Its remarkably non-obvious from the online catalog book cover picture, but the Frankfurt book is among the smallest and shortest I have ever read. Note the book dimensions and page count. You will find it a quick read.
It'd be interesting to reread in light of LLM developments and hallucinations, but being written by a philosopher the book is is more of a nice timeless lens to apply to whatever sort of BS that concerns you.
I'd also like to reread it in light of what I've learned about narcissism since I last read it.
Thanks for the information. I was aware it was originally an essay that was compiled into a book. And now that I know it's pretty light I'm even more motivated to read it.
In relation to your LLM comment, I was on the Wikipedia page for Frankfurt's Book and there is a specific mention of Bullshit of the LLM variety:
>Frankfurt's concept of bullshit has been taken up as a description of the behavior of large language model (LLM)-based chatbots, as being more accurate than "hallucination" or "confabulation". The uncritical use of LLM output is sometimes called botshit.[0] (at the bottom of the section)
This might be slightly tertiary but my interest in this subject has also led me to 'The art of being right' by Arthur Schopenhauer.[1] Which doesn't explicitly state that it's bullshit but it is rhetorical sophistry dedicated to winning arguments and debates. And many of the tactics in the book smell just as bad as any Bullshit. There's some modern reprints floating around and it's also a pretty light book.
There is a longer essay called "On Truth", also by Frankfurt, less read but also more interesting IMO.
https://archive.org/details/on-bullshit-by-harry-frankfurt
I'm currently reading "Calling Bullshit - The art of skepticism in a data driven world" by Carl T Bergstrom and Jevin D West.
Harry Frankfurt is mentioned in the preface of this book. And "On Bullshit" will probably be my next book I read on the subject.
Thanks for the share.
Its remarkably non-obvious from the online catalog book cover picture, but the Frankfurt book is among the smallest and shortest I have ever read. Note the book dimensions and page count. You will find it a quick read.
It'd be interesting to reread in light of LLM developments and hallucinations, but being written by a philosopher the book is is more of a nice timeless lens to apply to whatever sort of BS that concerns you.
I'd also like to reread it in light of what I've learned about narcissism since I last read it.
Its not really a book - its just an essay published in 20-page book format.
Here it is for free https://archive.org/details/on-bullshit-by-harry-frankfurt
Thanks for the information. I was aware it was originally an essay that was compiled into a book. And now that I know it's pretty light I'm even more motivated to read it.
In relation to your LLM comment, I was on the Wikipedia page for Frankfurt's Book and there is a specific mention of Bullshit of the LLM variety:
>Frankfurt's concept of bullshit has been taken up as a description of the behavior of large language model (LLM)-based chatbots, as being more accurate than "hallucination" or "confabulation". The uncritical use of LLM output is sometimes called botshit.[0] (at the bottom of the section)
This might be slightly tertiary but my interest in this subject has also led me to 'The art of being right' by Arthur Schopenhauer.[1] Which doesn't explicitly state that it's bullshit but it is rhetorical sophistry dedicated to winning arguments and debates. And many of the tactics in the book smell just as bad as any Bullshit. There's some modern reprints floating around and it's also a pretty light book.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Reception_and_crit...
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Being_Right