đŸ Archived View for dioskouroi.xyz âș thread âș 29426414 captured on 2021-12-04 at 18:04:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
âŹ ïž Previous capture (2021-12-03)
âĄïž Next capture (2021-12-05)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
________________________________________________________________________________
Few months ago I was asked by a colleague to contribute an inspiration for a company development workshop. Frankly speaking - I am pretty damn disillusioned by now and couldn't come up with anything meaningful. He insisted, so I googled specifically for "coporate buzzwords" and came up with this:
"Further establishing a welcoming and diverse work environment encouraging synergy and collaboration by committing to a common set of strategic goals."
That statement was unanimously received very well and nobody realized that this is basically just sarcasm in action.
Practically speaking my colleagues are all very smart (academics, PhDs all over the place) and should be able to detect bullshit bingo. At the bottom line though whether or not to go actively and motivatedly along with this ... bullshit makes a very practical difference with regard to boni. So, I don't know. Maybe it's me who's the idiot.
In short: Bullshit bingo'ing is also often quite lucrative.
It's popular because it doesn't ruffle any feathers.
I heard somewhere at some point that for organisational values to be useful, they need to provide guidance in making decisions. They need to be trade-offs. They need to reject something in favour of something else.
So, rephrasing your bullshit bingo:
"We are now pursuing a cultural shift: we will value good attitudes and difference of opinion over efficiency. We will start to ignore some of our personal goals and instead emphasise the goals we have in common."
This is actionable. It can be used to choose a path to proceed when efficiency is pitted against diversity. It actually says something.
And yeah, it's going to suck if you don't agree. Better that than meaningless drivel.
> I heard somewhere at some point that for organisational values to be useful, they need to provide guidance in making decisions. They need to be trade-offs. They need to reject something in favour of something else.
I think you really hit the nail on the head with this one, and it's why bullshit corporate value statements proliferate with ease: they can give the appearance of action without actually requiring any hard decisions.
If a company decides to spend times on these "values" exercises, I think it's important to phrase it in what the company _won't_ do. I.e., if a potential client is offering a million dollar contract, but requires constraints X, Y and Z, which constraints would require the company say "No, we won't do this deal, even if it means we'd lose a million bucks in revenue".
Also, the other reason I get very jaded about "corporate values", is that it's easy to say that you have all these nice, progressive values, but when the shit hits the fan and the company is under duress, I've found those values usually go out the window, replaced by the only true value, which is "make money".
How is that actionable? Who defines what âgood attitudesâ and âthe goals we have in commonâ is? Also âdifference of opinion over efficiencyâ seems to indicate that it is better not to make progress, and be outcompeted by the competition, than to value one opinion over another. In other words, eventually the company will fail and everybody loose their jobs. People disagree all the time. You need a mechanism to pick one opinion over another to make progress.
> Practically speaking my colleagues are all very smart (academics, PhDs all over the place) and should be able to detect bullshit bingo.
Who says they didnât detect it? Welcoming, diversity, strategic, collaboration - these are religious tenets that are not allowed to be questioned in any professional context. Much more likely to have been an âemperor has no clothesâ situation.
"Weird Al" Yankovic - Mission Statement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyV_UG60dD4
As a long time fan of Weird Al, I've always been impressed with his knowledge of culture specifically outside his own domain. Making satire of Prince & Eminem is straightforward, they are basically his peers.
What I'm impressed with is how does he get the insight into things like corporate America? Other songs like "It's all about the Pentiums" are satire, but they are accurate satire of a very early, nascent culture. It's rare that an entertainer can gain so much insight into things outside their own field.
I loved this! And the fact that I was parsing its lyrics for meaning suggests Iâve become too immersed in the culture for my own good
"Paradigm shift" cracked me up!
> "Further establishing a welcoming and diverse work environment encouraging synergy and collaboration by committing to a common set of strategic goals."
That certainly is buzzword soup. But I don't think its fully incoherent or bullshit. It essentially says:
Lets continue becoming more diverse. Because doing that will help us work together better and more. We will do this by all agreeing on what our goals are and agreeing that we will follow them.
