Episode 190: We Pod. We Pod-Cast. We Podcast. (Frankfurt's "On Bullshit")

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist, David Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:01:02] Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston. Dave, as the country is erupting and collapsing all around us and all the chickens are coming home to roost, there's only one question I have for you. What is the Very Bad Wizards brand?

[00:01:31] I almost want to pay a branding agency to figure that out for us, but I can't even answer this question because I know it'll be jokey, but it's so cringy to think about what we would do to intentionally brand ourselves. Repugnant.

[00:01:45] But it would be repugnant. That's the one brand that we came up with. In fact, that's the closest to marketing is when we took that one star review repugnant, which seemed to encapsulate us, but as people have pointed out, maybe we're less repugnant as time goes

[00:02:02] on. I don't know. There was that sex robot that turned into dog fucking and juvenile dog fucking. Maybe those listeners have just become so used to... They desensitized. We need people calling us out for violating norms.

[00:02:24] Speaking of branding, I know this isn't a conversation to have now, but we need to get new t-shirts and mugs. We're going to have a focused group of Very Bad Wizards listeners.

[00:02:38] We just need to call in a team of consultants, I think, because they know what they're doing. They're not bullshitting at all. Very nice. That leads us nicely into what we're talking about today. Our brand is Good Segways. So today we are talking about Harry Frankfurt's short article,

[00:03:00] it's an article. It's not a particularly long article that was turned into a book almost 20 years later. It wrote the article in 1986, published as a book in 2005 and it just became a bestseller on... A bestseller. A bestseller. Unbelievable. The greatest trick Harry Frankfurt ever pulled.

[00:03:21] It's convincing the world that his article was a book. I want to pull that trick. And then in the first segment we're going to talk about branding, in particular this document of the University of Oregon brand that we came across when Sanjay Sravastava

[00:03:42] tweeted about it and it is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. My first thought was that it was chilling, but then I realized it's not chilling, it's just hilarious.

[00:03:57] Yeah, Sanjay pointed us to this and I'm going to give a plug for the Black Goat podcast for those of you who are looking for other podcasts. Before we get to that, do you want to talk briefly about what's going on in our country right now?

[00:04:15] Sure. Yeah, so Tamela and I had a discussion about whether we should talk about this or not and it seems like the kind of thing that we'd be tone deaf to ignore, but also the kind of thing that our podcast isn't necessarily about. And so we didn't want

[00:04:30] to have a long discussion about all the shit that's going on now, but it seemed just like the worst kind of silence to not say anything. So for the record, I want to put out there that these last few days, man,

[00:04:44] I don't know, Tamela, we haven't really talked about it, but I've been just feeling completely dejected and sad, angry at what's going on and extra angry at people's responses about what's going on in the nation. And I don't know, like really upset.

[00:05:03] Yeah. So we should it's June 2nd today. This will not come out for another week. So who knows what'll happen by then? Right. Yeah. No, it's really it's horrible and it's exposing this stuff that was here that was always it was already here. And we've known about it.

[00:05:21] And it you know, when I said in the opening, the chickens are coming home to roost. That's what it feels like. It's like we can't turn our head away from this massive issue for much longer because people are just not going to put up

[00:05:37] with it anymore and rightly so, like I just they're not like there's something. I mean, to me, you said something about getting angry at people's reactions to it. And obviously, there are the racists out there and there's Trump who's been even for him just

[00:05:58] so awful in this whole thing just brings out the word here, guessing and like having tanks go down so he can do a photo up by the church that just happened yesterday in a peaceful protest.

[00:06:11] I the thing that I think if the one thing I think there can come out of this, perhaps even though it's such a such a big thing that needs to happen is significant police reform like that. That just has to happen, like taking on police unions,

[00:06:30] increasing the power of civilian review boards that if that needs to come out of that and everyone can talk about like people understanding their own whiteness and all of that, and that's fine. And that's you know, that's but if you want something to get done,

[00:06:46] that's the thing that needs to happen. And that is a really hard thing to do. And it's a really like it's not just a question of electing Biden into office because this shit was going on when Obama was in office. This shit has been going on forever.

[00:06:59] This shit has been going on since we were founded as a country. And the depressing thing is it may very well be as some people have said that that like the number of killings has gone down. But it's sort of beside the point.

[00:07:15] Like I mean, the fact that there still are, you know, not just killings, but incidents of brutality at this rate and targeted at young black men, especially is is something that, you know, part of my sense of being

[00:07:31] dejected comes from, I think I mentioned this in our Do The Right Thing episode, which if you want to hear our sort of take on rioting, I think we had a good discussion about that.

[00:07:43] But, you know, in 1980, I was in Miami and I was like a first grader. And there were riots, really race riots, because there was a black motorist pulled off his motorcycle and beaten by police. And then I was in California in 1992 for the Rodney King riots.

[00:08:01] And to see to see it all just happening again, it's like, yeah. I mean, well, Ferguson. For oh, yeah, I mean, it's in since then, right? Now with with the ability for everybody to have, you know, the Rodney King thing was really incredible that somebody happened

[00:08:18] to be out with a camcorder just at the right time. But that shit is when, you know, when we find one fossil, we know that there are actually probably millions of organisms that didn't fossilize. That's what the Rodney King thing was.

[00:08:31] Like, that was just one incident that happened to be caught. And now we can catch a whole bunch of it. But the Brazen police don't even seem to fucking care. They don't care. That's the thing is they know they're being even now,

[00:08:41] even now when these protests are going on. That's the thing. That's what I mean about like the task being so monumental. It's they their mindset and their training and the way they are. The way self protective, like the loyalty,

[00:08:58] the code that that you won't rat on your police fellow police officer is or just expect anything. But not only will you not rat on them, you won't expect any kind of good behavior. You won't even internally.

[00:09:10] It's one thing not to rat out to, you know, like the media or to the mayor or something like that. It's another thing to not even do something internally. You know, I talked about this in the in my honor book. That's when honor cultures go wrong.

[00:09:25] If there's not going to be if there's going to be a stop snitching code, there also needs to be a self policing code and they don't have that. There's just absolutely don't have that now. And I'm sure it's it's not true for all police,

[00:09:37] but it's true for enough that this keeps happening. And in some ways, if killings have gone down, it doesn't seem like the just day to day hassling of no, not at all. All you have to have is like one black male friend to know this. Yeah. Like literally

[00:09:54] our friend of the podcast, Demani, not too long ago, got a gun pulled. This is the he is a fucking 45 year old nerd. Right. He was with his girlfriend, like going to the beach in Florida and he got pulled over

[00:10:11] and the cop felt the need to draw his gun. This is yes, because it's not somebody there is a kind of training this warrior cop mentality where it's like they're going into Afghanistan or something and dealing with the public that are their enemies.

[00:10:27] Yeah, by the way, also black women, I don't mean to exclude that because they're obviously in black and black trans people too. Who are women or men? Tamar has I don't know why you felt the need to.

[00:10:41] You know, one thing I wanted to say is that there is this. There's always been this debate about whether it is racism, right? Is it that cops are racist? And then. Like the discourse gets centered around that. And I remember after the Ferguson thing,

[00:10:57] I was like telling my my intro psych class, which is fairly large class. And and I usually avoid kind of political talk. You know, I couldn't stop myself from talking about it. But one of the things that I said, which I truly believe is fuck it.

[00:11:11] If you don't want to call it racist, don't call it racist. Like let's find solutions for this because that that argument is one that I think completely not only fails to see the problem, but also actively prevents people from the problem.

[00:11:26] So things like changing the culture of police from the inside and getting better DA's and all that. You know, did you see killer Mike's speech? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, he motivated me for some listeners on Reddit who were talking about my claim to not vote.

[00:11:44] Killer Mike reminded me that things like the right DA's are the kinds of people that we should be voting, right? Like fuck the presidential thing like whatever. But but locally, the DA's who are failing to prosecute on these cases are critical to solving the problem.

[00:12:02] Then we can have the argument about racism or even implicit racism. But let's stop the fucking brutality first by whatever means necessary. But you you have to find a DA, a mayor, a chief of police who has the will to take on the police unions

[00:12:18] and that the political will needs to be in the community to back that, to support those people. The people who are saying like it's not only black people that they're killing are right, even though I think it's missing the point as well.

[00:12:33] It's not they say it almost as if it's like a defense of the police. Like they're killing white people too sometimes. Yeah. But there was this big and H Houston Police Department is not the worst of these of these big city police departments.

[00:12:49] But there was they did a no knock raid on a suspected heroin den, they thought. And it was just this white couple who just got gunned down. And like all the evidence was just then fabricated by the cop.

[00:13:05] It was it was like this massive cover up that was exposed. And before it was fully exposed and like the police union had this guy, Joe Gamaldi said enough is enough. If you're the ones out there spreading rhetoric that police officers are the enemy,

[00:13:23] just know we've all got your number now. We're going to keep track of y'all. We're going to make sure that we hold you accountable every time you stir the pot on our police officers, essentially blackmailing the city or extorting the city.

[00:13:39] And again, this is in defense of an officer who essentially murdered two innocent people and tried to cover it up afterwards. And like for those kinds of people, you just have to be like I and I know that if there are good members of the police force,

[00:13:58] but like, of course, that's like it's beside the point. You know, it's like it would be a ridiculous claim to say that this is all police. Like there is very few times where you say that of any group, right?

[00:14:09] Like it's just missing the point to not say that this is endemic to a particular culture that's common across the the nation. Yeah. And what I hate is, yeah, it's like sometimes people say, well, there was a black police officer who did it.

[00:14:26] Therefore, it's not racist or it was white people who got brutalized. Therefore, it's not racist. It's like, no, can we just can we just stop all of the police brutality? You know, and maybe we'll catch the brutality against like people who are

[00:14:40] mentally ill get very brutalized by police. They're one of the biggest targets. So it's it's it's not all about race in that in the sense of that problem. Yeah. But it's a fucking in the sense of the warrior cop mentality.

[00:14:54] Like I think racism is they are normally racist. But when you take the normally racist, you know, like like as racist as like the average person, when you take that and you, you know, a lot of these neighborhoods, black people are more likely to be poor

[00:15:11] and live in that's right. Her hoods that police are focusing on most. But, you know, if they're white people and in those kinds of neighborhoods, they will fuck with them too. And they may not be as likely to fuck with them, but it's still it's still

[00:15:27] bad and it's still it doesn't mean. But I think the one thing that like the people who are calling attention to the fact that this isn't all a racial problem. Yes, I didn't finish my sentence when I said that because I was starting

[00:15:41] to say it's not all race. It's not all about race. But the problem as it stands now in this country is fundamentally there is a deep problem about race that is being addressed. So I didn't want to like downplay that that aspect. Sorry to interrupt.

