You just got an email. It might be from HR, or your boss, or the head of some other department. And you’re scratching your head and saying “Is this real? Does someone actually think this makes sense?” Don’t just cringe. Don’t just lean over and whine to the guy in the next cube. Don’t write…
Liars lie. Bullshitters prattle on heedless of whether or not they lie. That’s what I learned from the only philosophical treatise ever published on bullshit. In 1986, the philosopher Harry G Frankfurt wrote an essay titled “On Bullshit.” In 2005 he published it as a very small book. On Bullshit, Princeton University Press edition, became a New…
For 20 years, I did the same thing, mostly. I was a technology analyst at Forrester Research from 1995 until last month. If you do one thing for a long time, you should learn from it. My job at Forrester molded my ways of thinking more than anything else I’ve done (save becoming a parent). Perhaps…
I need your help. Withoutbullshit.com needs fuel. I know you’re drowning in crappy stuff. I want to help. My post rewriting Inovalon’s “Who We Are” page was very popular. But I need more. Feed me! And I can keep things confidential. Send me: The email you got from your managers or HR department. The pitch…
The great science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon was once asked why 90% of science fiction was crap. His justification was this: “Yes, 90% of science fiction is crap . . . but 90% of everything is crap.” Sturgeon guessed way low. Any idiot with a keyboard now can and will write and publish in some form, from…
Being hard on ideas makes them better. Great ideas are clear, brief, and not boring. Don’t stop until you get there. For my last 8 years at Forrester — at least since I started working on my first book — I’ve had a sort of smartass attitude towards the world. If you ask people what I was like…
My name is Josh Bernoff and I hate bullshit. So do you. But the difference between us is: I intend to do something about it. After 40 years in academia and the corporate world, I’ve had my fill. I’ve seen it all. Articles from respectable publications full of generalizations and filler. Spurious statistics. Consultants’ reports…