The core concept is not that bullshitty. Though how exactly agreement on the goals leads to more diversity isn't quite clear. If the workshop were to be about figuring out if / how agreement on goals leads to more diversity in your specific company, then your buzzword soup happened to deliver an accidentally useful discussion.
> Lets continue becoming more diverse
Problem is that diverse doesn't really say anything, it is just a positive word. Diversity is often a bad thing, you don't want to have to build a diverse set of services for one functionality etc. Diversifying your income streams is good, but also not good since it dilutes efforts, you know there is also the "focus on your core business" mantra that goes the exact opposite.
Edit: For example, can you explain what "diverse work environment" means? Do they have no desk standards so that desks don't fit neatly together? Do they lack AC so that you get a diverse temperature over the year? Inclusive work environment would have said more, but diverse? Whatever positive meaning you attribute to it comes from your own imagination, that is the main selling point of these slogans. You don't promise anything but people still feel you said something good.
In a lot of social circles, the word "diverse" has undergone significant semantic narrowing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/opinion/language-race-sem...
is a decent discussion of the phenomenon.
It does mean the word means totally different things to different people. That may make it a good or bad word to use in a mission statement, depending on your goals.
> Because doing that will help us work together better and more
Not my experience at all. The more diverse, the harder it is to communicate, share values, and achieve goals. We are all products of our cultures. And some cultures are fundamentally incompatible.
Also, it is impossible for everybody to agree on the same goals. Without some sort of social/hidden pressure to comply with the dominant opinions, clearly signalled by who gets promoted/fired by the company.
In other words, I call it for what it is: BS.
You might disagree with the premise. But the statement is meaningful, interpretable, and testable. I don't think that qualifies as "bullshitting" because there is clarity.
I could imagine the content of workshop involving bullshitting. (Regardless of whether diversity is positive) but I don't think the title counts as bullshit.
As for me having a blindspot, I hope you see I wasn't arguing about diversity at all.
But it is bullshit - it just says, "let us do the things that work well, and not do the things that do not work well". It's not wrong, but it doesn't need to be said, either. Of course he was _trying_ to be ridiculous, but it sounds like every other corporate mission statement.
No, it is much more specific.
It identifies a specific goal, a reason to reach that goal, and a way to attain that goal.
The idea could actually be wrong. Whilst "do things that work well" is a tautological statement.
It actually is pretty "bullshitty". Diversity is just cultural zeitgeist that companies parrot to please demographics they want to hire. It's the definition of Mammon.
> Lets continue becoming more diverse. Because doing that will help us work together better and more.
This is a tautology.
I suspect you have a blindspot here, because this specific brand of bullshit is there to please people with your belief system. To others, it's as much bullshit as a company prayer, or talk of how a SAAS startup is "changing the world", would be.
That is not a tautology at all. It is closer to a contradiction.
My point wasn't that I agree with the statement. My point is that the statement has clarity, and that it actually communicates an idea.
The very fact that the statement could be falsified means to me that it is not bullshit as meant in the article. That is not to say the statement is true!
> That is not a tautology at all. It is closer to a contradiction.
I actually meant a non sequitur, but can't edit at this point.
> My point wasn't that I agree with the statement. My point is that the statement has clarity, and that it actually communicates an idea.
> The very fact that the statement could be falsified means to me that it is not bullshit as meant in the article. That is not to say the statement is true!
Yes, this is fair. I misunderstood the point you were trying to make. My apology!
Check out the Weird AL song "Mission Statement". It's exactly this.
Besides the emperor has no clothes possibility, are you certain that a lot of people are just not in the joke and don't want to rock it?
are you certain you read my comment to the end?
You stated that nobody realized the sarcasm, but you didn't state how you know that. The GP is basically asking how you knew nobody got the sarcasm. The GP is implying it's possible that one or more people understood you, loved it, and didn't want to spoil the sarcasm fun by mentioning it, and instead feigned enthusiasm. The GP is implying it's possible someone added their own sarcasm on top of yours, but maybe you missed their sarcasm.
