That’s the distinction between lies and bullshit. A lie is a statement that conveys knowingly false information with the intent of covering up the truth. Bullshit, as defined in the essay, is a statement that’s not intended to convey information at all. Any information that bullshit conveys is accidental, and may be false or true. The key thing to note with bullshit is that the speaker does not care what the informational content of the statement is. A bullshit statement is intended to serve as a rallying cry, a Schelling point around which like-minded people can gather.
Bullshit isn’t really a lie, because the person stating it doesn’t expect it to be believed. But it doesn’t seem to fit the definition of stupidity either. People offering up bullshit statements are often more than intelligent enough to get the right answer, but they’re just not motivated to do so because they’re trying to optimize for something that’s orthogonal to truth.
“People offering up bullshit statements are often more than intelligent enough to get the right answer, but they’re just not motivated to do so because they’re trying to optimize for something that’s orthogonal to truth.”—well that’s how it is at first, but after a while they’ll more than likely end up tripping themselves up and start believing a lot of what they’ve been saying
That’s the distinction between lies and bullshit. A lie is a statement that conveys knowingly false information with the intent of covering up the truth. Bullshit, as defined in the essay, is a statement that’s not intended to convey information at all. Any information that bullshit conveys is accidental, and may be false or true. The key thing to note with bullshit is that the speaker does not care what the informational content of the statement is. A bullshit statement is intended to serve as a rallying cry, a Schelling point around which like-minded people can gather.
Bullshit isn’t really a lie, because the person stating it doesn’t expect it to be believed. But it doesn’t seem to fit the definition of stupidity either. People offering up bullshit statements are often more than intelligent enough to get the right answer, but they’re just not motivated to do so because they’re trying to optimize for something that’s orthogonal to truth.
“People offering up bullshit statements are often more than intelligent enough to get the right answer, but they’re just not motivated to do so because they’re trying to optimize for something that’s orthogonal to truth.”—well that’s how it is at first, but after a while they’ll more than likely end up tripping themselves up and start believing a lot of what they’ve been saying