"Is my employer allowed to deduct breakages from my pay?"
"How much is cassava selling for in Lagos?"
Knowledge changes lives. As technologists, we are at the forefront of a revolution that has the potential to banish ignorance forever, for everyone. We have a basic moral duty to honour that responsibility, to recognise the real risks of what we are doing, and to work for the benefit of humanity.
The fun of bullshitting is something I am happy to accept as a casualty of war. Frankly, I think it's rather bourgeois to gripe about it.
I'm far more concerned about personalised search results inadvertently working to intellectually ghettoise us and reinforce prejudices. I'm concerned about the effect that paywalled academic journals might be having on the spread of pseudoscience. I'm concerned that IT systems are being designed predominantly by middle-class Americans in liberal cities, who are often ignorant of how their design decisions might affect people who are living in more repressive environments.
Bullshit should die unmourned, because we've got more important things to worry about.
It's possible to both lament the loss of bullshitting, and the interaction it generates, while also appreciating the significant improvements technology has brought.
I don't think the thesis of the article was that instant access to information is bad for society.
I think the article was more a reflection on how radically things have changed, and that, even if things are generally much better now, there still were unexpected positives to simpler times.
I find it difficult to relate to negative comments (for easy access to information) in this thread.
A story that might be interesting: We live in Arizona. Last year two old guys (really old, about my age :-) got out of their pickup truck and walked over to me while I was gassing up our car and asked for directions to some obscure little town. After asking why they were travelling (they were on the way to some distant relative's house for a party) I pulled out my droid phone and used the voice interface to Google Now to ask for driving directions; we also got a warning about a road closure. Neither of these guys had ever owned a computer so they asked the obvious questions of how much would a similar phone cost and where to get one. I would bet that they had a smart phone within days. +1 for easy access to information.
The story posted in the article provides a romanticized illustration of how finding knowledge in a world without easy access to it can produce an adventure. (I like that it doesn't directly say which of the 1994 or 2014 versions was better, though there's sure an implication from how they're painted.) On the other hand, access to information can produce an adventure, as well; so can many other things. In the end, the right group of friends can end up on wild adventures for any number of reasons.
That's leaving aside the implications of having easy access to information to answer more important questions.
Questions for which there's a known right answer should get resolved as quickly as possible. That leaves more time for the questions that the Internet and all the other resources we have available can help answer, but which still require work. (Whether those questions are useful or just amusingly absurd is up to you.)
> On the other hand, access to information can produce an adventure, as well
How many of us, solo or in a group, ended up reaching for the asked piece of information basically instantly on Wikipedia, yet, serendipitously hooked on by another piece of information, ended up bouncing around page upon page like a pachinko ball until one says "wait, how did we get up to this already?".
I once tried to find out on Wikipedia whether goldfish really have ten second attention spans. I learned that in Nix vs. Heddon the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.
I'm struggling to identify what it is about this nostalgia that infuriates me so deeply. Perhaps it's just fascinating to me that so many people find it fun to be in stupid situations. I find it barbaric and twisted.
More productively, I wonder how people would respond to this after having grown up with the boundary of their 30s knowledge horizon roughly equivalent to that of humanity's experts 10yr prior. Anyone born since ~2000 perhaps is in this situation. Will they have eliminated this kind of "fun" "bullshit" from their behavior completely?
Actually Google (and Wikipedia et al) enabled an even more evolved form of bullshit.
The kind were people with shallow (or none) knowledge of a topic check some reference source they half understand and try to pass of as experts in the subject matter...
At least with reference books you had to own them in the first place and get into the trouble to locate a reference in their index etc.
Now any bozo can check an obscure lemma in a matter of seconds and pretend he knows what he's talking about in an online discussion (and often offline), going back to check more details in the process any time his bluff is close to be discovered.
I have a rule I always follow, and have convinced many friends of too -- no Googling/Wikipedia-ing in social settings. If nobody knows something (trivia-like), it's almost always a lot more fun to continue not knowing.
Sure, look it up when you get home. But a little group self-discipline goes far in keeping the fine art of bullshitting alive.
(And it's not just the answer that kills the conversation, but also the fact that someone is right and someone is wrong, game over. Much better to keep the game going!)
