
Bullshit - 6cxs2hd6
http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/
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badman_ting
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
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?

~~~
mistermann
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).

~~~
Swizec
I've always argued Amdahl's law when people tell me I should recycle. When
that doesn't work, I start talking about job creation.

Yes, it's a disgusting job. But I imagine for the growing unemployed
population back home in Europe that's still better than starvation.

Furthermore, I really really don't have room for three to four different
garbage cans in my tiny apartment.

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

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mcguire
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?

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DanielBMarkham
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.

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

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

~~~
gregd
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
I dislike fasterisking.

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RobAley
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.

------
Aoyagi
_> Advertising, Public relations, Political propaganda, Education, Love, sex
and romance, News media, Technology, Business, Art, Medicine_

Not religion? Aww...

~~~
fit2rule
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?

~~~
dragonwriter
> 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.

~~~
fit2rule
I think the point is that once a religion stops being bullshit, it becomes a
science.

~~~
dragonwriter
That simply doesn't work with the definitions in the article. If you are using
BS to mean anything that's not taking an exclusively empirical approach to
explore exclusively questions of objective fact -- which its pretty clear that
some people _do_ \-- then, sure, that's tautologically true. But that's a
completely different definition than is used in the article, so its not
relevant.

Both truth telling and lying (both of which the article distinguishes from
BS), as defined in the article, are quite possible in domains where the
questions aren't subject to scientific exploration. Whether those domains are
meaningful is a philosophical question orthogonal to the truth/lie/BS
distinction that the article makes, though.

