology, Business, Art, Medicine

Not religion? Aww...

fit2rule2• 12 years ago

Religion is bullshit for bullshits sake. Is religion not the only place where bullshit is acceptable, nay .. even required .. and that people know that before they get involved in one?

Aoyagi2• 12 years ago

Yeah, it's bullshit by design, so I guess there is not a lot to talk about. Oh well.

dragonwriter2• 12 years ago

Religion is bullshit for bullshits sake.

I'd rather strongly disagree with that. Because it appeals to a form of justification which makes verifiability in any decisive sense largely impossible, it is a fertile venue for "bullshit" (in the terms used in the article) -- and for the same reason, for "liars", which the article distinguishes -- but it is not, either in principle or in practice, either exclusively bullshit nor "for bullshits sake". The purposes of bullshitting, lying, or truth-telling in religion are pretty much the same as they are in any other venue.

zorbo• 12 years ago

I don't consider what happens in religion bullshit as defined by the article. I think this sums it up pretty well:

The liar, by contrast, is concerned with the truth, in a perverse sort of fashion: he wants to lead us away from it. As Frankfurt sees it, the liar and the truthteller are playing on opposite sides of the same game, a game defined by the authority of truth. The bullshitter opts out of this game altogether. Unlike the liar and the truthteller, he is not guided in what he says by his beliefs about the way things are.

Especially that last sentence is relevant. I may personally consider most of religion to be nonsense or untrue, but its proponents at least are guided by some underlying "truth" (belief). Bullshit - again, as defined by the article - goes beyond that. It doesn't have to be true or false. It's just.. bullshit. The infamous "leverage synergy" phrase comes to mind. It doesn't even mean anything.

pdonis• 12 years ago

its proponents at least are guided by some underlying "truth" (belief).

The same could be said of other areas mentioned in the list in the post you were responding to. The point appears to be not that the entire field is bullshit, but that one can find examples of bullshit in the field. I would even add science to the list if that's the criterion; one can find examples of bullshit in science as well.

If, OTOH, the point was to give fields that appear to be primarily bullshit, I would not have put education, love, sex and romance, technology, business, art, and medicine on the list. (Or science.)

autokad• 12 years ago

some people in religion are bullshitters, some are liars, and some are truth tellers.

the real bullshit comes in with people like you who pretend your preaching the truth but you really know nothing about it. your just a bullshitter.

see, if you truly believed in science, which could be coined as the pursuit of truth, you'd simply stick to saying some elements of a religion are true, some are false, and some if not many cannot be known/discovered.

you'd probably sit there and complain if someone said something that blanketed an entire topic, while you do the same to religion. and i would guess you'd probably call yourself scientific. again, i think this is the epitome of bullshit.

bradleysmith2• 12 years ago

I'd say Aoyagi was really just expressing disdain for not including religion on the list. Saying he/she was 'preaching the truth' seems a bit far-fetched. He/she asked a question about something not being included: "not religion?", and expressed vague dislike (in an obviously subjective way): "awww"

He/she didn't really make any statements of what truth is. Only what his/her opinion of a missing element of the article was.

He/she did set off a heap of reactions though, which is interesting to me. I've noticed how much more religion-friendly, or at least religion-neutral HN has become over the past year. That is a positive thing, in my opinion.

jdmichal• 12 years ago

Of a particularly relevant note here is agnosticism [1], or the viewpoint that there are certain things that are simply unknowable to humans. The implication being that humans can neither confirm NOR deny the truth value of the statements. Metaphysical statements often fall into this category. And hence, you can also have agnostic theists [2] and agnostic atheists [3], who both recognize that they are taking a stance on an unknowable truth value. Some would then define this as the very essence of the word faith, but I would like to at least point out that both sides are subject to the same definition.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_theism

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnostic_atheism

claar• 12 years ago

Here we go. In the last year since moving here from Slashdot/Reddit, I've seen such a more sophisticated and thoughtful community.

Thanks for proving that mindless unkind criticisms of misunderstood communities is alive and well at HN as well.

RobAley• 12 years ago

Any reason why the title here is censored? It's spelled out in full on the linked page.

Anyone who knows what the word means and is shocked by it will surely still be shocked even with the * in. I've never understood what partial censoring, intentionally done so that people can still read the thing, achieves.

EDIT -> Ah, the title has been edited now, it did say "bullsh*t". It's probably a good example of how to derail a potential useful submission by focusing on the wrong details when creating a title.

raldi• 12 years ago

Why is "bullsh*t" considered less objectionable than "bullshit"?

gregd• 12 years ago

I never understood this type of logic. We all say "bullshit" when we read the title, not "bullshstart" or "bullshasteriskt". They're just f*cking words...

mreiland• 12 years ago

I dislike fasterisking.

6cxs2hd6• 12 years ago

As to why I submitted that way:

I couldn't recall the norms here. I figured a mod could always un-G-rate the title (as they did).

Plus, I felt a little uncomfortable because the title "Bullshit" could seem link-baity (although the content is worthwhile) so I felt better submitting it "toned down".

Those are my stated reasons. Of course you may call bullshit.

badman_ting2• 12 years ago

Yeah, Penn & Teller started out debunking psychics and so on -- then they decided gun control and recycling are bullshit too.