[00:15:55] I was just going to say that the one maybe positive thing that people who call attention to that will be it isn't this isn't going to get solved by making police like a little less racist. Like, you know, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yeah.

[00:16:12] That's that's not the way to target this. Like we want brutality to stop. We want it to stop. Is you know, we want it. We see is especially in black communities. But that doesn't mean that making hops less racist is going to solve the problem.

[00:16:27] Like in and moreover, it's unclear how we would make cops less racist. So let's you know, my baby mama, Judith Anderson works in. I think I've mentioned this before in police with police training them to lower their stress response when they're on these calls.

[00:16:45] And so they do these trainings and they're not about race or anything, but they are really meant to reduce the judgmental errors that police make in these sort of high pressure situations. And they are under a lot, a lot of stress.

[00:16:59] And that it's clear that that's the proximal cause of fear and stress. It's proximal cause of these bad judgments. So what they do is essentially just training for how to handle the stress response under these high pressure situations.

[00:17:12] And they have been able to show that you reduce the number of errors in these simulated, you know, like the training where they there's like a hostage crisis or whatever. And so that's I think that's a good way to address the problem

[00:17:25] because you're getting at a cause that might actually be able to be changed. By the way, Watchman is more pertinent than ever. The TV series, which starts with the Tulsa Tulsa massacre. Yeah. So the last thing I'll say is, you know,

[00:17:43] reforming the way they're trained is such a huge part of this. And then there's this guy who killed George Floyd. He was not under a lot of stress. He was he like he looked like as relaxed as like meditators during it.

[00:18:01] So with people like that, and he has had a record of brutality complaints, civilian complaints, reprimands, and he's still out there doing this, like then you do need accountability for like people like that because a training thing is not going to, you know, absolutely. Right.

[00:18:18] This has to be a whole like at the level of one of the things that that, you know, when people talk about addressing it at the level of punishment, of course, and it just makes me sad sometimes that it's harder to address it

[00:18:28] at the level of the cause and prevention. But but it has to be addressed at that level. Like accountability has to happen. It just can't be the only thing because like this guy going to prison is not going to fix the problem.

[00:18:40] Can I say one last thing which really, really got to me is the tendency for some people on social media to tweet against the violence of the riots or post on social media against the violence of the riots, calling out.

[00:19:00] And I'm going to I'll call our names like Lee Jussam did this, calling out saying academics have been silent on the the badness that is the the riots. He said that really. Yeah. Oh my god. Can't we also tweet? You know, Christina has been very vocal in showing

[00:19:19] in posting things that are violent, violent about the riots. But I muted her like I can't like I can't. Yeah. And it got to me because I can't like really talk to her about this. Like, yeah, it's like fine.

[00:19:32] You know, obviously, shit is bad when you have people who are being violent on the streets and there are a lot of people who are trying to stop that who are peacefully protesting. But the way that I feel is you're not allowed

[00:19:44] on my my book of rules, you're not allowed to to speak out against that unless you already spoke out to the injustices like that that caused this to go on. I know that's an arbitrary rule on my part, but I just feel really strongly that it's just upsetting.

[00:19:58] I also think that like, yeah, I think that whole conversation is misguided. Of course, like this isn't like if you're looking at it at the level of strategy, it's not like they're not doing it for strategy. These rioters, they're doing it because they're so angry

[00:20:17] and feel like this problem never gets solved. And whether it's peaceful protest or violent protests, it doesn't matter. Like this does this never changes. This has been going on forever. It doesn't change. It keeps happening.

[00:20:31] And so of course, that's going to lead to a violent reaction sometimes among. I mean, and then, you know, especially if they're like breaking into targets or like Apple stores, I totally I understand it. I know. I do.

[00:20:48] Again, if anybody feels like listening to or do the right thing, so I think that one of the things that we really expressed was like just that I think that that movie is trying to give a deep understanding

[00:20:59] of the kind of frustration that would lead you to be destructive. And it's not that I'm saying like, of course, that's probably not the best strategy right now, but it is in some ways the best expression that's available to some people. And yeah, there's going to be looters.

[00:21:16] I have a friend actually who was in L.A. during he's a black guy in L.A. during the the Rodney King riots, but I didn't know him at that time. And I asked him later on like I met him like two years later and I go,

[00:21:28] hey, where were you during the riots? And he goes, man, peas. We went down to the circuit city, but the cops were already there. Like he was just he was just really just looking forward to getting some free shit. But again, these are people who economically have been

[00:21:46] have been, you know, amongst the most. Right? It's not it's not your. And a lot of, you know, a lot of these people have just lost their jobs in the last two months and they have no money. Yeah. I like look, it's not.

[00:21:59] Yeah, it's the last thing on my mind that that's that's not the problem. That is a symptom of it. And yes, you know what shouldn't happen? Like going into poor communities and the small businesses and burning down like stores for people who are on your side.

[00:22:19] So yes, OK, I do. Like, I do have to say that. That's wrong. I do. I really do. But like other than that, it's the, you know, this is what's going to happen when you have society like this that doesn't seem to care about violence again

[00:22:36] and brutality against against you. It wasn't that Spike Lee hated Sal's pizzeria or Sal. Yeah, right? It was that that was the only way he found to express that rage that I don't know how I don't know how I could handle it if I were black.

[00:22:52] You know, the black people who I know have showed such restraint in at least from my perspective, because I would be like, how dare a police officer do this? I would like be taken into court. But, you know, I the

[00:23:10] then there is this extra little bit of fucked upness with the like white supremacist agitators going in and Antifa. But the terror, I think that's a I think that's a side issue. There's just not enough of those people.

[00:23:25] Like these things are happening in every city and there's just not I think that ultimately this is both peaceful and violent coming from people who really care about this and aren't just in there to like cynically start shit,

[00:23:42] even though that has I'm sure that's happening a little bit. But yeah. All right. Should we talk about something funnier? Yeah, it almost feels weird to switch over to the ridiculousness of the branding statement. So this is the University of Oregon.

[00:24:03] We should say that a lot of universities have this, which is picking this one because I tweeted. Yeah, exactly. I did look to see if we had one. We have something about like a brand, but it's not anywhere near as ridiculous as this one.

[00:24:19] I don't know if Cornell there's a couple of schools at Cornell, Cornell, ILR and Cornell Agriculture, I think who have them, but they are not my schools. And I didn't even bother to read them because I'm sure it would just be cringe-worthy like this.

[00:24:33] So it says brand and style is how it's titled. And it leads off with this. The University of Oregon brand is not something that marketers or communicators made. It's something the university itself made, the students, faculty, staff, alumni and community over the course of its entire history.

[00:24:57] So it just starts out with like a transparent lie, right? Or at least... It's a bold claim. Well, given that the university's been around for all this time and that the culture must have been shaped by all that time, therefore we can say that it's the entire history

[00:25:16] that's influencing the brand. I mean, you can say that, but these people have been brought in from outside. They say that they've interviewed, or no, that this is based on what dozens of students, faculty and staff members told us about the University of Oregon.

[00:25:35] So these are people from outside who interviewed dozens of people to find out what the University of Oregon brand is for their over the course of its entire history. This is... I think I've gone on a rant about focus groups

[00:25:54] but I won't now, but it's smacks of focus groups and the... I can just... Just the claim that bringing in like three people at a time and asking them questions is going to be in any way reflective of... Especially when they're being guided by a brand person

[00:26:15] is ridiculous. But this is true of all these branding companies, man. That's what they rely on. They say in order to develop a brand that's able to flex for different audiences, that's probably a word like some sort of buzzword.

[00:26:29] We had to first define the general tone of our messaging. A baseline personality if you will. Like I don't even know it... Like I can't say I will because I don't know what that means. Like a baseline personality. So we started by identifying several qualities

[00:26:45] that are or should be consistently used as descriptors for our brand. So again, now they're saying like it should be if they're not already. And they selected six words. And the first of the... And these words are irreverent, progressive, extraordinary, alive, natural and inclusive.

[00:27:17] And then they go through... I kind of feel like we should just go through what they say about either. Yeah, and I think that it will obviously put a link to this in our show notes. But the graphic already is made to look like an equalizer,

[00:27:31] like a stereo equalizer with each of the words being on a lever that you can push up or down, which they will actually use that metaphor. It's like moral foundations theory. Oh God. So the first is irreverent. No, this character quality doesn't mean

[00:27:53] we should ever be disrespectful or disparaging. Like who's the no for it? So playful. It reminds us that our brand should not shrink from being bold, unexpected and fearless about challenging convention. We can dial this quality up to create messaging for prospective and current students

[00:28:12] or dial it down for peer donor and key opinion leader audiences. So like for the kind of racist alumni, like maybe tone down the irreverence that the bold unexpected fearless. There is this again, like, and I assume we'll talk about this more, this smack of inauthenticity where,

[00:28:37] I get that naturally, I'm sure you and I, we talk differently to students and differently to our peers and differently to a prospective donor. Like that happens naturally. But to do it so intentionally is what really gets me where you're like, oh, I'm around students.

[00:28:53] It's like that Steve Buscemi meme, hello, fellow kids, hello, fellow children or something. But yeah, I don't even remember. Yeah. All right, so progressive, we never, this is just empty, just purely empty, like means nothing. We take our, we never take our eyes off the horizon.

[00:29:17] We exist as a university to help push humanity forward. We collaborate, innovate and find better ways. Like literally no specific concrete thing about what it would mean to be progressive. Innovate is one of these, innovation and innovate is one of these words that has taken over business speak

[00:29:39] in a way that it's just the perfect, again, I don't think there's a better, this a better intro segment for what we're gonna discuss in the second segment. But innovate is the perfectly vacuous statement where it's if you push people on what they mean

[00:29:55] by innovate, there's no definition. It's just a placeholder word that sounds cool. What about not taking your eyes off the horizon? Like what could they, like what do they even think that means? What could that possibly mean? Exactly, what could it possibly mean? I have no idea.

[00:30:14] All right, let's go to extraordinary because this is a great one, like in a different way. Simply put- This is the one quote that I chose to text back at you when you sent me this. When I said it. That for sentence, go for it.

