The situation is different in intellectual discussions. It happens all too often that some ignoramus comes along and joins our previously wonderful conversation on some specialized topic, doing little more than advertizing his ignorance, annoying the hell out of us. I suppose many of us are "civilized" and will either emptily reply something like "Oh, that's interesting ..." and move on, or, more likely, turn our body an extra 10 degrees to subtly alienate and exclude the ignoramus from the circle of conversation.
In The Daily Princetonian on Nov. 6, Peter Zakin '12 wrote on our apparent "need to confront bullshit and recognize that it can be a positive force." Defining bullshit to be "what we do when we try to talk about things we don't know" and "a misrepresentation of knowledge, a cheap imitation," he went as far as to write that "a bullshitting Princeton is far more constructive than a quiet one", urging that "our precepts actively cultivate an environment in which we are free to bullshit and deconstruct."
As a friend of mine would say, what's he smoking?
Zakin grossly mischaracterizes bullshitting in precepts as similar to some kind of creative and stimulating Socratic dialogue. This profoundly misunderstands intellectual creativity. Virtually all creative ideas or discoveries in modern intellectual history, such as those of Albert Einstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Pablo Picasso or Sigmund Freud, were all founded on deep, thorough and rigorous understandings of their respective orthodox roots. The probability that a bullshitter might somehow stumble upon a new, nontrivial and productive idea is vanishingly small. Even if it were to happen, he would fail to recognize its value.
We all know that it's rude to abruptly enter a heated discussion at a party, stop the discussants and ask them to tell you exactly what it's about. Instead, we listen for a while until we catch on, and only then do we join in. Similarly, the materials covered in most Princeton precepts have been topics of extensive, ongoing intellectual debates, and to contribute to it, we need to catch up on past discussions. Zakin asserts that "When learning becomes a spectator sport, it just doesn't happen." Far from not happening, listening keenly and humbly to those with better understanding is the indispensable first step to eventual active and constructive participation and learning.
But what if there is no heated conversation to interrupt? I've certainly been in precepts enveloped in silence because clearly no one could finish or comprehend the assigned reading. Even so, bullshitting is surely not the solution. The fewer people know the material, the more susceptible everyone is to pluralistic ignorance, where we mistake each other's bullshit for superior grasp of the material and therefore feel pressured to add up our share to the collective pile of bullshit. On the contrary, if the veil of pluralistic ignorance was removed to reveal that the required readings were too much or too complex for everyone, then it can be addressed with the preceptor's clarification or the professor's revision of the assignments. If the workload is simply unreasonable, then we should communicate that to the professors; it should not occasion us to prematurely and pretentiously critique a masterpiece we don't understand, perpetuating this inefficient cycle of bullshitting.
Preceptors should not tolerate bullshit. They should explicitly state that participation grades are for quality rather than quantity. Further, preceptors should know how to handle those who love the cadences of their bullshitting so much that they disrupt the flow and productivity of discussions. As students, we should question the odd and cheaply democratic idea that everyone's opinion is of equal worth and the epidemic of participating for its own sake.
In his essay "On Bullshit," which Zakin also quotes, emeritus philosophy professor Harry Frankfurt argues that bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences, and their simple disregard for truth leads him to conclude that "bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are." Bullshitting may be a necessary evil, but that doesn't mean that we should stop regarding it as evil, let alone start endorsing it as an institution whose primary goal is the pursuit of truth. Exactly opposite to Zakin's suggestion, we should openly stigmatize bullshit. A bullshitting Princeton would certainly not be far more constructive than a quiet one. In fact, that'd be disgraceful, and I'd be ashamed to attend such an institution.
Eric Kang is a physics major from Christchurch, New Zealand. He can be reached at eakang@princeton.edu.
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