I'm rather shocked at the fairly visceral reactions a lot of people are having here. This is pretty classic conversational shenanigans. We had a blast with this in college; either you play along or counter with something equally preposterous or unprovable. Looking up the answer is cheating. It's like a game of verbal Calvin Ball or Mornington Crescent. As noted elsewhere in this thread (edit: at least one level up it seems (I got lost, apparently)), the goal is to specifically not make it win/lose, since that ends the game and is boring.
Or, if you know your friends well enough to guess what they're going to say, it's the art of picking the third or fourth dialog choice from the top, Monkey Island style. And if you're really friends, they'll do the same and it'll work.
And then there was the other side, where you tried to derive the answer. One of my favorites was attempting to determine if you could neglect the earth's core in modeling gravity; ferocious debate for an hour and a half by a dozen engineers. Best lunch ever.
Really, this is more about people being boring. Jumping immediately to the obvious instead of enjoying a meandering argumentative stroll. It's a way to play. Simple as that.
Otherwise you're just the adult saying, "that's not lava, that's carpet." Killjoy is the word, I think.
I disagree. The conversation is so much more interesting when there are more connections, more tangents to explore than one mind can contain. Facts build on facts, and you can chase down endless rabbit holes when you're not limited to what one wrinkly lump of cholesterol can scrape out of its interconnected canyons.
At least with the people I know, most trivia is the sort of thing they already found on the internet. If you browse Reddit and none of your friends do, you're pretty much guaranteed to know some bizarre fact. Similarly with programs like QI, it's often quite easy to know where people get their facts from (the conversation usually ends with "You got that from QI didn't you?" "Yes. I did.")
On the other hand I find it incredibly difficult to shut up when someone says something wrong about computing (or usually about some current affairs topic in computing). Don't be that guy.
But sometimes Google can keep a non-bullshit, non-serious conversation going, say when two friends talk about a movie and it doesn't ring a bell, but then you google it and the first image suggestion reminds you that you've seen it too, and it was THAT movie! Back into conversation...
Or when something is on the tip of your tongue for an hour.
Just back from a family meeting. When someone didn't know some trivia fact, most of the time another one looked it up while te conversation continued. When the right answer was found on Google or Wikipedia, that was often a starting point to go more in depth and explore the topic even further. Or it was the start for an new conversation about other topics. To me, that was more fun and satisfying than just waisting time and having to hear endless bullshit around minor unverified facts.
I wouldn't oppose this and I'd probably even further it with a put-away-the-phone rule to encourage social interaction. That and it certainly helps with women/girls to be able to bullshit effectively because even if they know you're lying it is quite disarming and even charming and intriguing to engage in such banter. Another thing that helps with women is not necessarily having an expensive car but a nice car.
"I always tell guys, put away your phone and work on your car. Nobody ever got laid in the back seat of an iPhone." - Billy Gardell
Sure, because what fun are facts? What have facts ever done for us? Other than cured disease, ended hunger, doubled lifespan. But lately, I mean!
Why anyone would ever choose bullshit over facts is beyond me. Facts are interesting. Facts are fun. Bullshit is just the unrestrained spew of the ignorant ego. There's no point to it other than mate competition, and making what amount to factual claims that are known to be false so you can score is what created a vast amount of human misery for untold thousands of years, and continues to do so in the less enlightened parts of the world (philosophy departments, for example...)
I'd much rather find out the facts and discuss them--and there is always something for anyone who isn't completely brain-dead to discuss--than listen to some egotistical ignoramous spew nonsense, and then have to argue against them knowing that in the absence of facts the standard of proof is "what just makes sense", which only an idiot would take as an interesting guide to reality, because reality, in the absence of facts, does not make sense.
Quantum mechanics? Totally incoherent.
Evolution? Pull the other one.
The Earth moves in an elliptical path around the sun and the wandering stars are huge balls of gas and rock? Ridiculous!
In a world before we invented the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference--that is, science--people based their ideas on the "game" you are describing. If you're a member of SCA I guess it might be fun to continue it, but from an epistemologist's point of view it looks about as civilized as cat mauling as a means of social entertainment.
Such things are best left in the Middle Ages, where they belong.
The world, pre-Google, abounded in serendipitous quests to find one piece of information offline.