I think one needs to be very careful about this business of "cutting through the bullshit" or whatever. It's easy to turn it into a self-righteous way of talking about whatever you disagree with. You're not just disagreeing, you're scoring a victory for the truth in a world full of crap, etc., etc. Also, it does nothing to analyze why certain social fictions are propagated and continue to function even if no one believes in them. You can just content yourself with thinking everyone is full of shit and stop thinking there.

wavefunction• 12 years ago

I'm interested in their conclusions that gun-control and recycling are bullshit.

Was this a political thing for them, that they don't support these behaviors politically and so concluded after "examining" the resulting effects that behaving in this way (controlling guns or recycling) don't have the claimed effects?

badman_ting2• 12 years ago

Yes, basically. It's ok to call the woo-woo stuff bullshit, I don't care about alien abductions and crystals. But to take that and then apply it to gun control and so-called "environmental hysteria" (their phrase) is no good, I say.

I mean, shit, they called the episode "environmental hysteria" and they pulled the old "dihydrogen monoxide" thing. In so many words: We found some dumb people that care about the environment, therefore if you care about the environment you're dumb.

jiggy2011• 12 years ago

I haven't watched the show in a long time (is it still on air?) but based on what I remember a rhetorical technique used was to cherry pick who they used as experts to advance different sides of the argument.

If I remember rightly they did something on environmentalism where they mostly interviewed unwashed hippies rather than environmental scientists.

mistermann• 12 years ago

My anecdotal understanding of recycling is that something like 90% (????) of waste is industrial, so any consumer efforts to recycle are largely futile in the big scheme of things (not sure if that was their angle, also not sure how much truth there is to it).

I'm of the opinion that most strong advocates of recycling also aren't aware of these numbers, and more importantly, don't care, but maybe I'm wrong on that (but I doubt it from most of the conversations I've had).

falcolas• 12 years ago

Recycling - because most popular recycling (plastics in particular) was propped up by government subsidies, not viable businesses on their own. Plus, the energy savings (again, for plastic recycling) were nonexistent.

Gun Control - I don't remember the arguments there, other than specifically arguing against most popular arguments against the second amendment.

parasubvert• 12 years ago

Penn Jillette is a vocal Libertarian (leaning anarcho-capitalist), and fellow at the Cato Institute. So yes, I'd say it is a political thing for them.

That said, their approach to these topics tends to be one of the more tolerable I've seen, as they actually have a sense of humour, unlike most ideologues.

bradleysmith2• 12 years ago

guns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVzOV1EeeHw

recycling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rExEVZlQia4

rail2rail• 12 years ago

Don't forget one of my favorite Bullshit episodes: Lawns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx9jKv6pgP8

(nsfw)

bitwize• 12 years ago

That's pretty much exactly how Neal Strphenson defines "bulshytt" in Anathem...

lhnz• 12 years ago

A lot of what people call bullshit is necessary social grease/grace [0].

Trust and authority are currently centralised and because this is the case if you want to belong to society you will have to become more forgiving of bullshit.

Additionally I haven't met a single person yet (and I include myself in this wonderful category) that doesn't believe their own bullshit.

Whenever I hear somebody imply that they're always correct and never believe or act upon anything that can be empirically disproven I call bullshit at that or wonder whether they've ever risked believing and acting upon anything at all?

If you truly despise bullshit then do this: before you point the finger at others realise that you're likely one of them, and that if you really want to lessen it your best chance will be to start with yourself. This is called humility.

How might you do this? Well perhaps before or after you say something, you can turn to others and ask them what they truly think without imposing expectations or qualifications that they must agree with you. And remember even if they respond saying "yes, that sounds right" you could still be wrong and trust me here you will eventually be wrong. You are only human.

If the cognitive dissonance of knowing that you will never be a perfectly rational being is too much for you, then continue believing whatever you want about your intellect and others quackery as the world will not stop you.

I guess we all need our egos [1].

  *   *   *

[0] Firstly, I define bullshit as the action of using higher social skills to offset lower domain knowledge. Secondly, my intuition is that belief in bullshit also stabilises large groups: I would be just as worried about a lack of bullshit as I would harm caused by bullshit.

[1] Our need to politicise and attack the bullshit of somebody with higher status shows our wish to have the injustice of not being the dominant re-evaluated by our group, while our need to attack the bullshit of those with lower status is a strategy to fight off perceived pretenders of our position. Resentment and contempt are after all two sides of the same coin, both used when we don't want to personally act on our feelings.

voteapathy• 12 years ago

Oddly enough, On Bullshit is itself bullshit. Half of the essay is just a line by line elaboration of Oxford English Dictionary definitions.

mcguire• 12 years ago

Many of the example links in the article go to The Onion. (And there's Thank You For Smoking.)

Is the author trying to imply that irony, sarcasm, and satire are bullshit?

DanielBMarkham• 12 years ago

2500 years later, and we still have Socrates fighting the Sophists.

I'd be very careful with definitions here. Because many human endeavors can be observed and described from many different angles, the wisest course of action many times may be to emotionally disengage and describe one or many of the sides without caring about a discussion of universal truth. This does not make one a bullshitter, although by this definition it does.

Bullshit

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