[00:30:27] Simply put, there is nothing we don't do well here. I also like the second sentence, which is uncommon. It's, is that a complete sentence? It's not, but you know, that's part of their irreverence maybe. Like go back to the first tone word, you know, you forgot about that.

[00:30:46] Dial it down guys, dial it down. Simply put, there's nothing that we don't do well here. This sounds like something that not even Michael Jordan would say. This is like, you can only imagine that this would come out of the mouth of somebody

[00:31:01] who was so insecure that they would feel the need to say that there's nothing they don't do well. You know? It's like, one thing you don't do well is express yourself because- And something we must, they must be comfortable touting. Usually with the help of confident,

[00:31:21] straightforward messaging and unsettled design. We never want to come across as arrogant or conceited. Oh really? You just said there's nothing we don't do well here. This document was not meant for us to see apparently. The last sentence, the last couple sentences,

[00:31:41] we also see this as extra two words ordinary as in more than the usual. Isn't that just what extra- That's just what it means! Exactly. There's more here. This is awesome. This is one of my favorite things I've seen. Thank God for this in this time.

[00:32:00] It's like pointing out something that everybody knows. You know when your kids realize for the first time that something, I can't think of an example right now, but they're like, oh, that word means that because of this. They had that insight about the word extraordinary

[00:32:18] and they thought it was clever to put it in. But I like to say we also see this. It's not just extraordinary. It's extraordinary. It's both things. It's both. We disagree with you. Coincidentally, that word can be divided into two words that we also are alive.

[00:32:41] Okay so this one I actually have a problem with because there's just something about this place. The energy on campus is palpable. The electricity in the air at UO events is astonishing. It comes from everywhere, blah, blah, blah, blah. Alive is about our desire to do, it says.

[00:32:59] Now the reason I have a problem with this, aside from it just being completely empty, is I felt that way and said things like that about the University of Houston campus. And I remember comparing it to the Rice campus and just which felt kind of dead to me

[00:33:16] and whenever I'm at U of H, unlike I'm just walking on campus, I feel like this aliveness that is palpable. So now that's ruined because of this. You know, when I've been on Princeton campus, it feels like people are just struggling to stay alive. It does exactly.

[00:33:37] They're alive but they're just like... It's dull. No there are campuses like that where it's just like walking tombs. Like it's just like a big giant mass grave or something. Yeah, one of the problems with this whole document is that there is sometimes tacit,

[00:33:57] sometimes explicit desire to use these words as something that distinguishes them from every other school that ends up being unwittingly insulting to other schools. Because it's not as if there are other schools that are like this and this is not unique. The whole positioning of this is

[00:34:15] that University of Oregon is unique because it's alive or progressive or irreverent. And that just can't be true and just don't say that it is. Like just, you know. No do because I want more of this. Okay, can I read this next one because it's yet another instance

[00:34:34] of cleverness and quotes. Natural, it's about nature but it's not just about nature. And nature. I tell myself. The second nature is italicized to demonstrate that this is of two different meanings. It's about human nature and the way we interact with each other.

[00:34:59] Now, like again, how is this not true everywhere? You can be doing something well and be intense and in someone's face or you can be relaxed and comfortable in who you are. That's us approachable. That's how University of Oregon carries itself. The more this lever is dialed up,

[00:35:17] the more casual the tone. I don't even like that last sentence. What does that mean exactly? The more I was trying to do it at the end there. Did you notice my voice acting at the end? I was trying to dial up the casual tone.

[00:35:31] Yeah, but then because of you, that's it's about human nature. It's about nature, not just nature. And it's about incomplete sentences approachable. Yes, that's a great one because again, like I have no idea what they're, like what this is supposed to mean.

[00:35:49] Like exactly you can be doing something well and be intense and in someone's face. That doesn't sound casual, right? Or you can be... Not at all. Right, so what? Like I don't get what this tone word is supposed to be.

[00:36:05] I'll be honest, like that one is totally confusing me. The last one is one that like of course every school is gonna have inclusive. The university has a long history of being inclusive from the free speech plaza to the welcoming mentality applied to everyone.

[00:36:22] We pride ourselves in welcoming all kinds. They have a free speech plaza. Right, that sounds very or, I mean this whole thing has an Orwellian kind of feel to it but that sounds especially... Indicating that in other places, free speech isn't as free. This small plaza where there's,

[00:36:39] where people are allowed to say stuff. Can you imagine if it's too crowded and you really wanna say something that's on your mind but you can't? But it's more than that. We don't merely welcome them. We encourage them to collaborate and support each other

[00:36:50] as they discover who they are. A physics student who wants to also major in cinema studies? Sure, come on in. This is like... There's a subreddit called Not Like the Other Girls. Yeah. And that's what it sounds like. Oh, I'm not like every...

[00:37:06] There's a physics student who wants to major in cinema. Oh my God. Whoa. You can't do that right? You can? Oh my God. And note how they switch what it, what I would naturally think of as inclusive,

[00:37:25] which by the way I think is a great thing to have in a statement. But they switched the meaning that everybody's thinking which is inclusive in terms of minority students probably are underrepresented students. And they make it about what major you have and the free speech plaza,

[00:37:40] which is at least mentioned underrepresented minor. I don't know. And I wonder what the percentage of how diverse University of Oregon is in Eugene, Oregon. They have one Indian professor as far as I know. We can say that with absolutely certain. What really gets me about this though

[00:38:01] is in the next section, they represent the various states of the equalizer. So you can imagine the equalizer, they have six levers, they're the six brand words and you can dial it up depending on your audience. So for perspective... It's designed to flex for a different audience.

[00:38:20] It's flexed. So for prospective students, the irreverent dial is all the way up. But what fucks me up is that the inclusive one is dialed nearly all the way down for alumni audience. Are they just saying, like, dude, don't talk about that minority shit

[00:38:41] like in front of people who might give us money? Exactly. That's what I was thinking. Those are the whites. Like don't mess with the white. Yeah, like maybe go extraordinary. Or even extraordinary. Right. Yeah, like you choose. Like we're gonna let you have the...

[00:38:59] We're gonna let you flex on that. Natural or natural? Yeah, this is what actually struck me is the insincere part that bothered me because the rest I could call vacuous. But this part, like I know that you have to talk to people in different ways.

[00:39:18] But this sort of strategic way of dialing up irreverence or dialing down inclusivity is obviously not an expression of the character of a college, whatever the character is. If you can even say that a university has character, then you're not expressing the full character

[00:39:35] that you said they had. This then goes and I sort of wonder, like I can't believe that anybody is taken in by this. But let me just read like a little further on. We need to understand the voice for our brand.

[00:39:55] Like we need to understand the voice for our brand. Like I guess it's for writing copy. I'm picturing Bobcat gold plate. And this was the brand voice that was developed for the UO. So already they're saying it was developed right now. Like they're just admitting right now

[00:40:15] that we developed this external firm developed a brand voice. Well, in conjunction with the entire history. The dozens of... The dozens that represent the entire history. 32 students, faculty and alumni that they interviewed. They're self selected into a panel. Probably filled out like a 10 item survey.

[00:40:38] Is smart, confident, informed and approachable? Like our students, our faculty, our community. It's quote intelligently informal. Like why is that in quotes? I feel like that should be the brand that we go. Intelligent, informally. I really strive to be seen as smart.

[00:40:59] Basically being smart is what's the most important. He says that they say a quick test to see if you're on the right track tonally is to ask yourself, does it sound intelligently informal? I don't know why I wasn't expecting that when I was drinking water.

[00:41:18] We want you to be intelligently informal. What does that mean? Well, here's a way. Does it sound intelligently informal? It's like the worst of virtue theory, you know? When you're like, how do I be a good person? Well think to yourself, what is a good person?

[00:41:31] Am I being a good person? I don't know, ask yourself, are you being a good person? And does it compel you to want to read on? No, honestly what compelled us to read on was something entirely different, but yes. Okay, so then this might be my favorite thing

[00:41:48] in the whole document. So they talk about headlines. Like what you should do for headlines and they have different, like, you know, it's not just a one size fits all. They have like different headlines examples. It has to be flex. It has to be flex.

[00:42:03] So for a quotes, now they also just randomly put things in quotes. For a sense of place in quotes or a location, here's a headline. There's something about this place, everything. Is there an? That's the worst headline. I've ever read. Is there a more contentless headline

[00:42:28] that you could, if you were given like $1,000 to come up with a more contentless head? Yeah, to give a little bit of a preview of the next discussion. At least Dewey defeats Truman was wrong, right? At least that's wrong. Like this isn't even wrong. This is just unclear.

[00:42:48] It's just, it says nothing. I think they think it sounds good, but yeah, it sounds just transparently empty. It's very weird that they would think this is a good headline because I think any journalist who is actually working in making headlines would think this is a terrible headline.

[00:43:07] But what it sounds like very, very clearly is if you read this in commercial speak, it all makes sense. There's something about this place, everything. And with that tone, then at least I get the sense that they're, but for a real headline.

[00:43:26] For University of Oregon research, this is great. This is great. Yet again with their clever wordplay. This is Oscar Wilde coming up right now. I can't, I can't. This one is what made me want to just throw down my iPad. For the University of Oregon research,

[00:43:45] I'm gonna try to get through this. We search, we research. We re-research. I almost made it. I almost did it. Okay. You know, I've mentioned before this, William James wrote a poem while he was under the influence of nitrous oxide and he like published it.

[00:44:12] That, go and read that poem and that's exactly what it sounds like. It's like, it's like somebody got high and thought that this was like a cool sounding. We search, period. We re-hifen search, period. And then we research where research is a full word.

[00:44:30] And it's like that level of cleverness is too much. You know that there was like a fist bump after the person thought of that and like floated it to his supervisor or something. They thought this was their made man moment. This is their masterpiece.

[00:44:46] This is their like, oh man. For Oregon law, notable clients include land, air, water, and food. No idea. See because they're not actually clients, that's just, get it? But like what does that mean? I get that they're not actual clients, but what is that like?

[00:45:09] It's intended to convey, I believe, that they are a law school that focuses on progressive kinds of law, right? So environmental law. They must be that they, this is, they said at least communicated something to me. I don't know if it's right, but it communicated a,

[00:45:26] like unlike the we research, we research. I don't know, it could be like land, like foreclosures. They could be like working on foreclosures, air like funding massive, like, you know, like class action lawsuits against- airline companies. Yeah, water, you know, who knows. Anyway, that's the end.