The GP wants more details about how you know this wasn't the case. Your post lacks sufficient detail to determine how you arrived at the conclusion that nobody noticed your sarcasm. Without reading their minds, you couldn't know for certain, and the GP wants more details about your reasoning process.
no, I didn't. I stated that maybe they (employees in general) knowingly go along with it for financial reasons.
Then I misunderstood "That statement was unanimously received very well and nobody realized that this is basically just sarcasm in action." and I believe the GGGP had a similar understanding to me.
well, yes - let's say I kept thinking _while_ writing. I started out with that sentiment then I questioned it ;)
Is "boni" a shortened version of "bonification"?
I understood there were career gains in falling for the bullshit, but it wasn't clear it was very direct.
Let me tell you a secret: nobody cares. Except maybe the people who need to invent this stuff. Everybody else, including the ones who put the mission statement on the letterhead etc., just learned to ignore it. It's just like "How are you?" without really asking about your well-being. It's a kind of ritual. These words are basically empty, but have a function. However, the function is not so much in the meaning as in form. Nowadays you can't have a company without a mission statement, corporate values and so on. The point is, most values are the same. You don't have that much choice, you have to "embrace diversity" and so on no matter what you actually think. All companies do the same, and going in the opposite direction would be insane - you would simply lose customers.
_This distinction is captured by Frankfurt (2005) who argues that a liar is concerned about the truth, but attempts to replace it with falsehood. In contrast, the bullshitter is unconcerned with the truth and speaks with no reference to it. The bullshitter falls short of lying because they make use of insincere and misleading statements rather than outright falsehoods. Recent psychological work has found that established measures of everyday lying are sufficiently distinct from bullshitting._
I'll tell you what it really is: it's banal nihilism. We have this idea that nihilism is a kind of militant anti-truth, but it mainly manifests as a lack of conviction about anything altogether. When there is no fixed truth, and your survival depends on aligning to narrative, ("_getting it_" as they say) the abstractions you use become divorced from anything concrete that could be interpreted as a forcing function on the perceptions of the people you are speaking to.
The article underestimates the consequences of it, and we can say "ha hah, only bullshit!" but it's much, much more pernicious than that.
Someone who is enthusiastically fluent in bullshit can be trusted to be just as enthusiastic about destroying ecosystems, livelihoods, cultures, and peers, because instead of feeling existential dread at meaninglessness, they find security in it. It's difficult for most hackers to imagine that the dim agreeable affect of a middling project manager or adjunct eating lunch at their desk as barely concealing an abyss of rage and shame - one that is only relieved by tiny acts of passive sadism, but that's literally people everywhere.
The term for them was "Little Eichmanns," because the whole point of Eichmann was that nobody would ever have thought him capable of being the architect of mass atrocities, but he is the prototypical example of the "stupid and dilligent," who can be relied upon at scale to substitute compliance and bullshit jargon for meaning.
Source: banks, government, unicorns, and other institutions.
The quoted book (Bullshit by Frankfurt) also examines the consequences but more importantly defines bullshit as manipulating the perception of intent. I found the best example was the politician who does a speech with religious claims and hero worship. The book says that whether that politician is actually pious is besides the point, the politician doesn't care about the truth value of what he says but rather about being seen in a particular light.
The book argues that bullshit can be the bigger enemy of truth than straight up lying because it has no actual regard for truth at all.
> prototypical example of the "stupid and dilligent,"
I think stupid is too strong here, and misleading even. It allows those who are clearly not stupid from realizing they can fall into the same behavior. Simply not caring is sufficient.
Indeed I would walk that wording back a bit, it was a riff on an oft-quoted famous quip about military officers:
âI divide my officers into four groups. There are clever, diligent, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and diligent â their place is the General Staff. The next lot are stupid and lazy â they make up 90% of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the intellectual clarity and the composure necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is stupid and diligent â he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always cause only mischief."
This "clever and lazy" group is distinct from the low cunning of the archetype I was referencing, but I stepped out of the boundaries of being charitable. Your criticism is legit, and I prefer to be held to that higher standard of kindness. Cheers.
No idea how this article pleases my soul. I'm surrounded.