The world, post-Google, abounds in serendipitous quests to find many pieces of information online, such as starting at a given book on Amazon and moving down the chain of Amazon's "Customers Also Bought", or embarking on a semi-infinite dive through Wikipedia.
Any of these can turn into a game given the right mindset. Who can connect Klein bottles to the Gettysburg address in the fewest links?
The bullshit didn't even have to be believable: "Marilyn Manson was the kid that played Paul from the Wonder Years. Also, he had a rib removed so he could perform autofellatio." Kids everywhere believed that. Hilarious.
Right, like "Vaccines cause autism" and "Homeopathy is something you should say without laughing". Also hilarious.
There's a dark side to bullshit. There's a side which creates endless pain for no good reason, because things 'sound good' or are 'too good to check' and nobody likes a party-pooper, do they? Especially when the party-pooper is pointing out how this little piece of bullshit could kill someone.
No. Go along to get along. Don't be so serious all the time. Don't imagine you know better. It's rude.
My step-dad always posed with his fact-knowledge as if it was the holy grail of wisdom. It even led to this bullshitting in the link. If he didn't know something, he made it up. Or he would tell us about some (anecdotical!) evidence for this and that.
Today, I just flip out my smartphone and look it up and after that, everyone learned something.
Sometimes the facts are so ridiculous or shocking that knowing the truth can be funny or exciting too :)
Its actually become a fun game around here. Someone makes an outrageous claim and it starts a race to be the first to call them on it. Phones get drawn like six-guns and its on! We call this little victory of fact finding the "fonesnope". (Or "getting fonesnoped" if you happen to be the claimant). Its a fun party game. Try it.
As a kid I remember family discussions surrounding the legitimacy of certain pieces of trivia, often reaching the point where people began trying to shout over each other. Eventually, my uncle would pick up the phone, dial a random number and say, "Hi there, you wouldn't happen to know who directed Casablanca would you?"
For those looking for never ending talks and debates about what is true or not, we still have philosophy, religion, and of course politics. Moreover, there's a lot of room the "The Fine Art of Bullshit" there.
Those are divisive topics, those are debates that matter.
For increased social cohesion play-fighting over bullshit is better, there's a subtext that the only reason it's worth it is you actually enjoy the company of those around you.
[+] [-] jdietrich|11 years ago|reply
"Is it normal to be attracted to other boys?"
"Can I claim food stamps?"
"Is my employer allowed to deduct breakages from my pay?"
"How much is cassava selling for in Lagos?"
Knowledge changes lives. As technologists, we are at the forefront of a revolution that has the potential to banish ignorance forever, for everyone. We have a basic moral duty to honour that responsibility, to recognise the real risks of what we are doing, and to work for the benefit of humanity.
The fun of bullshitting is something I am happy to accept as a casualty of war. Frankly, I think it's rather bourgeois to gripe about it.
I'm far more concerned about personalised search results inadvertently working to intellectually ghettoise us and reinforce prejudices. I'm concerned about the effect that paywalled academic journals might be having on the spread of pseudoscience. I'm concerned that IT systems are being designed predominantly by middle-class Americans in liberal cities, who are often ignorant of how their design decisions might affect people who are living in more repressive environments.
Bullshit should die unmourned, because we've got more important things to worry about.
[+] [-] jljljl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] copenja|11 years ago|reply
I think the article was more a reflection on how radically things have changed, and that, even if things are generally much better now, there still were unexpected positives to simpler times.
[+] [-] mark_l_watson|11 years ago|reply
A story that might be interesting: We live in Arizona. Last year two old guys (really old, about my age :-) got out of their pickup truck and walked over to me while I was gassing up our car and asked for directions to some obscure little town. After asking why they were travelling (they were on the way to some distant relative's house for a party) I pulled out my droid phone and used the voice interface to Google Now to ask for driving directions; we also got a warning about a road closure. Neither of these guys had ever owned a computer so they asked the obvious questions of how much would a similar phone cost and where to get one. I would bet that they had a smart phone within days. +1 for easy access to information.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|11 years ago|reply
That's leaving aside the implications of having easy access to information to answer more important questions.
Questions for which there's a known right answer should get resolved as quickly as possible. That leaves more time for the questions that the Internet and all the other resources we have available can help answer, but which still require work. (Whether those questions are useful or just amusingly absurd is up to you.)
