August 20, 2005

  • Truth vs. Bullshit

    Background:
    For an essay on the above topic

    from this week’s New Yorker,

    click on the box below.

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/050819-Critic4.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Representing truth:

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/050820-Goldstein.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Rebecca Goldstein

    Representing bullshit:

    The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix05B/050820-Doxiadis.jpg” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.

    Apostolos Doxiadis

    Goldstein’s truth:

    Gödel was a Platonist who believed in objective truth.

    See Rothstein’s review of Goldstein’s new book Incompleteness.

    Doxiadis’s bullshit:

    Gödel, along with Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Einstein, and Heisenberg, destroyed
    a tradition of certainty that began with Plato and Euclid.

    “Examples are the stained-glass
    windows of knowledge.” — Nabokov

Comments (1)

  • The essence of bullshit, Frankfurt decides, is that it is produced without any concern for the truth. Bullshit needn’t be false: “The bullshitter is faking things. But this does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.”

    As I’m fond of saying, “If it’s a paradox, it’s probably true.” 
    Just more bullshit.

    It just goes around and around . . .

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