First Draft #8: a newsletter on public language
Bullshitters, persuasive non-experts and the limits of rhetoric
Can You Bullshit a Bullshitter?
A fanfare of teasing greeted Prince Harry’s entrance into the world of work last week. It was less the role (though “Chief Impact Officer” is of course silly) than the statement. “My goal,” said BetterUp’s newly minted impact merchant, “is to lift up critical dialogues around mental health.” Pardon?
Shane Littrell, scholar of bullshit, knows all about such talk. Littrell’s 2019 paper, the Bullshitting Frequency Scale, showed how to measure bull. His latest, meanwhile, tests some bullshit folk wisdom. You Can’t Bullshit a Bullshitter (Or Can You?), from the latest British Journal of Social Psychology, gauges if a tendency to deploy bullshit is connected to a susceptibility to fall for it. And for amateur psychologists of our errant Prince, it makes interesting reading.
Littrell defines bullshit as “information designed to impress, persuade, and/or otherwise mislead that is often constructed with an indifference for the truth”. It ranges from the “coherent yet hyperbolic or suspiciously implausible, to jargon-heavy yet obscure or nonsensical” (see: “lifting up critical dialogues”). Bullshit is different to lying. A liar seeks to convince you of a falsehood. A bullshitter, on the other hand, wants to make a social impression.
Littrell measured tendency to bullshit in 800 people. He then asked the same group to rate how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines. The more frequently someone bullshits, Littrell found, the more likely they are to be duped by misleading information. “Bullshitters,” he says, “seem to mistake superficial profoundness for actual profoundness. So, if something simply sounds profound, truthful, or accurate to them that means it really is.”
Harry’s predilection for bullshit, then, suggests he is rather vulnerable to it. As Sam Leith writes in this excellent column, this is not surprising after life as a Royal. Still, it is ironic given the Prince’s other new job. Harry is to be Commissioner on Information Disorder at the Aspen Foundation, where he will join a six-month inquiry into the spread of misinformation online.
Pollution of the information landscape isn’t only inflicted by trolls and bots. The daily deluge of nonsense and jargon takes a toll too. If Harry is serious about ending information disorder, here’s an obvious first step: cut the bullshit. (AD)
Jargon Busters: Strategic
Lawrence Freedman’s Strategy: A History is a magisterial book, tracing the art of hatching a plan from ancient apes to management theorists (one developing intricate strategies despite limited functional brain capacity and the other… an ape). So there’s nothing necessarily wrong with the noun, and it does seem there is value in having one. While Rabbie Burns was right that our best laid plans “gang aft agley an’ lea’e us nought,” I side with Eisenhower who thought “plans are worthless… but planning is essential.”
My beef, therefore, is with the adjective: strategic. It is the quintessential corporate filler word, lazily prepended to anything and everything to suggest deeper thought than really occurred. “Don’t worry,” it pleads, “I have a plan. I just can’t tell you what it is yet.” Next time you see someone use it, ask to see the strategy. I bet you’d be better asking an ape. Or perhaps even a management theorist… (JW)
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Jargon Busters: Jump On A Call
Jargon is often suspiciously eager to convey energetic and productive things are happening. Speaking on the phone? No, we’re jumping! On a call! To do list? No, these are actions! Suited office drone slumped in my chair? No, I’m a results-driven professional! Who jumps! On calls! (AD)
On This Day: Making The World Safe For Democracy
On 2 April, 1917, Woodrow Wilson gave a celebrated speech that shows both the power and the limits of rhetoric. “Making the world safe for democracy”, delivered to a joint session of the Houses of Congress, announced the President’s decision to enter the Great War. For a President elected on a promise not to do so, this was an historic reversal. As a consequence, Wilson elevates the conflict. He speaks of the heritage of law, the superiority of democratic politics and the virtue of international cooperation. In the isolationist US, it was a hard message to convey.
In one sense, it worked. The vote in Congress was won and the United States did indeed join the war. History, however, mocked Wilson’s hopes. His line “the Russian people have been added in all their majesty to the forces that are fighting for freedom” would ring hollow a few months later when the October Revolution shattered hopes of a social democratic Russia.