Just look at XKCD's What If (https://what-if.xkcd.com/), which references online information but nonetheless puts it together in novel ways (density of seawater and approximate volume of a bowling ball gives the minimum weight required for a bowling ball to sink). In the future, that post (https://what-if.xkcd.com/125/) will show up on the other end of a very strange set of search terms, but there will always be many more questions where that came from, and there are myriad examples online of detailed reasoning from fictional premises. For instance, see http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ , http://physicswithportals.com/ , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize , or https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uG3_RgX9JA0/TboU21S9gNI/AAAAAAAAD... .
[+] [-] lloeki|11 years ago|reply
How many of us, solo or in a group, ended up reaching for the asked piece of information basically instantly on Wikipedia, yet, serendipitously hooked on by another piece of information, ended up bouncing around page upon page like a pachinko ball until one says "wait, how did we get up to this already?".
[+] [-] j2kun|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] minikites|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_Biz,_Inc._v._United_States
[+] [-] chernevik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikecb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olalonde|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ableal|11 years ago|reply
Many years ago, someone wisely said that the problem was not computers thinking like people, it was people thinking like computers.
[+] [-] polarix|11 years ago|reply
More productively, I wonder how people would respond to this after having grown up with the boundary of their 30s knowledge horizon roughly equivalent to that of humanity's experts 10yr prior. Anyone born since ~2000 perhaps is in this situation. Will they have eliminated this kind of "fun" "bullshit" from their behavior completely?
[+] [-] coldtea|11 years ago|reply
The kind were people with shallow (or none) knowledge of a topic check some reference source they half understand and try to pass of as experts in the subject matter...
At least with reference books you had to own them in the first place and get into the trouble to locate a reference in their index etc.
Now any bozo can check an obscure lemma in a matter of seconds and pretend he knows what he's talking about in an online discussion (and often offline), going back to check more details in the process any time his bluff is close to be discovered.
[+] [-] mreiland|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|11 years ago|reply
Sure, look it up when you get home. But a little group self-discipline goes far in keeping the fine art of bullshitting alive.
(And it's not just the answer that kills the conversation, but also the fact that someone is right and someone is wrong, game over. Much better to keep the game going!)
[+] [-] HCIdivision17|11 years ago|reply
Or, if you know your friends well enough to guess what they're going to say, it's the art of picking the third or fourth dialog choice from the top, Monkey Island style. And if you're really friends, they'll do the same and it'll work.
And then there was the other side, where you tried to derive the answer. One of my favorites was attempting to determine if you could neglect the earth's core in modeling gravity; ferocious debate for an hour and a half by a dozen engineers. Best lunch ever.
Really, this is more about people being boring. Jumping immediately to the obvious instead of enjoying a meandering argumentative stroll. It's a way to play. Simple as that.
Otherwise you're just the adult saying, "that's not lava, that's carpet." Killjoy is the word, I think.
Edit: Ah, here we go: Mornington Crescent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjOsOB4erZI
[+] [-] cbd1984|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshvm|11 years ago|reply
On the other hand I find it incredibly difficult to shut up when someone says something wrong about computing (or usually about some current affairs topic in computing). Don't be that guy.
[+] [-] increment_i|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gurkendoktor|11 years ago|reply
Or when something is on the tip of your tongue for an hour.
[+] [-] yabatopia|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonathanwallace|11 years ago|reply
I agree with you. That sounds like much more fun.
[+] [-] Toenex|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nichochar|11 years ago|reply
Rule: all phones head down in a stack. That's it, go enjoy people a little
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Evolved|11 years ago|reply
"I always tell guys, put away your phone and work on your car. Nobody ever got laid in the back seat of an iPhone." - Billy Gardell
[+] [-] tjradcliffe|11 years ago|reply
Why anyone would ever choose bullshit over facts is beyond me. Facts are interesting. Facts are fun. Bullshit is just the unrestrained spew of the ignorant ego. There's no point to it other than mate competition, and making what amount to factual claims that are known to be false so you can score is what created a vast amount of human misery for untold thousands of years, and continues to do so in the less enlightened parts of the world (philosophy departments, for example...)
