Comments on: NB: BS

By: Crooked Timber » » Another Harvard economics scandal

Crooked Timber » » Another Harvard economics scandal — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 19:34:27 +0000

[...] lk about a bloody double standard. Best of luck, Marty. Btw, what a pity it wasn’t Bullshit[2], or the rhetorical irony would have been complete. [1]I plagiarised this from Doug Henwoo [...]

By: Ray

Ray — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 11:47:11 +0000

Robert Heinlein said: “The truth of a proposition has nothing to do with it’s credibility, and vice versa.” Politicians, preachers and lawyers know this instinctively. My dad informed me when I was a teen with a well crafted but easily debunked excuse regarding my whereabouts on a Friday night “Don’t try to bullshit me, I brought bullshit to town.” It seems that people outside of academia know it and deal with it everyday – which I find odd because academia is awash in bull. Any undergrad can tell you which profs are “10 pounds of bullshit in a 5 pound bag.”

By: Kent

Kent — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 11:07:30 +0000

Barnes and Noble vs. Amazon? How about private bookseller vs. corporate bookseller? I think it matters. Try Powells: http://www.powells.com http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=62-0691122946-0 or ABEBooks http://www.abebooks.com/

By: aldousk

aldousk — Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:42:27 +0000

It is curious to observe that, as one gets older, things that have seemed self-evident, or at least obvious, are rediscovered by the young and proclaimed as if they were new. So it is with Harry G. Frankfurt’s rediscovery of well … bullshit. What he is telling us that the politician (which means more or less all of us from time to time, for, save the siantly, there is an element of the polly within everyone) makes utterances that are disconnected from truth. Statements made by the politician have no truth value: they are not intended to convey information. Their purpose is to procure and maintain political power of one sort or another. It is plain to children from an age of eight or therabouts that this is the case. I guess the scary thing is that in some democracies, the infection of making value-free utterances by elected representatives and their associated cloud of wannabes has been passed on to our paid servants. The end of this process is terrifying.

By: dave heasman

dave heasman — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 23:36:59 +0000

Paul Fussell in his book “Wartime” writes of what he and his fellow soldiers called “chickenshit”- demeaning and pointless army procedures. Frankfurt quotes British soldiers who called this sort of thing “bull” I recall it as “bullshine”

By: Hamilton Lovecraft

Hamilton Lovecraft — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 22:52:32 +0000

Check out this essay on “shit” vs. “fuck” in today’s political climate.

By: ian malcolm

ian malcolm — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 16:29:25 +0000

I can shed some light on the genesis and format of On Bullshit, as I’m the editor at Princeton who suggested we do it. Although philosophers know the essay well, I thought it might never get the wide audience it deserves unless someone packaged it as a book. Aside from a comma here and there, it’s identical to the original essay. That means, of course, that it’s tiny—the smallest book we’ve ever published, I think. The designer, Deborah Hodgdon, did a very nice job of turning it into a pocketbook. (One philosopher at the recent APA meeting said it looked like a prayer book, which is not a bad comparison.) A number of people told me we should add G.A. Cohen’s Deeper into BS to it, but I thought keeping it as a self-contained piece had a nicer feel. I’m not sure why. In any case, if you have The Importance of What We Care About, the only advantage of buying this book is that it looks better. The substance is the same. Ian Malcolm

By: Jeremy Osner

Jeremy Osner — Tue, 15 Feb 2005 04:44:00 +0000

Jake—I received the book in the mail today (bought not from Amazon nor B & N, but from Princeton)—part of the answer is that the pages are very small. I have not yet looked into it more closely and suspect that that does not completely explain it.

By: seth edenbaum

seth edenbaum — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:56:03 +0000

My old argument again: Lawyers represent their clients, not ‘truth.’ If they can get away with bullshit, and have a right to use it. It’s arguable in some cases that they have an obligation to. The adversarial system is the best way we’ve found to administer justice, but it’s sloppy. My friends and I, however, value neatness. So here’s our proposal: Why don’t we do an analysis of the percentage of cases that are resolved correctly [let’s just pretend it’s possible] and switch to a lottery system that produces the same percentage of correct outcomes. Justice as a toss of the appropriatly loaded dice. We can even allow the accused to push the button that starts the decision making process. So neat and tidy. So logical. So stupid. This post reminds me why Montaigne is still my favorite philosopher.

By: jake

jake — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:53:40 +0000

The essay is in `The Importance of What We Care About.’ Has anybody bought the new book? I’m curious how they turned a short (10 pages or so) essay into an 80 page book. Is the original essay expanded? Is there a lengthy introduction or other commentary?

By: rob

rob — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:19:11 +0000

For those unwilling to pay, a link: http://victorian.fortunecity.com/postmodern/87/frankfurt.html Also, I think it’s already been published in a collection of his essays, I think called ‘The Importance Of What We Care About’.

By: Scott McLemee

Scott McLemee — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 21:02:03 +0000

Frankfurt touches on the distinction between bullshit and horseshit in passing, but this remains an underdeveloped aspect of his essay.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:45:50 +0000

In my family, horseshit seems to be the preferred term. Dunno why.

By: Another Damned Medievalist

Another Damned Medievalist — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:43:53 +0000

In my family, horseshit seems to be the preferred term. Dunno why.

By: Scott McLemee

Scott McLemee — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 20:42:19 +0000

In a column for Inside Higher Ed tomorrow, I take Princeton UP to task for not including Cohen’s essay.