"Bullshitology" ... "disconnected from normal standards of truth such as logic, clarity and evidence".
Words to my soul.
I even have a bullshitometer, and I know how much they're in trouble or have no idea what they're doing, based on a simple k/vv ratio ;) (keywords per verbal vomit). Late or overdue projects tend to have meetings with k/vv blowing off the roof. For this I introduced the k^2/vv ratio. Hey if you're still reading, first, I feel your pain, second, might as well have fun.
> For this I introduced the k^2/vv ratio.
Just use a log scale. It's a normal way to handle unbounded variables of the "the more you do, the more likely you'll do it more" kind.
The important thing to remember is that _everyone_ does this. You have your bullshitometer, but so does the person you're communicating with. They're looking for the k/vv ratio in what you write too. And while you might believe you're writing clear, succinct messages with Just The Facts, they're seeing bullshit flammery excuse-making wrapped in technical jargon to hide your incompetence.
Everyone believes they're a good communicator because no one is capable of judging their own writing. To hold that against them is unkind, just as it'd be unkind for someone to hold your comms against you.
Nope. This is a typical categorical fallacy: nobody can ever truly achieve the ideal, therefore everyone is equally flawed and we should stop judging others.
Do people often lack self-awareness and accuse others of things for which they are equally culpable? Sure. But objective reality does, in fact, exist and therefore it is possible to identify objective standards and judge people according to their performance along them.
_objective reality does, in fact, exist_
Maybe.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25233590-800-the-quan...
... only when people agree on their hallucinations.
Summary of a talk by brain researcher Anil Seth:
So much yes! What?
Are you saying my k/vv needs to be discounted by a hidden ratio called blackhole understanding, bu, for my inability to uplift my knowledge convergence with the ephemeral business strategy?
And so it is, (k/vv)^PI/bu
Thank you sir.
Yes, but âJason has plans moving forward after his transition elsewhereâ is different from âWe really do not know what Jason will do after being sacked.â
Thanks! It's great practice to look for your own fault first before finding it in others.
I noticed how deep in bullshit territory Western society is when talking to people from former communist Eastern Germany (until maybe the early 2000s), a place where self-promotion wasn't a thing, where nothing could be gained by bullshitting.
People would just plain state a realistic state of their affairs, like that they're unemployed, whereas I thought "dude you just moved here 2 weeks ago and you'll find work in no time, don't put yourself down like that". It was really eye-opening how much self-promotion is going on even among the most humble people.
This is even true in relationships. I learned it the hard way with my SO.
And I learn it every day.
She was born in GDR and even being only 8 years old when the wall came down she inherited that from her early years and her family's way of communication (while nowadays most of her family adapted the bs style of self protection/promotion).
At first I felt pain at (to me sounding harsh) truth. But I learned to value it as a great corrective to my bs tendency.
Bullshit is not the same as "bad communicator" and is not the opposite of "clear" and "succinct". On the contrary, I would say that an expert bullshiter displays very good communication (and usually political) skills.
Bullshit is to purposely mislead or say things that actually don't convey anything, e.g. in order not to commit to anything or to leave wriggle room for later.
Sometimes bullshit is the only way to satisfy some people without promising them unrealistic things. It's a valuable skill to have in political environments, just be aware of when you are using it and why.
Can we add media / "journalists" as well?
That said, truth be told, in the realm of politics and media the more accurate word for bullshit is propaganda.
That reminds about those Elizabeth Holmes' affirmations recently mentioned here - there was something like "I will call out BS immediately" yet there was no affirmations wrt. being called out on BS.
Almost every top management memo be like (random snippets from my inbox):
"Iâd like to echo XXXâs sentiments about the opportunities this organizational change creates.."
"YYY has been integral to the growth and success of the Y team. Her tireless passion has been a source of great inspiration and she will be greatly missed - thank you so much YYY! With YYY's departure, we are very fortunate to see one of our very own exceptional leaders..."
"Youâve heard us talk about our focus on reaccelerating our new business growth in fiscal year 2022, and while last year was challenging on many fronts, your continued focus on supporting each other, our customers, and our communities enabled us to successfully weather the storm and set ourselves up for a strong FY22 and beyond."