I'd much rather find out the facts and discuss them--and there is always something for anyone who isn't completely brain-dead to discuss--than listen to some egotistical ignoramous spew nonsense, and then have to argue against them knowing that in the absence of facts the standard of proof is "what just makes sense", which only an idiot would take as an interesting guide to reality, because reality, in the absence of facts, does not make sense.
Quantum mechanics? Totally incoherent.
Evolution? Pull the other one.
The Earth moves in an elliptical path around the sun and the wandering stars are huge balls of gas and rock? Ridiculous!
In a world before we invented the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference--that is, science--people based their ideas on the "game" you are describing. If you're a member of SCA I guess it might be fun to continue it, but from an epistemologist's point of view it looks about as civilized as cat mauling as a means of social entertainment.
Such things are best left in the Middle Ages, where they belong.
[+] [-] xianshou|11 years ago|reply
The world, post-Google, abounds in serendipitous quests to find many pieces of information online, such as starting at a given book on Amazon and moving down the chain of Amazon's "Customers Also Bought", or embarking on a semi-infinite dive through Wikipedia.
Any of these can turn into a game given the right mindset. Who can connect Klein bottles to the Gettysburg address in the fewest links?
Of course, that's not to disparage the fun of lacking access to proper information. Just look at these bodybuilders arguing over the number of days in a week: http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/233107/two-body-builders-arg...
[+] [-] asifjamil|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ummonkwatz|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igrekel|11 years ago|reply
I had to show them recent videos of Bobby McFerrin, his webpage, and then prove he had done that song.
[+] [-] spiritplumber|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbd1984|11 years ago|reply
There's a dark side to bullshit. There's a side which creates endless pain for no good reason, because things 'sound good' or are 'too good to check' and nobody likes a party-pooper, do they? Especially when the party-pooper is pointing out how this little piece of bullshit could kill someone.
No. Go along to get along. Don't be so serious all the time. Don't imagine you know better. It's rude.
[+] [-] k__|11 years ago|reply
My step-dad always posed with his fact-knowledge as if it was the holy grail of wisdom. It even led to this bullshitting in the link. If he didn't know something, he made it up. Or he would tell us about some (anecdotical!) evidence for this and that.
Today, I just flip out my smartphone and look it up and after that, everyone learned something.
Sometimes the facts are so ridiculous or shocking that knowing the truth can be funny or exciting too :)
[+] [-] noonespecial|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] increment_i|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moultano|11 years ago|reply
Did you know that early South-Americans used the shells of giant turtle-like mammals as houses? Isn't that crazy? Here, check out a picture of one. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Glyptodon...
Or as xkcd put it, you are one of the lucky 10,000! http://xkcd.com/1053/
[+] [-] KaiserPro|11 years ago|reply
This was exposed quite starkly with this story: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/...
If you exclude the pro/cons comments (and the abuse) you're left with loads of "charities have the cure, they are holding them back"
they defy sense, yet are reassured by the people about them.
[+] [-] hayksaakian|11 years ago|reply
There are claims which have no proof or disproof on the web.
You have to be more creative in 2015.
[+] [-] pervycreeper|11 years ago|reply
I believe I'm missing some profound point that the TFA is apparently making.
[+] [-] harshreality|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nl|11 years ago|reply
1) Koalas are from Australia, and in Australia every animal tries to kill you.
2) The AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM[1] has an entire page on them[2].
3) Australian Geographic (the Australian cousin of National Geographic) has a long post about how they tend to target non-native homo-sapiens[3]
4) This study[4] shows how they are best tracked by indirect means. PDF available at [5]
[1] http://australianmuseum.net.au/
[2] http://australianmuseum.net.au/Drop-Bear
[3] http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2013/03/drop-bea...
[4] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00049182.2012.731...
[5] http://eprints.utas.edu.au/16293/1/2013_Janssen_APAS2013_pro...
[+] [-] uniclaude|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stolio|11 years ago|reply
For increased social cohesion play-fighting over bullshit is better, there's a subtext that the only reason it's worth it is you actually enjoy the company of those around you.
[+] [-] robobro|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IvyMike|11 years ago|reply
http://youtu.be/PQ4o1N4ksyQ
[+] [-] jcr|11 years ago|reply
Hilarious. We're not quite there yet, but soon though. Just wait until we go from predictive search to preemptive search.