[00:45:49] And then wait, like this is what they end with. They say, see how this seems to come from the same place? The same voice? They get in your head, make you want to read on. This is what good headlines do. Do this. It's like, it's the most cringe-worthy.

[00:46:08] There was nothing as funny as that and what follows. No, I mean, there is like you could, like it's all kind of brilliant. Like you should definitely go to it. This is where we can really let our intelligently informal brand voice sing.

[00:46:24] And then they just start talking about like people alive. Tamler, very bad wizards, a podcast and a podcast. That's our news. The hyphen, oh, we can include the third one can be italicized, a podcast and a podcast. This is to again bring this back to something serious.

[00:46:54] If I read this in a genuine non-like sarcastic asshole way that we were doing it right now, a way to try to determine how to write something, I don't think I would know. I don't like, I actually don't think that this gave me any concrete ways. No, right.

[00:47:14] It's so vacuous. It's so useless. It's so devoid of like anything concrete or useful for anybody to do anything. It is, it's kind of, that's what's like remarkable about it. It's not even like reprehensible in the way. Like at first I thought it was reprehensible

[00:47:32] but it doesn't have enough just sense. It doesn't have enough meaning to be reprehensible. It's not even wrong as they say. The, this is by the way again, like in some senses I'm fair to pick on University of Oregon because this is what branding companies do.

[00:47:47] And I've had the whatever the opposite of privilege is to work with companies that we were working with at BE Works who also had a branding company like on that project and they were the worst. Like so, I'll give you an example.

[00:48:03] A company like a big hotel company hired an external branding firm to talk, they want to revamp their loyalty plan. And these guys, they like, their idea was for how to get in the headspace of loyalty as a concept. They had like a circular, like a wheel

[00:48:21] with the word loyalty in the middle and a bunch of other words that kind of mean loyalty all like surrounding it. And I was like what, like, how much did you get paid for essentially going to like Rojay's Tessaris

[00:48:35] and like giving me, like that's, it's just built on nothing. So this is bullshit. Now whether, I sometimes wonder what this people because I feel like I can get in the head of, I don't know, like Kim Jong-un better than I can get in the head of somebody

[00:48:55] who does this for a living, you know? Like, but do they believe this? Like, is this a purely cynical enterprise? Like I, if I had to guess, I would say no that they actually think that they're- They have to believe it. Tell them they have to believe it.

[00:49:10] Yeah. Like they have to believe that what they're doing is meaningful and to give a little bit of credit to advertisers and marketing firms and even branding firms that the, there is a way in which, you know, commercials can make you feel an emotion, right?

[00:49:25] They're the best advertising is advertising that makes you feel something. Like it mimics art and then they sneakily make you be a consumer at the end. But this isn't that, and I doubt that branding for most corporations or in this case universities is actually anywhere near that.

[00:49:43] They're not doing art. Right. They're not paying probably, it's not like Apple, you know? Yeah. They're paying like the best people at this to do it. Right. And the audience here is, you know, it's like I was wondering when I was reading it.

[00:50:01] Like so who really is seeing headlines like this? You know, it can't be the school paper or whatever. You know, if this is I guess in newsletters to alumni, does that make them feel good to see this stuff? I don't know. I can't imagine anyone consults this

[00:50:19] like for doing anything. Like this is probably just something that like they hired a company to do and it's, I really can't imagine. Like I would love if we have listeners that work in a company like this and maybe they're not fully on board

[00:50:36] or maybe they are and we're missing something. I would love for you to tell me like how this kind of operation works. Like because I have been lucky enough to not have, to only see this like, you know, secondhand not to be a part of it.

[00:50:53] You know, this is something that we mentioned last time that we were gonna appear on Two Psychologists Four Beers but they didn't release it until now. Now when you hear this they'll have released it. But one of the things, I don't know if it made the edit

[00:51:03] we were talking about the lack of incentive for any of these companies to figure out, to measure whether or not they had success in branding. So like these companies just they're fly, they're not fly by night in the sense of like their, you know, businesses that are standing

[00:51:19] but they drive by, they come, they give input and then they leave and there's nothing ever done to determine whether that was a good branding strategy. And it's hard to know in some cases what it would mean to be a good branding strategy.

[00:51:31] Well, like what I don't understand is why? Like there's so many things at a big university that I don't understand. Like why do they keep revamping like the websites every two years and why do they keep doing these things

[00:51:41] and why are like, it seems like if you were a president you would be like this stuff is bullshit and it costs money. Like I don't get it. In my experience there is a degree of like Sisyphean work that goes on in these places

[00:51:58] where what they want to know, what the VP of marketing wants to know is that you did something and doing something is hiring an external branding company and giving me a final report. Oftentimes again from my experience oftentimes they will commission a report

[00:52:15] just to show that they did and they will heed none of the advice. And it's I think it's especially problematic in bureaucratic companies because I think that like small companies would never put up with this bullshit because they can't afford it. But these are like very big companies

[00:52:31] who have such a strong corporate structure that the way that they communicate is just to show somehow that they were busy. It's crazy. It is, it really is. If people have more documents like this that they can share with us, you need cheering up in times like this.

[00:52:50] So this did the job. It did the job. And I swear to God, if it weren't that people wouldn't understand the reference I would make a podcast, a podcast our next firm. That's what maybe the title or something. Yeah. There we go. Let's get back to have,

[00:53:15] now for now we'll have in the second segment true important philosophy because it will help us analyze what we just read. What we just read. All right, we'll be right back. Today's episode is brought to you by The Great Courses Plus.

[00:53:28] I am very excited to have them as a sponsor. Learning about various perspectives can help us make sense of the world as it changes every day. And The Great Courses Plus is a streaming service that is an excellent resource to expand our knowledge

[00:53:45] on a whole variety of subjects, a wide array of subjects. And you will gain valuable, reliable insights from some of the world's best teachers. Such a fantastic way to keep your minds active while staying close to home, which we now have to do.

[00:54:07] Yeah, I mean so we've actually been talking about The Great Courses Plus and why it might be perfect for our listeners. I know you've been excited about this for a while. One of the things that we were talking about

[00:54:18] is one of the most frequent emails that we get is something along the lines of could you do an episode that's kind of like a primer to introduce us to a bunch of, to the topics that you cover because a lot of what we say might be

[00:54:35] something that you only pick up if you're taking a philosophy course and we're never gonna do an episode like that. Yeah, that's not what we do. All right, but The Great Courses Plus is a great way to just get your foot in the door to learn some philosophy.

[00:54:49] So they have a course called The Great Ideas of Philosophy that just takes you through the history of philosophy at least from the Western philosophical tradition from Plato to Voltaire and beyond. You can learn more about Kant than even we know. If you dig down deep.

[00:55:06] Even Kant specialists like us, yeah. Even Kant specialists like us. I have a special bond to this. Now, this is The Great Courses Plus streaming app and also the website, but I used to listen to cassette tapes back in the day on classical music

[00:55:24] and it was really the first time in my life that I appreciated classical music which is something that you need a course to get you just give you the basics so that you can understand what's going on and that just opens the door for greater appreciation.

[00:55:39] Yeah, and it's not just audio, it's also video. They have an Apple TV app where you can stream video so you can watch it as a family if you want. And you get all the unlimited courses for a monthly fee except Great Courses Plus is offering our listeners

[00:55:54] an entire month for free to start your free months trial. You have to use that special URL Thegreatcoursesplus.com slash wizards. Thegreatcoursesplus.com slash wizards. Go there, just try it out for a month, you know, for free. You have nothing to lose there

[00:56:18] and learn something about a topic that you didn't know enough about to fully appreciate. Our thanks to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this episode of Very Bad Wizards. Seven minutes of not being able to breathe, not being able to move. Welcome back to Very Bad Wizards.

[00:57:47] This is a time where we like to take a moment and thank all the people who have reached out to us in all the different ways that you do, whether to criticize us, to thank us, to, I don't know, interact with us. It's really, really nice.

[00:58:04] We just got an email right before recording where somebody said, thanks, you've gotten me through some tough times and that was it. And like, that kind of message is so meaningful to us. Like, I don't know. You got me through some shit.

[00:58:16] Like, that's the best thing you can hear. Like, I really, you know, like, do you ever get that from students that will sometimes write you and just like, you know, students in a big class that you might not have even known and they'll take a moment?

[00:58:32] It's so meaningful. Like, and I don't think I ever did that. I mean, there was no email really when I worked at undergrad, but like, I feel terrible about not having done that. I was lucky enough to have a small college

[00:58:47] where I could be in contact with the professors afterwards and did that, like, I was able two years after. But yeah, the students, I always write back, I don't think you realize how much this means to us professors to hear and things.

[00:59:03] And same is true for a lesson. Like, totally. Like, it's great. And if you would like to get in touch with us for any reason, not to thank us, to tell us we're totally full of shit, that we're bullshit-ers. Bullshit. You can email us, verybadwizards.com.

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[01:00:00] in more tangible ways, we really appreciate it. You can go to our support website, verybadwizards.com slash vvw slash support, I believe. No, no, slash vvw support. You'll find it, there's a link. Just go to the homepage and click support. Just go to our homepage.

[01:00:19] You can support us by making a one-time donation or a recurring donation on PayPal, especially if you're at a place that doesn't accept Patreon. But you can become one of our Patreon patrons, which we really, really appreciate. Appreciate so much that we just the other day

[01:00:37] finished recording the long-promised episode on The Leftovers. Yeah, and it was a long-promised, long episode. And we don't edit those. Yeah, so there you go. I don't know if it's a gift or... A burden. A burden, but that will be posted soon, right?

[01:00:58] Yeah, it'll be posted before this is posted. So it'll be up. And we also, for our beloved, are they especially beloved, our $5 per episode listeners? I might say... I don't, you say it, I don't like to say that because times are tough for some people.

[01:01:19] So there you go. Everybody is beloved, but they will get to vote on one of our topics that we selected in the opening segment last time that we're all suggested by all of our Patreon supporters no matter what level of support. Tons of good suggestions,

[01:01:37] I'm sure we'll get through a bunch of different topics. I think on bullshit came out of this one time maybe. Yeah, yeah, I think that's, that might be true. It definitely came from a listener and so... Yeah, we appreciate it. It's always fodder for like the next year.