"From day one, XXX has been a driving force in helping ZZZ become the unquestioned HHH industry leader and a true visionary for the future of work. Along the way she has played key leadership roles across ..."
The best parts IMHO:
One informant told [...] that his job involved âcharacterizing the reality of a situation with any description that is necessary to make that situation more palatable to some group that matters . . . Everyone knows that itâs bullshit, but itâs accepted. This is the gameâ (Jackall, 1986, p. 145)
and
the effort they need to put in to refute bullshit is often of an order of magnitude greater than what is required to produce the bullshit in the first place (Brandolini, 2014)
>> the effort they need to put in to refute bullshit is often of an order of magnitude greater than what is required to produce the bullshit in the first place (Brandolini, 2014)
So P != NP?
I had a similar thought: time for a bullshit-powered cryptosystem?
Isn't that just cryptocurrency?
That second one is exactly why misinformation has so easily taken hold.
Quantity is a Quality of its own.
And false claims of misinformation! It's far easier to falsely claim that something is misinformation than it is to refute the claim and show that it is in fact reasonable or factual. We're in a misinformation bull market!
So, it's a bunch of Narcissus clones/clowns bragging about themselves and each other in Echo's chamber and the applauding audience refuses to admit, the emperor is naked? Because they are not just afraid to look dumb, but actually love the play?
Nothing new under the sun, eh?
Boys will be Boys.
Until reality bites.
On a more serious note:
"Communication is improbable", Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy
"Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur", Latin phrase
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundus_vult_decipi%2C_ergo_dec...
"Nothing is true, everything is permitted", Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
"Facts and events are infinitely more fragile things than axioms, discoveries, theories, which are produced by the human mind."
Hannah Arendt, Truth and Politics, The New Yorker 1967
Also: "There is no truth, there is only consensus"
Online bullshit detector:
When ran on the abstract of this article:
Bullshit Index :0.7
This reeks. I bet you're a PR-Expert, Politician, Consultant or Scientist. If there is a message, it's unlikely it will reach anyone.
Clearly the bullshitometer is bullshitting. 88 points currently, the message has reached HN frontpage. It even reached me, a major bullshitter. When i ran my own comments through it they come up with extremely low scores. I call bullshit
That is awesome. I ran the abstract of something I am writing for our marketing peeps and got:
Bullshit Index :0.47
Something's getting a bit fishy. You probably want to sell something, or you're trying to impress somebody. It still may be an acceptable result for a scientific text.
i.e. it's assessment was pretty much exact.
Iâd love a GitHub Action that runs all changes to docs etc through something like this!
We need a browser plugin for this.
Non-shortened title: Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over Organizations
Author: André Spicer
Date: June 4, 2020
Abstract: Why is bullshit so common in some organizations? Existing explanations focus on the characteristics of bullshitters, the nature of the audience, and social structural factors which encourage bullshitting. In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation: bullshitting is a social practice that organizational members engage with to become part of a speech community, to get things done in that community, and to reinforce their identity. When the practice of bullshitting works, it can gradually expand from a small group to take over an entire organization and industry. When bullshitting backfires, previously sacred concepts can become seen as empty and misleading talk.
Is this abstract intentionally ironic or not? Bullshit in this include âsocial structural factorsâ,âpart of a speech communityâ,âpractice of bullshittingâ âbullshitting backfiresâ. Is there any principle that âany critique of language is self referentialâ?
> Is this abstract intentionally ironic or not? Bullshit in this include âsocial structural factorsâ,âpart of a speech communityâ,âpractice of bullshittingâ âbullshitting backfiresâ.
They are all very real.
The first three are standard aspects of a linguistic/speech community.
The fourth, as described, is specific to BS communities. That said, the phenomenon of linguistic artifacts falling in and out of speech communities is a thing, and this is sort of what he is talking about (maybe if viewed at a higher level of abstraction).
Iâve done research on speech communities, and Iâve also seen âprofessional BS speech communities in action. Itâs a sight to see.
