[Music]
TEDx is the most important educational
cultural event at Ohio State University
and I am so honored that you came out to
hear me today and that was bullsháá in
the strict academic sense and
lying are both forms of
misrepresentation with this critical
difference when I lie I know what is
true and I deliberately stay the
opposite when I
I don’t care all about what is true in
the misrepresentation does not
have to do with the statement it has to
do with the person making the statement
the purpose of is to deceive
you about what the bullshitter is up to
so I said most important educational
cultural event has a completely
meaningless statement and I don’t care
if it’s true I only said it so that you
would take me seriously this comes out
of the work of Harry Frankfort he was a
Princeton philosophy professor who in
the mid 80s published a paper on
the paper was widely circulated
and discussed quite a bit in his circles
so much so that in 2005 he published it
as a book the book became a best-seller
and he even got invited on to the daily
show and he kept working with these
ideas and then wrote a second book on
truth in 2013 that stuff I said at the
beginning that’s normal garden-variety
puffery the stuff we say to grease the
wheels of social interaction and for
some kinds of social interaction
may actually be necessary this
is me with my wife Nancy nearing she is
the most beautiful woman I have ever
that may not be factually accurate but I
believe it which in romances all that
counts there’s also an implication that
I never notice other beautiful women
that’s not much of a deception Nancy
knows that’s not true but she also knows
that I adore her and that I’m completely
faithful so it’s all good
Frankfort says we actually need
and romance otherwise you wouldn’t have
Shakespeare sonnets there are however
other situations that tend to breed
and in these you need to be a
bit more suspicious and I like to
illustrate them by using famous TV
heroes so you’re in the
situation where you have gone way beyond
your knowledge and expertise so you need
to make stuff up to save face and that
is the life and work of George Costanza
on Seinfeld we are expected to have
opinions about absolutely everything
even things about which you have given
no thought at all which brings to mind
cliff Clavin on Cheers and this one’s
actually toxic and this one’s serious
there’s the boss who uses as an
instrument of power and nobody ever did
that better than Michael Scott who spun
such a deep sticky web of that
he started to believe himself and then
he lost all touch with reality and it’s
a joke on a TV show but it’s actually
illustrative of Frankfurt’s central
point his hypothesis is that is
actually more damaging than lies because
the habit of causes you to lose
the essential critical Faculty of paying
attention to the way things really are
so you can think of is like a
drug you’re in an uncomfortable
situation you use a little bit of
to ease the pain it’s easy it
doesn’t have any side effects but if
every time reality slaps you in the face
you resort to while your
tolerance goes up pretty soon you are an
addict you don’t care what is true
anymore you move into
darker levels of untruth like scams and
conspiracy theories and this doesn’t
just happen to individuals it can happen
to a society Frankfurt postulates three
cultural conditions in which
thrives and truth weakens and I’ve come
to think of it as kind of a negative
feedback loop
thrives when there is so much
information out there that the average
person has trouble separating fact from
not fact thrives when we begin
to prefer sincerity over accuracy belief
over fact thrives when there’s
a breakdown in the cultural consensus
that truth matters when I look at events
over the past 10-15 years I find
evidence that Frankfurt’s theory bears
out I brought along a few artifacts I’m
going to zoom to 2004 so we are post
9/11 post second door and a journalist
named Ron Suskind goes to do an
investigation on how it is that the Bush
administration got it wrong on weapons
of mass destruction he talks to an
official in the Bush administration says
ok it turns out there were no weapons of
mass destruction that was your
justification for war is this a problem
and the Aged famously answers it’s only
a problem for you because you live in
the reality-based world the people we
talked to believed the rally out reality
that we invent why is he so sure this
will work well because he understands
think of what happened in the 90s the
explosion of new media and communication
scholars observe two parallel trends
first everybody can get their story out
so everybody as a journalist and anyone
can be an authority and then going along
with that a consumer can choose the
source of information who will always
confirm what he already believes media
empires are built on this and Stephen
Colbert satirizes it in The Colbert
Report which is a send-up of The
O’Reilly Factor from Fox News and in his
first episode in 2005 he introduces his
big theme truthiness and he is all for
it says I don’t trust books they are all
facts and no heart and it’s a satire but
serious media critics say that he nailed
it
Farhad Manjoo writes a book true enough
and he devotes a chapter to truthiness
and merriam-webster names truthiness
their word of the year okay so I’ve got
a Republican president and conservative
media don’t get too comfortable liberals
Frankfurt also calls out the academic
left which has been waging its own war
on truth in post modernist discourse it
is an article of faith that there is no
such thing as objective truth in fact
when I give talks on I can
expect that somebody in the audience is
going to raise their hand and say and
pretty much this tone of voice in the
humanities we do not accept the notion
of truth and I’ve got more of this but
basically that’s game set and match on
all sides that contempt for truth the
triumph of belief over fact and by the
way when did authenticity become a thing
and in unending undiscriminating deluge
of information this is the
apocalypse we are on the precipice of
losing the reality based world because
my generation is hopelessly addicted to
we have given you alternative
facts and fake fake news
at this moment there are actually
responsible journalists conducting a
serious conversation about how when the
President of the United States makes up
some crazy stuff should you take him
seriously or literally that is
[Applause]
that is about we have
achieved Metta but I have a
growing sense that there’s a younger
generation still paying attention I was
very impressed how you all reacted to
the Bowling Green massacre
I believe you can save the world by
making war on and I want to
talk about how you do it defend truth
when somebody decides I do not accept
the notion of truth it’s just that it’s
just a decision you can work for truth
it’s hard you have to pay close
attention you have to work with your own
biases and misperceptions and you will
often be uncertain but you will always
know when something is definitely not
true do your homework
we college professors we teach you how
to source information that is not just
an academic skill that is a life skill
and if what you know about your world
comes from surfing Breitbart or HuffPost
or watching guys yell at each other in
cable TV you are hanging out in the
crack houses of addiction learn
to argue and I mean argument in the
classical sense an argument is a
discussion between people of divergent
views who are prepared to work on an
issue until they can figure out what is
true we suck at this right now we have
stuff that looks like argument its
debate it’s propaganda its advocacy it
is about beating up your opponent it’s
about winning it is not about finding
out what’s true learn to listen learn to
ask good questions look for mistakes
especially your own argument is how you
test your ideas and your integrity and
especially it’s how you suss out
and as you gain confidence in
argument have the courage to break
silence there is a reason why when you
were a kid we told you that story about
the Emperor’s New Clothes
and isn’t that actually a great reason
to have a college education
mean you may not end up with the career
that you want you may change course six
or seven times but find some great minds
and you should come out of school with a
well-functioning detector and
when you do I have a mission for you
after all only you can prevent
wildfires thank you very much for
listening [Applause]