[01:01:55] And you know, listen, we always have this section asking for this support if you're able to do it, but we are committed to always making our podcast free. I think it was that a subtweet of that. It was a subtweet. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:02:17] Yeah, it's okay soon we'll be completely thrown off the charts because Joe Rogan is going to Spotify. Everybody's gonna follow and nobody's gonna listen to us anymore. Yeah, no, I know. Like that's the new thing. Can we promise we'll never do that only be available on Spotify?

[01:02:33] I will never only be available on Spotify unless they give me a hundred million dollars. Yeah, then we might be, you know, like we'll figure that. I don't think Spotify is interested. But I think we're gonna have to face that model. I haven't checked my spam filter.

[01:02:49] So, you know, before I say that they didn't email us like I got it. Spotify is a good deal though, you know. All right, so let's get to on bullshit. This was, I think the story of this, it's a little like the, you know,

[01:03:05] the Getty or article that three page article that ended up getting Getty or tenure and like, you know, being cited 50 trillion times. It's like the story behind it is as interesting if not more interesting than the thing itself. Although I think it's a really good piece.

[01:03:24] It was an article that he published in a quarterly, which I don't have in front of me right now, in 1986. And then in 2005, he, somebody had him turn it into a book which then became a best seller for Princeton University Press. Like, I don't exactly know why

[01:03:47] or what the like how that all came together and what the, but it's kind of amazing. It's like. The title was something, like I really wonder because as we'll discuss this is, he's doing actual analytic philosophy here. And I wonder how many people bought it thinking

[01:04:05] that it would be something that it's not actually. That one day that too. So Harry Frankfurt is, he's a Princeton University professor on that dead campus. Almost no, almost. It's dying. Yes. And he's a big contributor and kind of foundational contributor

[01:04:25] to the modern free will moral responsibility debate. He, of course, is behind Frankfurt cases. He used them in a very famous paper called Moral Responsibility and Alternate Possibilities or the reverse of that, I don't remember. But although he was not a contributor to the industry

[01:04:46] that became of Frankfurt cases, he didn't really write much about it. And then also another paper on free will, Freedom of the Will and the concept of the person, which I think is actually kind of a brilliant essay introduced the idea of higher order,

[01:05:01] higher order desires and higher order volitions being more, it's easier to consider us responsible or free for those. And it just introduced a new way of thinking about free will and moral responsibility that was legitimately valuable. And maybe one day we'll do that paper

[01:05:22] because it's actually, it's not as clear cut as it gets presented in the secondary literature. Do you know, I don't remember if we've talked about this, but my dissertation in graduate school ended up being essentially Harry Frankfurt inspired. Really? That paper, yeah. It was all on meta desires.

[01:05:47] I ended up publishing it with Eric Ollman and Peter Salve. It's on meta desires and judgments of responsibility. And I, unabashedly to, I mean, accredited Frankfurt, but unabashedly was influenced by him. He also turned that into another interesting line of research on authenticity, which is also maybe-

[01:06:10] Oh, interesting. Yeah. I would love, I don't know that work. I don't think, I would love to talk. Authenticity is something that I always, there's a lot of bullshit about it, but there's always like, I have the temptation to read something good and discuss it. Yeah.

[01:06:24] And I actually don't, like I don't remember. I don't even know if I've read that stuff. I just know that he's done it. I know that people are respect like it. So this is unbullshit. It's an interesting kind of article, right?

[01:06:37] It's not, I don't think there's a single, I guess there's citations, but not really. There's like the, yeah, I don't think there's a citation or a footnote. I mean, he definitely quotes a couple of people. Yeah. But there is no, you know,

[01:06:56] maybe this is the book version that I'm reading. Like he definitely quotes the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, no, no, I think I looked into this. They're exactly the same, the book version and the article version. Yeah. And it's like an old time philosophy article,

[01:07:11] like the Bertrand Russell used to write in the vein of In Defense of Idleness where it's not in a literature that it is trying to contribute to. It is just thinking of a concept or a topic and reflecting on it and exploring it. And the topic is bullshit.

[01:07:31] And he says at the start that we don't have a theory of bullshit. And we're not, this is very important. We probably wouldn't be discussing this if he didn't say this. He says, we're not gonna come up with necessary and sufficient conditions

[01:07:47] for it will just be arbitrary at that point. But we can through this kind of exploration get at, you know, I don't know how, how literally to take this, but something about the essence of bullshit. Yeah, or at least exploring it.

[01:08:06] Right, at least the core of what we mean. Right, the big assumption is that these words mean things and that we deploy them in situations that are similar to each other. Or again, not situations that you could define clearly

[01:08:20] with clear boundaries, but that we deployed as a concept even though we don't have a well worked out theory of what it is. And the question, how are we deploying this? Like what are we saying when we say that something is bullshit is I think an interesting one.

[01:08:35] I agree with you though that had he not said that because he flirts with it. He flirts with it. He still flirts with it, but it was important that he says that. He was important for me that he said. That he wasn't working.

[01:08:49] He also started out, like I don't know if you were gonna get to this, but the very first sentence is that one of the most, he says, one of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this.

[01:09:00] Each of us contributes his share. Each of us contributes his share. And I don't even know what it means to say there's a lot of bullshit because in reference to what? Like I guess, like everything we discussed in the first segment about the,

[01:09:14] like I would classify that as total bullshit. So there is a lot if we're counting that, but are we bombarded by bullshit? One of the things that's interesting about the def, not a definition, but at least a kind of account of it,

[01:09:27] a loose account of bullshit that he ends up with is I'm not sure if actually what we discussed that branding document would count as bullshit, even though it clearly seems to me to be bullshit. So I think there is something maybe that his account is leaving out.

[01:09:46] He has a section that is almost intended to capture this, but then he kind of contradicts himself. One of the things about bullshit being common today though it seems very prescient given when he wrote this in 1986. Why is there so much bullshit?

[01:10:04] Of course, it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at any other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. But then he says, I will,

[01:10:18] I've mentioned a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it is currently so great. Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Now, if you think about that sentence and then you think about social media

[01:10:33] and how that magnified just multiplied the circumstances where people are required or at least motivated to talk. That's what I was gonna say. It's funny that he couldn't have known that there would be so much opportunity in a non-required way to spout bullshit.

[01:10:51] And then he says later on in that paragraph, closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least anything, everything that pertains to the conduct of his country's affairs.

[01:11:10] Again, you kind of feel like you have to talk even if you don't know what you're talking about. There's pressure on people to do that. That's why people feel like they should answer survey questions that they actually don't know anything about. Slate Star Codex had a post that,

[01:11:28] I don't know if it's new or not, but my student, or Paul Bloom who loves him sent it to me where it's like when you ask people... That's a match made in heaven. Yeah. So it's different. When you ask people about and then insert fake event,

[01:11:44] they just claim to know about it, right? It's like rather than going out of your way to say I don't know. I imagine that's around for a long time. It's reading this and knowing that it was written when it was,

[01:11:58] it made me realize, and this happens every so often, that a lot of the things that we think are new and specific to our age are really not. And like this can happen if you read or like Voltaire. Yeah, like this, or Plato, or like, you know,

[01:12:14] like this shit has been going on forever and it will continue to go on. The population is larger and the ability to communicate with each other is greater. And so, but the spirit of nonsense has been around. I mean that was true when the printing press

[01:12:30] was at an event too, like that was like no different than the internet and people had the same thoughts and it was bringing out the same kinds of dynamics. All right, so let's get, we are dancing around what bullshit is. And part of that is because he also...

[01:12:46] He doesn't... It takes him a while. I know, when I was talking to you, I was saying that this is one of the biggest pieces of advice that I ever get is to say what you mean to say in your paper early, like, you know,

[01:13:00] and to first paragraph tops. And he just does not care about that. Definitely not about that. It's not that style of essay, which again, I kind of appreciate just that it's not going, it's not boilerplate. It's not like, you know, according to this structure,

[01:13:16] which is fairly boring structure off and like, he's kind of wandering. Yeah, I will admit that I was frustrated because I thought that I was missing the point because maybe as a result of the common structure, I like read six pages and I'm like,

[01:13:34] I don't like, what is this about? What... Well, it starts out weirdly as he goes into a definition of humbug. Yeah, because he did a literature search for one paper. Right. And then he found a source, the prevalence of humbug by Max Black.

[01:13:55] And I just really quickly read this sentence right before he says that, I have not undertaken a survey of the literature, partly because I do not know how to go about it, which is the biggest skirting of... Really? You're a scholar.

[01:14:12] That's another thing that you can't get away with right now, right? Can you imagine reviewer three? I just don't know how to use JSTOR, you know. Sorry. So he goes through this definition of humbug, deceptive misrepresentation short of lying, especially by pretentious word or deed

[01:14:34] of somebody's own thoughts, feelings or of attitudes. And then kind of goes through it, I guess to see to what extent this would have, that definition would work for bullshit. Deceptive misrepresentation short of lying, so it's not the same as lying, which will be important,

[01:14:52] especially by pretentious word or deed. He has something interesting to say there. He says, bullshit is like, it can be pretentious for sure. A lot of bullshit is pretentious, but the fact that we say pretentious bullshit means that it's not part of its essence,

[01:15:09] which I think is right. Trump, who is a top of the line bullshit, or he's not pretentious. So he goes through it kind of, I don't know, says what relations they might have with bullshit, but he's very, he's like dancing around it, he's flirting.

[01:15:27] It's weird that he started with somebody's depth. I get what he's doing. This is the kind of work that I understand he would be doing mentally to try to pull apart. But like to start with this guy's definition of humbug

[01:15:41] and then write all the things that you disagree. This is like eight or nine pages before. That's what we're saying. So this is like an actual 20 page PDF document. I put a link in show notes. And it's funny because it's short,

[01:15:56] but what's even funnier is how much shorter it could have been. So yeah, he's very coy. It's like he's kind of coy about it. And then he tells the story about Wittgenstein. Now I would think Wittgenstein here, just based on what you're doing,

[01:16:14] you're looking at language, you're trying to figure out, but it has nothing to do with any of his views on language or family resemblance or anything like that. It is a story of him, what was the woman's name? Pascal. Pascal, right. Yeah, I'll read it.

[01:16:32] I had, as she says, I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn nursing home feeling sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called, I croaked, quote, I feel just like a dog that has been run over. He was disgusted.