From the article itself,
_value prop, first moved advantage, proactive technology, paralellization. Leading edge-solutions._
These are also pretty common terms in business/technology. The fact that someone cut proposition to prop may be a bit pretentious but not bullshit. The first moved looks like it is a first mover advantage and indicates that whoever was intimidated by these terms was probably not part of the âcommunityâ.( I donât know what to think of a linguist who writes âleading edge-solutionâ⊠and âparalellizationâ?)These terms are not just common but also easily understood in my opinion, even outside the specific domain and less pretentious than âpractice of bullshittingâ when all you want to say is âbullshittingâ.
Who knows, maybe I am a bullshitter too and just in denialâŠ
Felt the same when reading these examples. I am afraid we just got used to it.
I am afraid it is true to some extent⊠but then again this article made me feel a bit better about my condition:
_I will argue that bullshitting is triggered by a speech community with many conceptual entrepreneurs, significant amounts of noisy ignorance and permissive uncertainty. These conditions are likely to spark the language game of bullshitting_
You could not make it up, writing an article about bullshit and arguing about âconceptual entrepreneursâ, ânoisy ignoranceâ, âpermissive uncertaintyâ, âlanguage gameâ. This made my day.
I think you may want to consult the article for a definition of "bullshit". The article describes it as (this definition is curated by me, the article has more descriptions): discourse which is created, circulated and consumed with little respect for or relationship to reality, and crafted to wilfully mislead and to serve the bullshitterâs purposes.
I'm pretty sure the terms in the abstract are well defined recognized terms in this area of study.
There's a big difference between _jargon_, which may be opaque to someone outside the field, but is genuinely communicating something important to someone within it, and _buzzwords_, which are largely bullshit designed to _sound like_ important jargon.
My jargon is your buzzword and the other way around. Qualification of importance and information content is subjective and contextual. Will one side or the other choose who the bullshitter is, or will both sides realise everyone is bullshitting to some extent as a social signalling tool. I gave a few quotes above from the author that would be inspiring for many a buzzword slingers.
"Leveraging synergies to create strategic multiphasic solutions" is 100% buzzword. There's no _real information_ being conveyed there.
"Investigating the social structural factors underlying the speech community helps us to understand the practice of bullshitting" contains jargon, but is _actually telling you something_. (Probably. I don't 100% understand the jargon involved, but inferring from related things I _do_ understand, this should probably be a coherent sentence. Regardless, the words being used _can_ convey actual information.)
Just because you can't understand something doesn't mean it's bullshit. It being bullshit means _there was nothing to understand in the first place_. It's conveying no meaningful information, just trying to make you think the person who said it knows what they're talking about.
If you want to try to redefine "bullshit" to mean "stuff I can't understand", then you're welcome to do so, but it's going to be about as useful as Humpty Dumpty declaring that "glory" means "a nice knock-down argument".
âLeveraging synergies to create strategic multiphasic solutionsâ a bit extreme I concur, no zero information content nevertheless. I can see that the solutions will be delivered in phases but with a strategic intent. Need more clarity on the link between synergies and phasing but that does not make it bullshit or absolve it from being bullshit either.
Could be someone telling that he will align their teamâs schedule with another teamâs and therefore will split delivery in multiple phases. Could be someone throwing words in excuse for their failure to deliver a strategic project. Could be some random person saying this to demonstrate what bullshit is.
There is no scenario there where information is not conveyed and that does not have anything to do with bullshitting in the end anyway. Bullshitting is not about the vocabulary but about its use as a means to conceal something by saturating the channel of communication. There is an intentionality assumption as the key defining criterion. Also the challenge that while information in a communication is âwellâ defined, concealment makes many assumptions about the social context of expectations for information flow.
> ... to get things done in that community...
But how does anyone get anything _done_ in that community? It's all just words that don't mean anything; how do you cause any action that is more than just words?
Or is "getting things done" just producing words, and getting others to produce words in response?
"I will argue that bullshitting is triggered by
a speech community with many conceptual
entrepreneurs, significant amounts of noisy
ignorance and permissive uncertainty."
Right now, "metaverse".