But the biggest disappointment of all was the great hope of Wilson’s political life, the League of Nations. In this speech he unfolds his great idea and the League was, indeed, formed soon after at the 1919 Paris Peace conference. The United States, though, never joined it, despite Wilson embarking on a speaking tour of the nation that covered 10,000 miles and 29 cities. The strain cost him his health. In September 1919, he collapsed, and not long after suffered a stroke which left him half-paralysed and secluded in the White House for the rest of his time in office. It’s a great speech that still reads well today. In the end, though, it wasn’t enough. (PC)
Experts Aren’t Always The Best Messengers
Character is persuasion. If a messenger isn’t credible or trustworthy, their message, no matter how compelling, will not persuade. Character (“ethos” in Aristotle’s Greek) is why Fauci is a more convincing critic of AstraZeneca than Ursula von der Leyen. And it’s why, during public health emergencies, apolitical experts speak ahead of politicians.
But though expertise improves persuasiveness, it does not guarantee it. In a new study for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Marcella Alsan and Sarah Eichmever compared black and white attitudes to flu vaccines after hearing from experts and non-experts. Vaccine hesitancy was strongest among poorer black men. For this group, the most persuasive vaccine advocates were black non-experts.
The study’s authors posit this may be because medical doctors are seen as representing private interests of insurers or pharma companies. Through such a lens, professionals, though qualified, “may also appear conflicted, whereas laypersons do not.”
As ever, Aristotle is instructive. Expertise (phronesis), he said, is just one part of a speaker’s ethos, or character. Alongside it is moral virtue (arete) and a trait roughly translated to likeability (eunoia). To make character a persuasive asset, it’s not enough to have one in abundance. You need a balance of all three.
This division, a version of which has been backed up by modern behavioural science, is a useful guide for policy makers battling vaccine hesitancy. For some groups, particularly ones that experience institutional racism, experts’ association with, say, government, may make make their characters irredeemably lacking in virtue or likeability.
In such cases, the good character of community leaders, public figures and other trusted lay people can be called upon. Hence this week’s open letter from Lenny Henry calling on black Britons to take the vaccine. Vouching for the life-saving power of vaccination is, of course, a job for experts. To vaccinate the world, however, we need non-experts to do it too. (AD)
Language and Beyond
Former Obama data guru David Shor is characteristically brilliant on the demographic trends reshaping US elections. The interview includes the counterintuitive point that in 2020 white voters as a whole trended toward the Democratic Party, while nonwhite voters trended away from it.
James Marriott, one of the best young journalists, interviews Megan Nolan, one of the most exciting new novelists, and it’s a treat. A must read if you’re curious about the hype surrounding Acts of Desperation. We just read the book and agree it is deserved.
An excellent blog on why French vaccine hesitancy isn’t all it seems. A useful reminder, also, of the perils of comparing countries.
Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech was actually titled “The Sinews of Peace.” The New Statesman’s David Reynolds revisits the great post-war address on its 75th anniversary.
A classic list from McSweeneys on the linguistic meeting points of the most and least privileged.
This article, on the suspension of the AZ jab, includes a useful guide to writing about statistics. From Tom Chivers, whose reporting on the pandemic has been essential. He has a new book, too.
A fantastic piece on Kazuo Ishiguro with interesting insights into his writing process.
English, unlike most languages, has no phrase meaning “good fortitude”. We have “good luck”, of course, like the French have “bonne chance”. But we lack a “bon courage”. The Economist’s Johnson chews this over (£).
A fascinating interview with the great Ken Burns on his new Hemingway documentary.
This New Yorker piece is great on the limited persuasive power of facts.
New from us
Phil’s New Statesman column on the patriotism of David Lammy.
Josh on what we learned from a year of Covid for CityAM’s series on the subject.
The first of Josh’s now monthly column in CityAM, from the end of February. The next is out Friday.
Zach in UnHerd on how to rescue politics from abstraction.
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