[01:16:47] You don't know what a dog that has been run over feels like. Which is, yeah, it's a point that can be made without the anecdote. Well, yeah, also like it's a weird story about Wittgenstein which he declines to interpret like was he kidding? He says maybe.

[01:17:06] But he just a total asshole. But he dedicates a whole paragraph to whether or not we should take Wittgenstein literally in this, it's like. I actually don't, this is one of the most, if I had to pin down the most confusing part of this essay

[01:17:19] it's the relevance of the story which takes up a few pages to what he's talking about. I guess it's an introduction to the idea of unconcern or unconnected to a concern for truth but I just, it doesn't seem like that's what she was doing

[01:17:38] and he seems to recognize. Like she's just saying something. She feel, you know, you see a dog that's been run over and you like, she's just making an analogy. As he says, sometimes people will say I'm sick as a dog.

[01:17:50] You don't know what a sick dog feels like. Yeah, I mean, I feel like shit, right? Right, exactly. You don't know what shit feels like. If you're gonna police all that kind of language then nothing. But what's the point of the, like I guess the idea is really

[01:18:05] it's all leading up to this idea of unconnected to a concern for truth but. Yeah, the sort of, the sort of like negligent or reckless use of things that aren't true without concern. So yeah, every time we use a metaphor as Frank himself points out,

[01:18:30] we would be accused of this. But if we're loosely using language like that, maybe it perhaps is that attitude that a bullshitter magnifies. Right, I guess. Yes, I guess. By the way, just I'm curious. Do you know the word pleonastic? No, I meant to look it up.

[01:18:49] I had to look it up. It's using too many words to describe something like the use, the overuse of words to just like. So like literally. What's the context? So deceptive misrepresentation is the phrase and he says this may sound pleonastic

[01:19:05] and that's referring to the fact that misrepresentation is already deceptive, right? So you're using too many words for them. So like redundant kind of. Yeah, but I was like, you can't use the word pleonastic right after you talked about pretentiousness. Or you can't. Or you can't.

[01:19:22] You're a best seller. Best seller. Best seller. Oh my God. That's a frank for it. Like look at the numbers, look at the scoreboard. Where's your best seller? That's right. I like to picture Frankfort running down the sideline like Michael Jordan and shrugging his shoulders.

[01:19:44] Like I don't know. It's just going in. I wrote an article. I know it's gonna be a best seller. I can't mess. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, so he, I guess he says like Pascal's Wittgenstein does not intend to accuse her of lying

[01:20:03] but of misrepresentation of another sort. She characterizes her feeling as the feeling of a run over dog. She's not really acquainted however with the feeling this to which this phrase refers. It's just and then she's. It is for this mindlessness that Pascal's Wittgenstein chides her. Yeah.

[01:20:22] To the Wittgenstein and Pascal's story judging from his response, this is just bullshit. So now maybe if you're trying to be as charitable to Wittgenstein here, like he's saying that this is a little like the bullshit of the branding document which is it just doesn't mean anything.

[01:20:40] It just means I feel really bad. But it's not and it's not attempting to like illuminate exactly how bad she feels. It's hard because like to me, it is communicating more than that branding document because she is saying I feel bad

[01:20:56] and to give you a sense of how bad I feel in comparison to other times I've felt bad. I'm gonna use this turn of phrase. So it seems like it's communicating something for real. I agree. And he's just, you know, I can imagine Wittgenstein being just somebody

[01:21:11] who is too literal maybe, you know, like that kind of person. It would, this would be a fun like play to write which is their interactions. Pascal and Wittgenstein. Have you ever read Wittgenstein's poker by the way? Yeah, I did actually, but a long time ago

[01:21:29] but it was like 10 years ago, 15 years ago. But yeah, I have it in my office. The last thing I'll make to a paper that I actually like is that this does, this section reads like he sent it in and they said, we love it.

[01:21:45] Can you just make it like five more pages? It's like, yeah. Everything that we tell our students not to do. Like I tell, that's the one thing I like, that's not the one thing, but it's one of the things

[01:21:58] I was like, I don't want to see you padding a page. I would much rather it's like three pages under like my recommended page thing than to have you pad it with bullshit. With bullshit. Right, bullshit. Exactly, yeah. But this isn't bullshit. He's trying to make a point.

[01:22:13] It's just a long point which is the cavalier attitude towards truth is something that he's trying to introduce as something that he will flesh out a bit later. But I like, do you think she was bullshitting there? No. Because I don't at all.

[01:22:27] Not at all, not at all. I mean, it's only in as much as all use of metaphor is cavalier about truth. Cause it is cavalier about literalism because it is intentionally eschewing. That's how you say the word. So yeah. Nice. Speaking of pretentious.

[01:22:46] Then he talks about a bull session. So we are hovering around this concept without fully still landing on any kind of real stand taking a stand about it. Once again, my metaphor of the break dancer in us going around in a circle

[01:23:02] without hitting the floor is like going. That's exactly right. I didn't know what a bull session was. I've never heard that used. I have. I don't know why. Like, I don't know if I read it in books or a five ever.

[01:23:17] But like, I get the idea of it, which is, all right, which looks like spitballing, I think is the idea. Let's just throw shit out there, see if it sticks. You know in 12 angry men that marketing guy, I think who's always like using these,

[01:23:33] let's run it up the flagpole and see if people salute it. Let's put it in a saucer, see if the cat drinks it up. That kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, makes sense. Yeah. And then also like he talks about like the drudgery

[01:23:50] and bull in a military police life. He quotes this guy, I don't know what the first name is, Baron, all that sorts of bull. And he says here are the term bull, evidently pertains to tasks that are pointless in that they have nothing much to do

[01:24:05] with the primary intent or justifying purpose of the enterprise which requires them. Thus the unnecessary routine tasks or ceremonial that constitute bull are disconnected from the legitimating motives of the activity upon which they intrude. Just as the things people say in bull sessions are disconnected from settled beliefs

[01:24:26] and as bullshit is disconnected from a concern with the truth. So now we're getting somewhere, it feels like. Here's the thing that popped into my mind when he talks about the unnecessary routine tasks, ceremonial or pointless tasks that have nothing much to do with the primary intent.

[01:24:46] Have you ever like sat through sexual harassment like training sessions or seminars? I don't know if that's the grip of example that we'd wanna use but I totally know what you mean. So and like the number one thing you would say

[01:25:03] about those things is that they're bullshit, right? They were told, like the universities have been told to deal with this problem. Right, not that the advice itself might not be worthy but that the whole endeavor, yes. The whole endeavor reeks of bullshit.

[01:25:22] Because it reduces sexual harassment by like zero, by zero percent. I actually felt the one that I can recall I felt so bad for the woman who came to train us because part of what she was trying to express was implicit attitudes, implicit bias

[01:25:42] and she was just in a room full of psychologists. I would do it, she was sweating a little bit. But here's the thing, is there an unconcern for truth in those things? I don't think so. Like I think people's intentions are good. It's a non-concern with time.

[01:26:00] That's what I feel like it's nice. With your time. Yeah, but I don't think pomp and circumstance is... I get what he's trying to say but I would never use that as a central example of bullshit. But see, I would, to me,

[01:26:18] that is a prime example of bullshit that you have to go through. If somebody asked me how is that sexual harassment seminar? I was like, you know, it was bullshit but what are you gonna do? But at the same time, I think that the intentions behind it

[01:26:34] are at least for the people who are running it good. Yes, that's why I resist it. Yeah, but that still doesn't... This is what I mean. I still think it's still bullshit even though so I might have a... And again, unconcern for truth,

[01:26:51] that's not what makes it bullshit. It's that it's not gonna do anything is the thing that makes it bullshit and it is a little bit foreshadow. It is a little bit like, you know, okay, we check this box. There's a...

[01:27:05] It reminds me of another way in which I would use bullshit which is imagine that you're in a group of friends and you tell one of them or even maybe a child but maybe it wouldn't occur. But you tell one of them to do something and they complain.

[01:27:23] Now their complaints are stupid and they're just trying to skirt what they have to do. I would say quit your bullshit without meaning that they were cavalier with truth, that they were just being dumb. Like the thing... They're stalling. The complaints were true.

[01:27:44] They don't wanna do it for that reason but they have no good reason to be telling me that. Like you are wasting my time and that's the sense in which like you're wasting my time kind of thing. And that's the thing that like that this is ineffective

[01:27:59] and it's kind of obviously ineffective. So I think that's the way in which those things are bullshit. Time wasting I think is a big part of bullshit. Time, energy, wasting like... Like an idle use of words. It's idle. It's not misrepresenting or cavalier with the truth.

[01:28:18] It's just idle and it's idle in a way that's annoying. Let me just say by the way some sexual harassment training might work, I don't know. And we probably need it anyway but hopefully you know what we mean. Insert bullshit session. I'm not gonna issue that caveat.

[01:28:35] I think those things are total. Well do you know that doesn't work? Do you have data on that it doesn't work? Like I don't think there's data on whether it works or not. I so... So that's why I say... I'm willing to take a stand

[01:28:47] and use human judgment. I believe that a lot of people think it's bullshit but I do hold on to the possibility that maybe one soul was made to consider whether or not in that video where the people are poorly acting and somebody says...

[01:29:05] I would love for this podcast to get my hands on one of those videos. They do things like... Like somebody closes the door and they pause the video and they're like, okay, what did he do wrong? Well that's part of it too is the infantilizing part of it.

[01:29:24] The way they speak to you like your children and like there's just... It's like everyone is expected to go through the ceremony, like a ritual and maybe there's something... Maybe there's something valuable about it but I don't think there's something valuable about it

[01:29:39] when it comes to reducing sexual harassment. If everybody there thinks that what they're doing is going through the motions in order to check like a box in like the whatever university accreditation then yes, like that's total bullshit. It's bullshit. But still not disconnected from a consumer for truth.

[01:29:58] Right, not what Frankfurt thinks to bring it back. Not what Frankfurt seems to land on for bullshit. Yeah, okay. Finally we get to like the... I think the big thing that this article and then best-selling book is... And who knows, maybe it'll be a movie soon.

[01:30:13] Like a Hollywood blockbuster. The principle of alternate possibilities was his first hit now. Harry Frankfurt brings you... That was his like memento, like kind of a smaller like art house and then like this is his inception. His dark night. There's horns in the preview.

