The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #77142   Message #1426336
Posted By: robomatic
03-Mar-05 - 06:14 PM
Thread Name: BS: Fact vs. Factoid: What to believe??
Subject: RE: BS: Fact vs. Factoid: What to believe??
Another interesting topic of relevance is a philosophical treatise that has been knocking about the internet for years and is now being published by Princeton University Press
The free version is complete but is rapidly disappearing as knowledge of the clearly copywritten version is being disseminated. I think it would be fun to have a hardbound serious looking book called "On Bullshit" on my shelf next to "When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden". Nevertheless, they took a 19 page essay and turned it into an 80 page book. I never did as much when I was in college!

The most interesting point to me was the from the first page: That one who is lying pays more tribute to the truth than one who is bullshitting. The liar has enough respect for the truth to knowingly step away from it. The bullshitter has no reference to the truth whatsoever, the bs-er merely wants to convince the listener.