Netflix Co-Founder: It isn't lying if you believe it
finance.fortune.cnn.com
finance.fortune.cnn.com
""" Both lies and bullshit can either be true or false but bullshitters aim primarily to impress and persuade their audiences, and in general are unconcerned with the truth or falsehood of their statements (it is because of this that Frankfurt concedes that "the bullshitter is faking things", but that "this does not necessarily mean he gets them wrong"). While liars need to know the truth to better conceal it, bullshitters, interested solely in advancing their own agendas, have no use for the truth. Thus, Frankfurt claims, "...bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are" (Frankfurt 61). """
I loved that book by the way. 'On Truth' was good too, but 'On Bullshit' is definitely better.
A startup, by definition, is an act of hope. It's a bunch of people agreeing to be underpaid and overworked for the chance at doing something great. Even though they know the odds of them actually doing something great are next to 0 (the majority of startups fail).
So the type of Bu--sh--ting or Hucksterism he refers to absolutely MUST be present by definition. And I think everyone knows that. In fact I think it's celebrated here more than any place else.
Look at all the "ASK HN: REVIEW MY STARTUP" threads and you'll see a lot of support. I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone tell a budding entrepreneur not to reach for $100-a-share. When criticism is present it's almost always to help the person achieve that goal not reprimand them for having it.
He made a lot of eloquent ennemies in the process, which probably didn't help during the trial that sealed his fate.
That said, I don't feel that HN is overall anti-marketing. It just tends to attract people who would prefer not be the ones doing the marketing (and who would prefer not to need it). To me that's not the same.
(Personally, when my wife was taking marketing classes in college as part of a Graphic Design degree, I couldn't believe how evil her textbooks were. "Consumer Behavior" is an ugly cross between psychology and evil.)
Bad marketing: we want your money. We realize you won't just give it to us, so how about if we give you this product in exchange for your money? We'll do whatever we can to make you think you want this product, even if you really don't, because we really want your money.
I think most marketing leans toward the bad side, which is unfortunate. I really appreciate good marketing.
(I'll leave out the inflammatory parts of my earlier comment, though.)
Ballmer has said iPods and Google aren't allowed in his house (http://www.geek.com/articles/apple/no-ipod-google-in-ballmer...). He and his family all use Zune and Bing (by Ballmer's edict). So he's completely detached himself from reality.
If anything this is the reason Ballmer has to go. He has Microsoft too ingrained into his thinking. So much so that he can't see its weaknesses anymore. Which means those weaknesses don't get addressed and things go from bad to worse.
So believing that Zune will supplant iPod might not have been wrong, but ignoring iPod's strengths and Zune's weaknesses is definitely wrong.
I'm not saying you're suggesting this, I just always see things like "Betamax vs VHS" trotted out. Where the engineers spend undue time comparing visual quality specs and completely ignore things like the simple fact that Betamax tapes didn't hold enough video to record the types of things that consumers wanted to record. (movies, sports, etc)
It's a lot easier to find examples where things are all pretty much equal except marketing. Toothpaste, soap, all sorts of consumable household stuff where the only differences are color, perfume and marketing.
So, I should amend my original statement and say that there are lots of products which were superior in engineering terms but lost the battle on other grounds, whether it's user-friendliness, price, availability, installed user-base -- all of which I (incorrectly) grouped into the term "marketing" in my original post.
The general view is that marketing entrenches information asymmetry.
It is Ballmer's/Gates' job to convince the world to use Microsoft products, not Microsoft's job to convince them. In public sphere, they are of course going to present a unified front. But in reality, I would be shocked if he actually never used a competitor's product.
In other words, you are still responsible for correcting anything you say if it's wrong.
It's worse to knowingly tell an untruth, but it's still bad to have done it at all.
The story about kibble? Sure it's probably half-true but he clearly spun it in a different why to tie it into his argument here.
And then this is just a blatant example of bullshit/spinning:
I had to think for a minute. Then I said, "It isn't lying if you really believe it yourself."
Kind of appropriate to write a piece in defense of bullshitting which is composed entirely of bullshit. :)
Disclaimer: I have been known to bullshit myself.
However, in context, his message is closer to "it's not lying if you lie convincingly to yourself first," which is one of the more pernicious flaws in our culture.
I guess any statement about the future is a lie, since you can't know. Interesting how he relates a similar propensity to "lie": optimism. OTOH, the self-fulfilling prophecy is a real effect: expect success, and you increase its likelihood.