经济与社会科学2020journals.sagepub.com
空洞且误导性的沟通主导组织（2020）
Empty and Misleading Communication Takes over Organizations (2020)
入门 · 约 45 分钟读完前置知识：组织管理学基础、批判性阅读英文社科论文
导读
这篇组织管理研究探讨“胡说式沟通”(bullshit)如何在组织中蔓延：与说谎不同，说谎者在意真相，而胡说者根本不关心真假，只追求让话听起来得体、令人满意。论文梳理了相关理论与访谈证据，指出这种空洞、误导性的话语已成为组织中的常态，甚至发展出一套“何时该胡说、如何得体地配合”的潜规则。
HN 关注点：HN 读者对职场空话、企业黑话深有共鸣，讨论焦点是为什么聪明人明知是胡说却仍配合表演，以及这种文化的实际危害。
HN 评论精选
这几条评论里：支持 1 补充 2 亲历 1
亲历亲历：明知是空话的企业黑话反而广受好评，配合胡说还能带来实际利益
几个月前同事请我为公司发展工作坊提供一句“灵感”。我早已幻灭，实在想不出有意义的东西，于是专门搜了“企业黑话”，写出这句：“通过承诺一套共同的战略目标，进一步建立鼓励协同与合作的包容多元工作环境。”结果大家一致好评，没人发现这其实就是讽刺。我的同事们都是博士、非常聪明，本该识破胡说宾果，但配合这套胡说与否，直接关系到奖金。所以说，玩胡说宾果其实相当有利可图。
2-718-281-828查看英文原文
Few months ago I was asked by a colleague to contribute an inspiration for a company development workshop. Frankly speaking - I am pretty damn disillusioned by now and couldn't come up with anything meaningful. He insisted, so I googled specifically for "coporate buzzwords" and came up with this: "Further establishing a welcoming and diverse work environment encouraging synergy and collaboration by committing to a common set of strategic goals." That statement was unanimously received very well and nobody realized that this is basically just sarcasm in action. Practically speaking my colleagues are all very smart (academics, PhDs all over the place) and should be able to detect bullshit bingo. At the bottom line though whether or not to go actively and motivatedly along with this ... bullshit makes a very practical difference with regard to boni. So, I don't know. Maybe it's me who's the idiot. In short: Bullshit bingo'ing is also often quite lucrative.
补充哲学解读：这是平庸的虚无主义，其危害远超文章估计
我说这到底是什么：是平庸的虚无主义。我们以为虚无主义是激进的反对真理，但它更多表现为对一切缺乏信念。当没有固定真理、生存又依赖于迎合叙事时，你使用的抽象词汇就与任何能约束他人认知的具体事物脱钩了。文章低估了后果——我们可以说“哈哈，只是胡说而已”，但它危害大得多。一个对胡说驾轻就熟的人，同样会热衷于摧毁生态系统、生计、文化和同侪，因为他们在无意义中找到安全感而非存在性恐惧。
motohagiography查看英文原文
> This distinction is captured by Frankfurt (2005) who argues that a liar is concerned about the truth, but attempts to replace it with falsehood. In contrast, the bullshitter is unconcerned with the truth and speaks with no reference to it. The bullshitter falls short of lying because they make use of insincere and misleading statements rather than outright falsehoods. Recent psychological work has found that established measures of everyday lying are sufficiently distinct from bullshitting. I'll tell you what it really is: it's banal nihilism. We have this idea that nihilism is a kind of militant anti-truth, but it mainly manifests as a lack of conviction about anything altogether. When there is no fixed truth, and your survival depends on aligning to narrative, ("getting it" as they say) the abstractions you use become divorced from anything concrete that could be interpreted as a forcing function on the perceptions of the people you are speaking to. The article underestimates the consequences of it, and we can say "ha hah, only bullshit!" but it's much, much more pernicious than that. Someone who is enthusiastically fluent in bullshit can be trusted to be just as enthusiastic about destroying ecosystems, livelihoods, cultures, and peers, because instead of feeling existential dread at meaninglessness, they find security in it. It's difficult for most hackers to imagine that the dim agreeable affect of a middling project manager or adjunct eating lunch at their desk as barely concealing an abyss of rage and shame - one that is only relieved by tiny acts of passive sadism, but that's literally people everywhere. The term for them was "Little Eichmanns," because the whole point of Eichmann was that nobody would ever have thought him capable of being the architect of mass atrocities, but he is the prototypical example of the "stupid and dilligent," who can be relied upon at scale to substitute compliance and bullshit jargon for meaning. Source: banks, government, unicorns, and other institutions.
支持摘录精华：胡说被默许为职场游戏规则，且驳斥成本远高于制造成本
我认为最好的部分：一位受访者说他的工作是“用任何必要的描述来刻画现实，让相关群体更容易接受……大家都知道这是胡说，但被接受了，这就是游戏”(Jackall, 1986)；以及“驳斥胡说所需的精力往往比制造胡说高出几个数量级”(Brandolini, 2014)。
fagnerbrack查看英文原文
The best parts IMHO: > One informant told [...] that his job involved ‘characterizing the reality of a situation with any description that is necessary to make that situation more palatable to some group that matters . . . Everyone knows that it’s bullshit, but it’s accepted. This is the game’ (Jackall, 1986, p. 145) and > the effort they need to put in to refute bullshit is often of an order of magnitude greater than what is required to produce the bullshit in the first place (Brandolini, 2014)
补充补充：组织中的胡说有精妙的分寸与配合规则，戳破者反而被排斥
文章写得很好，带着绝妙的调侃幽默。我喜欢这段引用：胡说的关键在于用量恰到好处，还要能判断合适的时机。称职的胡说者也必须学会做称职的听众——胡说不该太当真，要以恰当方式应对。太当真会被视为傻子，太频繁质疑则会被视为混蛋。
robocat查看英文原文
Very well written, with some excellent tongue-in-cheek humour. I love this quote: “One informant told Jackall that his job involved ‘characterizing the reality of a situation with any description that is necessary to make that situation more palatable to some group that matters . . . Everyone knows that it’s bullshit, but it’s accepted. This is the game’ (Jackall, 1986, p. 145). A crucial aspect was not using too much or too little bullshit, and also being able to judge the appropriate moment to bullshit. Competent bullshitters also needed to become competent audience members for performances of bullshit. They had to learn that bullshit should not be taken too seriously and it should be engaged with in just the right way. If you took bullshit too seriously, you ran the risk of being seen as a chump. Likewise, if you challenged bullshit too frequently, you risked being seen as an asshole.”
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历次讨论
- 2020Hacker News 讨论帖45 分 · 12 评
- 2021Hacker News 讨论帖188 分 · 112 评
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