In this paper, I claim bullshitting is a social practice. I will argue that in particular speech communities people are encouraged to play the language game of bullshitting, and when it is played well it can bolster their identity.
This is a very ironic sentence.
How so?
When I was in college, I used an automated bullshit generator to create some "feedback" (a buzzword on its own!) for an article in a fancy business magazine. These "reader feedback" comments were supposed to be high quality, so they were only accepted by email and were reviewed in-house. My "feedback" was published on their website!
This explains a whole lot of things -- like for example how I once heard a certain engineering director explain, with a straight face, how one cloud platform was more "agile" than other. By which he meant (as he explained) "has a more user-friendly toolchain". Which is of course a perfectly valid criterion for preferring one platform over another.
But no, he had to say "agile". Which by now of course has become completely meaningless, other than to mean vaguely "good". And as the article points out, a speech signal: a way of indicating "I'm an engineering director (or product evangelist, whatever) now, and one of the ways I maintain that slot in the status hierarchy is by using lingo you don't dare challenge me on, and certainly not to my face. Even though most everyone knows it's basically bullshit."
Before I read the article, I found his choice of words quite perplexing. But now it makes perfect sense.
Yes the definition they give for bullshitting is:
"According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, bullshit is an informal vulgar term which means âto talk nonsense, especially with the intent of misleading or deceivingâ. The Oxford English Dictionary defines bullshit as âto talk nonsense or rubbishâ and âto bluff oneâs way through something by talking nonsenseâ"
And the word bluff is a more apt definition for these situations. It is essentially a bluff like in poker. Where the situation is "I might not know what I'm talking about because I'm using vague obfuscated language, but calling me out on it might point out that I don't know what I'm talking about, or it might make you look like you just didn't understand" especially if the audience in also uninformed it can be spun either way
The paper itself, 4th paragraph of the Introduction chapter:
speech community [...] conceptual entrepreneurs [...] noisy ignorance [...] permissive uncertainty [...] surface-level agreement
Am I uneducated or is the author trolling?
I think there's probably a difference between specialist terminology (i.e. jargon) and the type of bullshit that they're talking about (although the distinction isn't always obvious). If I say "I couldn't SSH into the host - which I thought was because of a rule change on the firewall. Turns out that the IP I had been using was the reverse proxy address and not the backend server itself." that might sound like bullshit to a non-tech but if you're familiar with those terms/concepts then the sentence is fairly easy to understand. Not so with some of the bullshit this paper is talking about.
It's also about the target audience. This is an academic paper written for an audience who will understand immediately what speech community means. A lot of the more irritating forms of corporate bullshit are distributed quite widely.
Perhaps via Baudrillard, the author is identifying bullshit as a way to make us believe that the rest is real?
Nah these are jargon but concerned w communicating truth.
I find 'speech community' esp. Illustrative. These are the 'idea people' who talk all day instead of rolling their sleeves up. Not as bad as bullshitters tho.
I am not sure, I googled
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22permissive+uncertainty%22
and most of the top results refer back to this paper or similar website talking about bullshitry. But maybe I am wrong and this is a real professional jargon of a real profession.
Very enjoyable article, but I do wonder if the conceptual entrepreneurship displayed in the section "De-escalating bullshit" is ironic by intent or merely by circumstance.
The seminal text referenced in the article is a short, poignant, and enjoyable read: _On Bullshit_[1].
[1]
http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...
I peddle in this trade. Honestly, most of corporate America speaks in bullshit. So I use bullshit to sell them things they donât need, then more bullshit to convince them it was a resounding success. It pretty much works every time until you get a super-demanding client, at which point I fire them as a client and move on to easier targets.
Why shouldnât I go in and get mine? Weâve built an economy that prizes looking competent over actual competency, and Iâm just taking advantage of that. I have zero loyalty to the demons in the money pit, and in fact ripping them off is an existential coping strategy in many ways. That the system rewards this behavior is basically the point.
All Iâm doing is making America work for me. This attitude is becoming pretty prevalent; Iâve started dubbing it corpo-punk since itâs a bunch of white collar workers causing chaos through deliberate incompetence and bad-faith efforts in corporate America.
