On bullshit (from unit 6)
As generally understood, bullshit seeks to confuse and complicate matters, refusing to answer the question directly and substituting obfuscating rhetoric yet it is not immediately clear that this is always a bad kind of deception, or even if it is, that it is necessarily as bad as telling a lie.
No-one likes 'to be bullshitted'. Yet there are circumstances where we are required to bullshit. For example, the last thing the shy and not very skilled apprentice needs is criticism. So you offer fulsome praise, underlining the successful results that they have so far achieved, even though the praise is not fully merited. Objectivity is the last thing they need.
Anyone listening would know that what you're saying contains an element of bullshit. Perhaps even the apprentice sees this too. But the real point is not what you said but the fact that you took the trouble to offer words of encouragement.
Just as words of encouragement go a long way, even when they are not merited, so a defiant response to a serious threat is not required to be objectively true.
With the wisdom of hindsight, Winston Churchill can be seen as one of the greatest all-time masters of bullshit. For a period early on in the Second World War, bullshit was Britain's strongest weapon. 'We will fight them on the beaches.' With what?
When you run out of bullets you wave the skull and crossbones, or let off firecrackers. (The Royal Air Force didn't have enough real aeroplanes so they built runways with mock fighters made out of cardboard which looked sufficiently real from the air.) At least, there is a chance you will give the enemy a scare, or introduce just enough doubt to confuse their calculations — as arguably proved to be the case
If your product is not as good as the other company's product and everyone knows this, still you don't own up to that fact. Make a joke of it. Even if the design of the other product is better, your product is cooler.
'We're number 2, so we try harder,' was the famous response by Avis to Hertz's dominance of the care hire market in the early 60's. The idea that Avis were only number 2, therefore they always tried harder to please the customer was a breathtaking non-sequitur, or in other words, sheer bullshit. [contd.]