[01:30:39] So the difference between lying and bullshitting is I think the big thing that this article is justly famous for. This is what like a philosopher can do sometimes. Like just draw attention to like a distinction that maybe a lot of people are thinking

[01:30:54] they're more or less the same thing. So he says, the liar is inescapably concerned with truth values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. In order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood

[01:31:07] under the guidance of that truth. On the other hand, a person who undertakes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. And so like the bullshitter is unconcerned with truth whereas the liar is actually very... is actually respects the truth

[01:31:21] in the sense that they are then going to go against it. Right, respected in the sense that they admit that there is a truth and they know it and they believe it and they're intentionally deceiving. Which by the way, he talks about Augustine's discussion of lying

[01:31:40] and I think he says that the final category for Augustine is people who lie for no purpose whatsoever. Like they're just like lying for the sake of lying. And that's true lying, he says. That's the only real lie, the real liar.

[01:31:56] So did he say that's not bullshit, the real liar? No, he said that that's just really rare that somebody just lies for the sake of for the intrinsic pleasure of lying. Yeah, I know a couple of people who do that. He does.

[01:32:10] Yeah, like just it seemed like lying was just a sport. Like it's crazy. And it's like, wait, why would you make that up? It's like me telling you, like, hey, by the way, I went to Target right before we started and it wasn't true.

[01:32:25] Like why would it matter? It's crazy. I went to Target, I got some paper towels and some dog food. Yeah, no, you didn't. But that seems like bullshit to me. To do that? Yeah, lie for the sake of lying.

[01:32:39] I don't know, it just seems like a very weird liar to me. It's wasting my time. That's what I feel. That's what I feel like it's bullshit. It's our contribution to this discussion is that we have found a new criteria for bullshit

[01:32:52] and that is just a complete disregard for what time is and what priorities are. And that's something very distinctive about you too, is that that's the thing that you hate the most is people taking up your time. I've had friends, unnamed friends

[01:33:11] who have lied to me in a manner that requires me to, because I believed the lie, to be on a conversation for like two hours talking them down. And it turns out that the event that had bothered them never occurred.

[01:33:25] Like to me, that's just like the worst use of my mental resources. Like... I don't mind recording for three hours with you. So here's another interesting distinction. The fact about himself that the liar hides, you can tell this is written in the 80s

[01:33:44] because he's not even trying to like switch the key sheets. Yeah, exactly. You know. He didn't go through that training, Tam. I believe that... The fact about himself that a liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality.

[01:34:02] We are not to know that he wants us to believe something that he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshit or hides on the other hand is that the truth values of his statements are of no central interest to him.

[01:34:16] What we are to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor conceal it. Yeah, so the bullshitter can say a bunch of stuff that turns out to be true. And it doesn't even matter if they were saying it because it's true. It's just...

[01:34:37] And it's amongst a string of things that might be false. But the concern is never whether it's true or false. It's in just communicating this bullshit. Right. There is intention behind it, but the intention... Or usually there is. Some people just love it for art for art's sake.

[01:34:58] The bullshit artist is like... But it's just a total disregard for whether what you're saying is true or not. And this is... Yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say like... And I know people have made this comparison before, but nothing describes Trump better.

[01:35:15] Yeah, that's exactly what I was gonna say. Right. And this is... I think even the people who support him know that this is the case. And the only argument that they might have is that it's not a big deal that he does this

[01:35:30] because he's doing it for some reason and therefore it's okay. But it is a utter disregard for what is true. Some of the things that he says, you could just tell because he will switch the thing that he says with no compunction without saying I was wrong. Right?

[01:35:46] No, never. No, I mean, like this is not a time where it's funny at all. This is a time where it's horrifying, but there are times when it's really funny. And there are times where... I haven't followed him on Twitter,

[01:36:00] but there was a time where I would go to his Twitter feed every once in a while just to see what bullshit he was saying. And it is such a flagrant lack of regard for the truth. He's not even pretending to care about whether it's true or not.

[01:36:15] Like there's almost something honest about it, something sincere about what he's doing. A weird kind of sincerity, right? He's like, I'm a phony and you know I'm a phony. There is no pretense that what's involved in a lie is an intent to deceive. So with some rare exceptions,

[01:36:34] if I think that you know that what I'm saying is not the truth, then I would feel like I failed as a liar. But if I know that you know it's not true, I know it's not true, everybody knows it's not true,

[01:36:44] then and we're going through the motion, it's bullshit. Yes, in contrast, and I think this is one of the reasons for his appeal among is that a lot of politicians aren't doing that. They are bullshitting. They will say anything, but the pretense is that they're being sincere,

[01:37:03] that they are caring about the truth. And even if it's obviously not the case, they pretend that it is the case. And with Trump, it's like that's gone. Right. And if there's anything that's almost admirable about him as a politician is yeah, there isn't that pretense

[01:37:22] to caring about the truth. I would not use the word admirable, but I know what you mean. Well, so maybe it's not even bullshit because what Frankfurt says, or at least according to his definition, is that he is trying to deceive you about the fact

[01:37:44] that truth values are of no central interest to him. And I don't think he's even trying to do that. Yeah, no, you're right. Like I think that a lot of people, even when they say they believe him, what they believe is the spirit of his message

[01:38:06] because they've learned that they can't believe the actual content of the message. They just agree with what he's trying to express and they make excuses that way. So maybe for them, to them it isn't bullshit. To us, it might be bullshit

[01:38:21] because we think that he is spouting off in order to persuade those people. Or maybe bullshit doesn't have that condition. Maybe bullshiters can kind of be that flagrant about it. It's just rare. It's like the liar who lies for the sake of lying. Exactly, Augustine's type eight liar.

[01:38:42] I wanna know what the other seven read. In Augustine? Yeah. He's finally gotten to what he thinks bullshit is. And then he goes in and this gave me the sense that this is why he was writing this the whole time.

[01:38:58] I don't know if we wanna skip to this part, but when he discusses why bullshit has proliferated. Tamler, you already said one of the conditions where bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. The second one is, he says,

[01:39:18] the contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. And he calls these anti-realist doctrines

[01:39:35] that undermine competence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. So that to him, that disrespect which he's clearly talking about academics think that don't, it's not that they're indifferent

[01:39:56] in the emotional sense to truth. It is that they have decided that truth can't be something to strive for. And because of that, they've switched the goal of discourse or of whatever, of pursuing what it is they're pursuing. And he says that instead of pursuing objective correctness

[01:40:16] they're pursuing an ideal of sincerity in the sense that they are sincerely trying to communicate their subjective experience. And he says that that, he then goes on to criticize that before we get to the criticism. This is a blow at what departments, that again like what you said,

[01:40:41] it's clear that this was already happening in 1986. There were a ton of people who might have been spouting the kind of academic bullshit that he's railing against. If anything I think it was more prevalent then because there wasn't as big an emphasis on like STEM or that.

[01:40:58] So like I think that was, it's maybe a little past the height of that stuff. And I think Rory might have been at Princeton at the time that he was writing this. And I don't know if that's an attack on Rory. It's like a beef.

[01:41:16] Yeah, this could be kind of a beef about that. I mean, this is an old debate that goes back to Plato and the Sophists who thought that truth is relative. And so what matters is that you persuade people. That is the goal of discourse.

[01:41:35] That is what we should be training our youth to do. Cause that's how you can acquire power. And that's how you can be successful. And Socrates in Plato's dialogues argues against that. This is old and I think,

[01:41:54] I actually think there's a lot to be said for both sides. I've been reading a good amount of Rory. They're good people on both sides. There's good people on just like Charlottesville. There's good people on both sides. No, I think like Rory also Nietzsche, right? Like the perspectivalism,

[01:42:14] like there are some good philosophical arguments for that point of view. And there is a kind of leap of faith you need to make to think that what we're getting at, given our limited perspectives is some kind of objective reality.

[01:42:29] You just have, it's inescapable that you have to, whether it's the problem of induction or whether it's the problem of, I think at the deepest level of like what's, science criticism and Thomas Kuhn, philosophy of science and all of that like. So this is the very thing that,

[01:42:50] the fundamental thing that you and I disagree about. And I am here on Frankfurt side, because I think that to the extent that anything like those endeavors are valuable, they're only valuable because there is a belief that some things are objectively true that can be sought after, right?

[01:43:08] And so at least this is also what Frankfurt seems to believe because he says that convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things. He says to himself to being true to his own nature.

[01:43:21] It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself. But he goes on to say, you have to have a belief that being true to yourself is capturing something

[01:43:35] that is actually true and in some sense objectively true. Yeah, I just don't. So my problem with the end of this, I don't know if we have a fundamental disagreement about that, I don't know if I, where I stand exactly. It's a fundamental disagreement of emphasis for sure.

[01:43:53] Okay, here's what I'll say before, sorry, letting you. You think it's a leap of faith and I think it's a little step of faith that causes Zeno's paradox to be resolved, right? That last step you take might cover infinite amounts of halves but it doesn't matter.

[01:44:08] I don't think that it's that much of a leap to believe that there is objective reality. Right, so okay. This is a different podcast because I don't think like, I don't think even like the Nietzsche's and the Rorties of the world are denying

[01:44:23] that there is an objective reality, just more it's an epistemological problem of how we're to understand it. That's right, whether it's epistemological but I think that Frankfurt is criticizing the metaphysical. Yeah, here's what my problem with this though, I think this is utterly unrelated to bullshit

[01:44:46] like and the prevalence of it. Yeah, it was a drive by at certain people and certain departments, yeah. It's irrelevant to what was before, I think getting at sort of some features and properties of this word bullshit that we use, now it's like settling scores with, you know.

[01:45:08] Well, I guess, okay, let me defend him a little bit here. What he's saying is that I think bullshit is an attitude of disregard for truth by truth. He means at least objective truth and there is an entire industry of people who have a cavalier attitude toward truth.

[01:45:28] Now, what he's not being fair at is the well worked out views of people who if they don't believe in objective truth then what they're saying isn't bullshit. Like it's only bullshit if you believe what Frankfurt believes. So it's a little bit of an unfair accusation.

[01:45:43] And they have their own understanding of bullshit also, which is yeah, that's my beef with it. I mean, I think that Rordy can just as easily as Frankfurt call people out for their bullshit even though they have fundamentally different metaphysical and epistemological views of the world.

