For your consideration this evening/morning, here are two short, tangentially interrelated essays. One revisits "On Bullshit," an essay by Harry G. Frankfurt, professor of philosophy emeritus at Princeton University.* The other looks at the phenomenon of the "black box" in our society.
"On Bullshit" Revisited
A liar intentionally attempts to convince his audience of untruths. A bullshitter attempts to convince his audience of something without regard for truth.
A bullshitter cares not what is objectively true. In fact, bullshit is most effective when the audience doesn't believe that there is objective truth at all, that whether the earth takes the shape of a plane or a sphere depends only upon what you decide to believe, and how hard you work at believing it. Or upon how loyal you are to the bullshitter, which consequentially amounts to the same thing.
A liar cares what is true and endeavors to make his audience believe otherwise. The concept of a lie relies upon the validity of objective truth.
Extending Frankfurt's framework a bit, I would add the category of "true believer," an amalgamation of bullshitter and liar. A true believer thinks there is an objective truth but also thinks and tries to convince his audience that factual evidence is separate from and does not necessarily have any bearing on that truth.
Practitioners of all three categories are detestable, although of the first two, Frankfurt states that the bullshitter is more dangerous. Even if the bullshitter loses a given argument, if he advances his framework of discounting objective truth, he wins the overall contest. For example, note the enormous investment that oil companies (which operate in an engineering- and science-based industry!), notably ExxonMobil, put into discounting the evidence for human causation of global climate change. I'm at a loss as to whether the true believer is worse than the bullshitter.
Somehow "bullshit," despite its profanity, sounds less the harsh word that "lie" is. Perhaps it's that in the case of the bullshitter, the possibility exists that his intentions are good. We are all aware of what good intentions can pave, however. And when the bullshitter is so because he is intentionally ignorant of factual evidence, the possibility of innocence vanishes.
* If you decide to read "On Bullshit," be patient for the first twenty pages (paragraphs, rather; it's a short essay) or so. It picks up quickly after that.
Black Boxes
One ideal in product design, the field of creating items that people buy and use, is that of the black box. Within this ideal, the perfect product is one in which anything that the user need not know about for its successful operation is hidden. It is an ideal of efficiency, and it is a very useful concept.
For example, take the development of music media, from phonograph record to magnetic tape to compact disc, hard drive, and flash memory. The music itself becomes further removed from physical manifestation, from contoured grooves to analog magnetic charges to ones and zeros on an optical surface, then a magnetic surface, and finally on a chip, completely enclosed in a tiny, cute metallic package. Perfection! How many people now understand the end-to-end process of how music goes from a singer's mouth, through a machine, onto storage media, back out through another machine, and into the listener's ear? But really, who cares? It's not of any consequence.
The ideal of a black box is also a dangerous concept, when applied too universally. If election officials at a given polling station don't understand the end-to-end process of how they count votes, how will they detect tampering? If someone turns on a water tap and never sees the pipes, pumping stations, powerplants, dams, reservoirs, and diminished rivers that feed that tap, how is he ever to know the impact of what he is doing? Just by the dollar amount on his water bill at the end of the month, perhaps. But is that enough?
One problem with excessive black boxing is that of action removed from process and consequence. Black boxes feed incuriosity. If you pop open your car hood and see only plastic covers, with no apparent gears, axles, and pistons, why bother trying to understand it? Why even think to build one of your own? If the news reports only on the election horserace and not on the primary and general elections process and why people put that process in place, then who cares about making that process better represent the will of the electorate? If corrupt politicians reduce the passing of laws to the ideal of tools to get things done (versus the evil machinations of "obstructionists"), what does it matter how those tools work or how they might effect your freedom someday?
Another problem with black boxing is the reliance upon the ability of the designer to anticipate all circumstances and the inability of the user to correct problems. If a phonograph record gets dusty and skips in the player, the user has a chance at seeing the problem and addressing it on her own. She can see the dust and clean it off. If an MP3 file gets corrupted, it might wipe out the entire player, with no recourse available. She has to take it in for servicing, or get a new one.
Black boxes in a system of democracy hold bullshit. When we don't know -- and especially when we don't care to know -- what happens within our government, how our government operates, and why, corrupt people win, and our freedom suffers.