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Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

from TFA:

> “Corporate bullshit is a specific style of communication that uses confusing, abstract buzzwords in a functionally misleading way,” said Littrell, a postdoctoral researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences. “Unlike technical jargon, which can sometimes make office communication a little easier, corporate bullshit confuses rather than clarifies. It may sound impressive, but it is semantically empty.”

I'm taking issue with "semantically empty" and saying they're actually semantically rich, but they are coded signals. Coded signals become increasingly indistinguishable from noise.

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But they're not semantically rich. People who speak the code aren't doing it to more efficiently communicate, such that a long and complicated message can be expressed quickly. They are taking a short simple message, stripping away all the details, then padding it such that it becomes more verbose and vapid. This makes the real message harder to decipher for the uninitiated, it removes information even for those who understand the code, and it serves as a display for people who appreciate the flourish. There may still be some meaning left, but it's semantically emptier.

Further much of it is not even code. Examples like the microsoft letter are clearly a performative act to soften the blow of bad news. No one in the know is reading such an email to discern some hidden message; it's written to not be read.

In exactly the sense my HTTPS packets are semantically emptier than my HTTP packets.

It's not even meaningfully similar, let alone exactly that way.

I think it's more like that you are signalling by your use of HTTPS at all, and the packet body itself is encrypted nonsense.

Hiding information in the protocol layer while the bulk content that is "supposed" to contain the meaning is present but actually meaningless. Or for a physical analogy the payload of the envelope vis a decoy and the real information is hidden in the way the flap is sealed.

Well, if your HTTPS packets are somehow more retarded than your HTTP packets, yes.

I use HTTPS because it makes my packets “more retarded” than the HTTP version of those packets to anybody without the session key to decrypt the “retarded nonsense”.

That’s literally the whole point of encryption:

Your message becomes unintelligible to those who aren’t able to decode the content.

Except encryption isn’t made to protect enlightened few from stupid masses and their “poor” understanding. If you have something secret to say to other managers then just send an email to a mailing list. Assuming that only you and your clique understand the message directed at specific people is an insult to people around you.

It's called elite maintenance of the social class hierarchy. They can't help it, it's all they know. The thing that bugs me is it should be on us working stiffs to divest them of these habits. You can only lead a horse to water, however...

Yes, taking 16 kb to transmit what could have been transmitted in 1 kb with the express purpose of making communication more difficult. That is what semantically emptier means.

> Eventually they figured out that language served a different purpose inside the bond market than it did in the outside world. Bond market terminology was designed less to convey meaning than to bewilder outsiders. Overpriced bonds were not "expensive" overpriced bonds were "rich," which almost made them sound like something you should buy. The floors of subprime mortgage bonds were not called floors--or anything else that might lead the bond buyer to form any sort of concrete image in his mind--but tranches. The bottom tranche--the risky ground floor--was not called the ground floor but the mezzanine, or the mezz, which made it sound less like a dangerous investment and more like a highly prized seat in a domed stadium. A CDO composed of nothing but the riskiest, mezzanine layer of subprime mortgages was not called a subprime-backed CDO but a "structured finance CDO." "There was so much confusion about the different terms," said Charlie. "In the course of trying to figure it out, we realize that there's a reason why it doesn't quite make sense to us. It's because it doesn't quite make sense."

The Big Short by Michael Lewis, page 101.

I thought a mezzanine was when you go see a movie at noon.

That’s a martingale you’re thinking of

Actually, I think he's referring to the resplendent angel of the Kabbalah, Metatron. In the Jewish canon, Metatron is a big film buff.

Megatron is also a film buff and the enemy of Optimus Prime. Optimus Prime flies well above the mezzanine.

I believe that’s a matinee

The mezzanine is the drink with the worm in it; after you get "mezzed", you feel like the worm is eating you from the inside.

No, that’s mescaline (Spanish for tequila).

It was my attempt at a joke.

woosh

Close, it's the part of the cinema where you can purchase popcorn and soft drinks.

But the article isn't about people who do the speaking or what their reasons or real meanings are, it's about people who like hearing it.

I'm always reminded of Asimov's Lord Dorwin: "[the linguistic analyst] after two days of steady work, succeeded in eliminating meaningless statements, vague gibberish, useless qualifications—in short all the goo and dribble—he found he had nothing left. Lord Dorwin, gentlemen, in five days of discussion didn’t say one damned thing, and said it so you never noticed."

In some cases, sure, they're semantically rich, but the result here is that in some cases it doesn't matter whether they are or not, that some people can't tell. That can still be true even if corporate jargon originated and is sometimes still used for rational-ish reasons.

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