I used to work for Anthroplogie (kinda bougie clothing store). We sold bound copies of On Bullshit, marketed largely because the title is funny and would look good on a coffee table. One day, while it was slow, I started reading it. In case folks don’t know, it’s actually a guy’s doctoral thesis for his philosophy degree and aims to establish “bullshit” as a philosophical category. It’s brilliant and completely changed the way I see things.
See, philosophy is battle between truth and falsehood. The author argues that bullshit is a greater threat to truth than a lie. This is because a lie needs the truth in order to be effective, whereas bullshit does not care one way or another. What we’re seeing now is not the US government lying to people. It’s the US government spouting bullshit. So yeah, they don’t care if the lie is good. Because they’re not lying. They’re bullshitting.
EDIT: Apparently there are now two books with that title! The one of which I’m referring is by Harry Frankfurt (and is available online as a PDF if I’m not mistaken).
Some people just want to believe I guess. Like they could start pushing lies that trump cured cancer and there would be some people that believed it with no credible evidence even as they died from cancer. The media would spin words to make it not sound like complete fabrication but rather everyone being misdiagnosed, and then appease some moderates by stating cancers are all different issues really, so they don’t really have cancer but a more acutely defined illness and at the end of the day 30% of Americans would answer polls that Trump cured cancer, 30% say he didn’t cure cancer and 40% didn’t know how they felt or if their head was infact in their ass at that very moment. Because yes, several of them look around and only see shit.
The trick is the people they’re lying to won’t look past the surface, so the lie does not have to be good.
I used to work for Anthroplogie (kinda bougie clothing store). We sold bound copies of On Bullshit, marketed largely because the title is funny and would look good on a coffee table. One day, while it was slow, I started reading it. In case folks don’t know, it’s actually a guy’s doctoral thesis for his philosophy degree and aims to establish “bullshit” as a philosophical category. It’s brilliant and completely changed the way I see things.
See, philosophy is battle between truth and falsehood. The author argues that bullshit is a greater threat to truth than a lie. This is because a lie needs the truth in order to be effective, whereas bullshit does not care one way or another. What we’re seeing now is not the US government lying to people. It’s the US government spouting bullshit. So yeah, they don’t care if the lie is good. Because they’re not lying. They’re bullshitting.
EDIT: Apparently there are now two books with that title! The one of which I’m referring is by Harry Frankfurt (and is available online as a PDF if I’m not mistaken).
So there is apparently two different books titled that. Is it the Harry Frankfurt one?
Ah, yes. That one.
Some people just want to believe I guess. Like they could start pushing lies that trump cured cancer and there would be some people that believed it with no credible evidence even as they died from cancer. The media would spin words to make it not sound like complete fabrication but rather everyone being misdiagnosed, and then appease some moderates by stating cancers are all different issues really, so they don’t really have cancer but a more acutely defined illness and at the end of the day 30% of Americans would answer polls that Trump cured cancer, 30% say he didn’t cure cancer and 40% didn’t know how they felt or if their head was infact in their ass at that very moment. Because yes, several of them look around and only see shit.