[01:46:02] Right, and I think it might be a little harder to call out some of this, you know, this is my description of my day kinds of papers. No, you're right. I thought you were gonna say it might be a little bit harder

[01:46:14] for Rordy to call out like a Trump than for Frankfurt. Which might be right actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But again, yet another case of this could have been a short paper, even shorter paper. But I think that this really is motivating. It seems when I read that paragraph,

[01:46:37] it seemed as if that was what had been motivating this paper to begin with. Like people are writing bullshit papers, they have no regard for the truth. These anti-realist doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false

[01:46:53] and even the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. And again, I think also like this idea of sincerity, like that's not, that's probably like some post-modernist or like, I don't know, French guy at the time who decided that it was all gonna be about sincerity.

[01:47:12] But that little reductio ad absurdum I think doesn't work on most of like the good anti-realists. Right, it would be interesting to know how Rordy, I think if he responded at all, he ends the paper just in trying to reify that point. That's just how it ends.

[01:47:31] I don't know, like we could talk about the methodology of this. I couldn't be more against conceptual analysis in general, the way it's often employed by philosophers. So I think there is a difference in the use of the conceptual analysis here versus in something like knowledge,

[01:47:53] where there seems to be a deeper faith in that knowledge as a concept almost just is mind independent, which it's not really, I don't think anybody really thinks that, but almost as if that knowledge is mind independent. God. Here, I think Frankfurt is being very honest

[01:48:15] and upfront with the kind of analysis that I think is interesting, which is look, this is a, obviously this is a concept that we came up with, right? Like who knows if it exists in other cultures or in other times, maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

[01:48:30] We use this label. It's interesting to see that people use this in ways that other people understand across a variety of situations. What are those situations? Because you can't expect anyone to have a well worked out theory of what bullshit is,

[01:48:45] just like you can't have a well worked out theory of what a table is. Like it's, we use it and I think that he's being, yeah, I think that he's making a good faith effort to just try to match, right? The fundamental criteria for him is

[01:49:01] does this match how people use it? And you and I included, right? Yeah. I think the difference between bullshit and knowledge, definitely the biggest one and those debates is that he just states upfront, like I'm not gonna try to give necessary and sufficient conditions,

[01:49:19] whereas that's the whole point of the knowledge debate. And he said because obviously there are none. Like it's obvious to him that there are none. But knowledge occupies such a weird fucking place but here's the, and this is why even more so,

[01:49:33] it's also like it's not an interesting question what is knowledge in the way that what is bullshit? Like why do we use this word? Like knowledge is the kind of word that we use just without really being curious about. Like bullshit is kind of interesting.

[01:49:48] It's like we use this word constantly. Like what is it referring to? Like we've never really, like with knowledge I'm like I've never reflected on that. I've never tried to think of, we have to pin down like what I mean

[01:50:00] when I say I know something, it's just not, maybe that's idiosyncratic to me but like that's another difference. And so there's something about these words that, and it's interesting just how they developed. Like how did that word just all of a sudden acquire

[01:50:15] these properties clearly when I use it and I use it in all these wide range of different kinds of situations. It can be like a training seminar. It can be like an article that I read. It can be a whole field of research.

[01:50:27] It can be something that Eliza is saying, something like it can be anything. Okay I think I have something about the fundamental difference here. If we went to Frankfurt and said, you know what, I was reading your article and there is this sense in which

[01:50:46] when my daughter complains about something I say quit your bullshit. And I think that is a valid use of the term bullshit that isn't captured by what you said. He might say interesting, right? Like that's yeah, I mean this is a fuzzy concept to begin with.

[01:51:01] The knowledge debate is that I could publish a paper. Imagine publishing a paper saying this is an instance where I told my daughter quit your bullshit and surely you agree that this is bullshit so therefore it defeats your theory of what bullshit was

[01:51:20] and that this is somehow progress, right? This is like incredible, an incredible, like you can't do a get your paper for bullshit because Frankfurt himself acknowledged that bullshit would never have those kinds of necessary insufficient. Right, or you could because like nobody ever thought knowledge had

[01:51:39] necessary sufficient conditions. I in spirit I agree with you. I think that we have stronger intuitions about knowledge that are common that you might not think but it doesn't matter. That's not the point. It doesn't matter. It is a great example of a family resemblance word

[01:51:58] as long as you acknowledge that it can be interesting to explore the different kinds of ways that it's used because sometimes if somebody calls something bullshit they can kind of be wrong. Like they can use it inappropriately. Yeah, totally imagine acquiring this language

[01:52:16] when you come from a language, right? You have to learn and the way that you're gonna learn is through example, right? That's a reason that it's very hard to just tell someone what it is. They have to see what it is. Yeah, exactly. Like when you use it.

[01:52:29] And when you learn another language there are these kinds of slang words that you just have to sort of absorb when it's appropriate and when it's not and you will definitely use it sometimes when it's not because. Totally. Spanish has a word that means

[01:52:44] to use something for the first time. And I'm constantly wanting to say that in English but there's no words for it. But it's not always that it's not like my definition doesn't, it's not like so you could be a Spanish speaker

[01:52:57] learning the word and you could misuse it and we would laugh at you even though it met those criteria and bullshit is obviously like this. And probably most concepts are which is why this is a good example of criticism side what I think is interesting conceptual analysis.

[01:53:15] I totally agree. And I think that you're getting to something metaphysical is bananas like people argue about the word Adam and what the word Adam means and they think that they're adding to the scientific debate. And it's like, no. That seems to me to be like,

[01:53:34] you know, like as crazy as somebody who was like a flat earth or something like I really does like I can't understand it that people approach language that way. And I've never really understood it. And the only question is to what extent

[01:53:53] that applies to other things to me like, you know, like moral responsibility or blame worthy or, you know, like- That's actually, yeah. That's like you reminded me of something else I want to say which is that that kind of the kind of conceptual analysis

[01:54:09] that Frankfurt is doing is the kind of thing that I could understand if what you saw, for instance, the law and it's the way that it used the term responsibility to like incorporate things like negligence and recklessness and all, you know, something that's coming to the forefront

[01:54:27] when we decide what kind of murder it was that was committed on George Floyd. All of those things are kind of naturalistic conceptual analysis that emerged into common law or whatever. And it's not that responsibility is like this fundamental. There's a box with the word responsibility on it

[01:54:47] that we can just discover. It's of course not. It is what we have used it to be. And now that means that you can be wrong when you say that somebody is responsible. Like it's, you could really use it completely incorrectly but that doesn't mean that it's-

[01:55:02] But you could use it incorrectly only in so far as that was the agreed upon language, right? A whole culture after like 50 years where the word has kind of transformed and people are using it, they can't use it wrong. I'll give you an example of just that

[01:55:22] which is that we have a project on moral praise and I was trying to think of what we would say for moral praise, the opposite of blame for moral responsibility, the reaction to somebody who's morally responsible for a good thing.

[01:55:39] And there was no Spanish word that captured it, right? And it's not that I don't think they don't understand what moral praise is because I could tell them but it actually, I was talking to two native speakers and it was actually taking me quite some time

[01:55:51] to express what moral praise meant when we said- Well that's not really a word in English. It's not something that people, like that's like a, that's a philosopher, psychologist word. Like nobody says I morally praise that person. It might be a term of art. You're right.

[01:56:07] It might be a term of art but it is one that exists in, at least, it struck me which is making your point. It struck me that it didn't exist there and possibly shouldn't have because you're right

[01:56:21] if I asked the person on the street what moral praise is they might not know. But- You put the two words together like extra ordinary. Extra moral praise. I only use the kind of praise that's italicized. No, no, no. I wonder if bullshit has analogs in other languages.

[01:56:40] I'm sure it does in some but maybe not in others. Yeah and why would it in others? You'd have to believe that there is some sort of natural kind nativist concept that's sitting there to be discovered. And I know people genuinely believe this

[01:56:54] and I'm not doing justice to that view probably in the way that I'm summarizing it but it seems just on the face of it to be ludicrous to me. Their concepts don't exist just like that. They don't just- Yeah, it seems like you should be institutionalized

[01:57:09] if you think that. Like, and I've had respectful conversations with people who but I have yet to not think, like they shouldn't be literally institutionalized but to think that there's anything behind it and maybe I'll go to my grave and realize I was wrong but that hasn't happened.

[01:57:32] I'm a stubborn son of a bitch. Yeah, if you mean metaphorically institutionalized I'm disgusted. That's another one we could do. Disgust, it's disgust that's right. Like it has a- Yeah, there is where it's only, to me scientific concepts are totally terms of art.

[01:57:49] They have to be defined in a way that we've had this discussion before and I won't belabor it but the common use of the word often gets in the way of what the scientist is trying to describe and so we should just use other words.

[01:58:04] Yes, and define them properly but then there's the question of are then what's this for? Like if the interest of it is to the extent that which corresponds to the concept as people are. Like I'm trying to do an outline right now about experimental work on responsibility

[01:58:23] and free will judgments and there does seem to be this dilemma where you can either define it very specifically but then there's no reason to think it corresponds to popular usage because especially since that's just a mess how people are using it,

[01:58:40] the folk concept of it as like experimental philosophers like to say or you can try to measure it like measure people's judgments by imagining that you think what they're saying but then the problem is how do you know? Like that's the whole point of the exercise

[01:58:59] and I know your student Lance Bush is working on this issue too. And this is, it's so frustrating because there really is I think a meaningful difference in the social psychologists approach to this where I think we're more willing to say

[01:59:13] there is a meaning in the heads of lay people and let's investigate what that is. Whereas experimental philosophy really is let us use this as a metric for the philosophical concepts that we agree are right, which to me seems like just an endeavor that...

[01:59:31] Right, but like there's not given that there isn't a really a lay concept or at least that that's what they're trying to discover is the lay concept. It's like yeah, there's something that seems doomed, doomed like fundamentally unsound about the whole project.

[01:59:49] Yeah, maybe they should all be institutionalized. That's gonna be the point. It's gonna be my thesis statement, which I will only get to on the last page. All right, speaking of the last page, should we wrap it up? Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.

[02:00:09] Please send us your branding documents for Very Bad Wizards. Oh yeah, organ. We need six tone words. We'll put a link to the, you can use the University Organ as a template or come up with your own. If you do a good one,

[02:00:23] I mean this with all sincerity, we'll read it on the air. Yeah, oh yeah for sure. I thought you were gonna say we'll use it. And we'll use it. If it's really good, we'll use it for responsibility. Join us next time on Very Bad Wizards.

[02:00:40] The Queen of Hesbosan. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. I'm a good man. Brains and U.S. Anybody can have a brain? You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard.