Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Death to Bullshit

deathtobullshit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 217 posts

Re: Death to Bullshit

#121

Post by Dylan16807 »

mindcrime wrote: post #116
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that bullshit is a negative externality. It's cognitive pollution. Those who clutter the world with bullshit reap the rewards of nabbing the suckers who respond to it, but don't pay the costs of imposing those cognitive loads on everyone else. That leads to more bullshit than would be economically efficient. Take a simple example like billboards. If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose l…

If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose life experience is degraded by seeing a billboard for a product they'd never buy I've never found my life "degraded" by a billboard, even if it was for a product I'd never buy. In fact, some of them are still useful, especially when driving long distances on the Interstate. They're something to break the monotony and give you something to think about, if only for…

You may welcome the billboards, but "cognitive pollution" sounds like a perfectly good description to me. Something that disrupts your focus and is forced on you as part of the environment rather than asked for.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#122

Post by letstryagain »

frame_perfect wrote: post #108
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

> Advertising expenses should not be deductible business expenses at all. Wait, WHAT!? Advertising is a tax-deductible business expense? Why on earth?

Business expenses are tax deductible by default. They only change to non-deductible under special circumstances, for example if the company buys a fancy car for the CEO's personal use. But normally every expense incurred as the result of carrying on business is deductible. That includes payroll, infrastructure, cost of sales, advertising, market research, utilities, postage, travel, contractors, consultants etc.

In general an expense is deductible as long as it has a legitimate business purpose.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#123

Post by a3n »

mindcrime wrote: post #119
a3n wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the call to arms is two pronged: call out bullshit, but also don't create bullshit. Don't do it is always achievable, even if it might take some time to extricate yourself from a situation that demands it, and still take care of your family.

Except the call to arms is two pronged: call out bullshit, but also don't create bullshit. Never gonna happen. Human beings are born to bullshit. The fact that we compete for mates and the way the different genders have differing optimal mating strategies pretty much ensures that. We are always going to bullshit each other to a certain degree, as we try to achieve the ends we are innately wired to pursue. That doesn'…

> The fact that we compete for mates and the way the different genders have differing optimal mating strategies pretty much ensures that.

I think we've accumulated some nuance over the millenia. Killing the mating competition, or even lower level violence, is very relatively rare these days. And I'm pretty sure that significant numbers of people approach meeting and mating with more sincerity than bullshit.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#124

Post by krapp »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #121
mindcrime wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If billboard advertisers had to pay every person whose life experience is degraded by seeing a billboard for a product they'd never buy I've never found my life "degraded" by a billboard, even if it was for a product I'd never buy. In fact, some of them are still useful, especially when driving long distances on the Interstate. They're something to break the monotony and give you something to think about, if only for…

You may welcome the billboards, but "cognitive pollution" sounds like a perfectly good description to me. Something that disrupts your focus and is forced on you as part of the environment rather than asked for.

> Something that disrupts your focus and is forced on you as part of the environment rather than asked for.

By that definition, anything outside of one's immediate focus and interests is "cognitive pollution." If that's the standard, then it's so vague and subjective as to be nearly useless. As forms of advertising go, I can't think of many which are less disruptive, or easier to simply ignore, than billboards.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#125

Post by letstryagain »

gjm11 wrote: post #117
jsolson wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Businesses (in the US, anyway) pay tax on their profits, not their revenue. Profit is revenue minus expenses. Advertising is an expense, just like all of the other expenses that go into successfully bringing a product to market (research and development, transportation, etc.).

Wouldn't it be interesting if personal income taxes worked the same way? (Capital gains tax kinda does, at least in the jurisdictions I know about; you can offset losses against gains. But earned income seems just as much like business revenue as capital gains...)

Personal income tax is more restricted but still works in a similar way. For example if I need to purchase a high-vis work outfit in order to do my job, that expense is deductible.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#126

Post by x5n1 »

killface wrote: post #110
Animats wrote: post #60

Advertising in the US doesn't create demand. It just moves it around. America is spent out. The US personal savings rate is under 5%. Everything else gets spent, and the saved money gets spent later. There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. Advertising is thus a net lose for Americans. All that effort adds to cost. For some products, including movies, long distance phone service, and many pr…

> There's no "pent-up demand" waiting to be unlocked by advertising. This is why any economic recovery plans that don't focus on growing the income of middle- and lower-class americans is doomed to fail. The rich can already buy anything they want, and they're saving like crazy. Until we unleash more demand from the lower- and middle-class, all efforts are futile. It's also why we should be focusing on, and supportin…

Wallerstein said that Capitalism has failed for the Capitalist class, what he means is that it's costing more and more to make a dollar. The reason that income is falling is because the Capitalist class expects to continue making billions against a market which is efficient. They just squeeze that profit out of the worker's paychecks.

Ultimately, that's the problem. The Capitalist project has reached its end, but the shareholders don't want to admit that and entrepreneurs don't want to admit that to them... because why would you invest if you can't continue to make outsized gains against a market that doesn't support your vision of profit.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#127

Post by afarrell »

Eupolemos wrote: post #46
afarrell wrote: post #9

This page talks mostly about interface bullshit, but people are also tired of content bullshit. To paraphrase from Harry Frankfurt, this is content produced not to conceal truth, but without regard for for it whatsoever. If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it. Producing bullshit is more profitable because it still attracts eyeballs (and therefore ad revenue), but is much less costly to produc…

> If to lie is to murder truth, to bullshit is to manslaughter it. I believe "manslaughter" and "murder" should be switched around here. IIRC, Harry Frankfurt argued that bullshit was worse than lies, since it corroded this simple but for-society-to-function-in-the-long-run incredibly important distinction (or aspiration).

The analogy I'm drawing here is to the intent, rather than the effect. Murder is intentional. Manslaughter is reckless.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#128

Post by MichaelGG »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #99
MichaelGG wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>QR codes on the back of my business cards containing a VCard record Isn't this almost certainly done better with a link to a vcard file?

QR code can store the entire vCard, thus enabling you to read it off-line.

Is this a real concern? Someone might be on a flight without WiFi and need a digital version of your contact info because the card isn't enough?

Re: Death to Bullshit

#129

Post by sillysaurus3 »

krapp wrote: post #124
Dylan16807 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may welcome the billboards, but "cognitive pollution" sounds like a perfectly good description to me. Something that disrupts your focus and is forced on you as part of the environment rather than asked for.

> Something that disrupts your focus and is forced on you as part of the environment rather than asked for. By that definition, anything outside of one's immediate focus and interests is "cognitive pollution." If that's the standard, then it's so vague and subjective as to be nearly useless. As forms of advertising go, I can't think of many which are less disruptive, or easier to simply ignore, than billboards.

I've been thinking it over. Dang left an agreement, so the premise is worth reconsidering. It seems like the problem was that billboards were a remarkably bad example.

A better example might be alternative medicine. It's bullshit because it's mistaken. It's a negative externality because it costs nothing to imply that it works. And it's harmful because it can kill you.

Most cases of bullshit aren't as extreme, and I'm trying to think of some better examples of bullshit that won't kill you but will degrade your life. TV comes to mind.

Re: Death to Bullshit

#130

Post by tgflynn »

letstryagain wrote: post #125
gjm11 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be interesting if personal income taxes worked the same way? (Capital gains tax kinda does, at least in the jurisdictions I know about; you can offset losses against gains. But earned income seems just as much like business revenue as capital gains...)

Personal income tax is more restricted but still works in a similar way. For example if I need to purchase a high-vis work outfit in order to do my job, that expense is deductible.

You also need to purchase food, housing and clothes to perform your job but those expenses aren't usually deductible so I would say there's a double standard.
Post reply on HN