I do the opposite. I refuse to peddle in this bullshit. I am that super-demanding client.
It's a struggle, but I do well. Not as well as the bullshitters, but well enough to satisfy my family's needs and desires.
The peace of mind of knowing that I'm doing my part to make the world a better place is priceless, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
Honestly I feel the same â bleeding corporations of the resources they need to extort people out of their money _is_ making the world a better place. Praxis takes many forms.
An interesting take. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear, I don't think what you're doing leads to positive change. I think it leads to a race to the bottom.
Are you sure your take isn't just self-justification?
Honestly donât care about the second order effects on the broader economy; itâs about taking direct action, ripping the system, then spreading the wealth around your community.
Not everyone is a straight white guy with a family and kids, and if youâre not, climbing the corporate ladder doesnât happen for you if you play by the rules.
Who, exactly, are you trying to convince that what you're doing is OK?
Nobody; morality in the business world is for losers.
You are peeing in your bathwater.
Itâs honestly difficult from the outside to see how what I do is any different from the legions of consulting firms who fake time sheets, triple-bill clients, trade insider info in exchange for contract discounts, etc.
It's part of the continuum sure.
Why is bullshit so common in some organizations?
Because it works
Specifically because it communicates belonging ("fit") and facilitates status plays.
Worst case it's meaningless filler - the equivalent of looking busy while doing nothing. Best case someone important may be impressed.
It's important to remember the downside is on _not_ bullshitting and sticking to facts and metrics. In many orgs, neither will win friends and influence people.
Because the organization doesn't live or die (immediately) based on interactions with the real world. It can continue on autopilot for a while while the leaders/staff play their game of pretend.
Such things don't continue forever, though. Such organizations are eroding their future.
Explains so many government agency employees.
In this paper, I offer an alternative explanation: bullshitting is a social practice that organizational members engage with to become part of a speech community, to get things done in that community, and to reinforce their identity. When the practice of bullshitting works, it can gradually expand from a small group to take over an entire organization and industry. When bullshitting backfires, previously sacred concepts can become seen as empty and misleading talk.
This is Culture. Bullshitting is an example of the means to a bad ends. The ends being Culture. While a rewards system helps, the ultimate enabler is cronic denial.
Pascal said âI feel like a dog that has been run over.â Wittgenstein told his friend âYou donât know what a dog that has been run over feels like.â Although the philosopherâs response is unfriendly in the extreme, it does make a logical point. Strictly speaking, a human canât know what a run-over dog feels like.
That's not a good example of "Bullshit". It's a colorful metaphor based on what we would imagine the dog feels like.
Pretty sure Wittgenstein was trolling his friend. But a clever man would have known. . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMz7JBRbmNo
One phrase I really can't stand is, "Out of abundance of caution". I have an abundance of "shut the fuck up" for anyone who uses it.
Although I'm not sure what a good replacement is. In the nonfiltered world it'd be "Because we're worrywarts".
I see a business opportunity here: business communication tailored to personal sensitivities: You will received bullshit that is personalized and tailored to your stated preferences
Yes here are my new preferences regarding email comms and if you don't follow them I may experience emotional trauma:
1) responses should never include the word 'no' or any negative word.
2) responses should always include the phrase 'yes sir, thank you sir, you are an amazing inspiration to the team and I hope to be like you someday'
That exists â itâs called a âmanagerâ and comes with command-and-control functionality too!
There are lots of situations where being very cautious is objectively the best idea - so it is a mistake to categorically reject caution.
Being excessively cautious is a mistake when the stakes are low and the benefits outweigh the risks. It is also a mistake when a decision needs to be made and no new information is going to arise. But that is contextual. It is sensible when dealing with situations where mistakes are easy to make and costly to recover from.
I don't disagree. "There is currently a high risk of flooding. Out of an abundance of caution we have shut down our subway system.". It's the appropriate amount of caution, but that phrase just grinds my gears. It makes the user sound like they want to overemphasize the fact, like saying "Oh we care soooo much." (without any sarcasm)
But.... in that example, wouldn't you _actually care quite a bit_ about a flooded subway?