Sublime

as Voltaire put it, the perfect is the enemy of the good.

What is not genuine need not also be defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the truth, it need not be false. The bu

And reality matters because it is the only thing that can satisfy us.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself.

It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.

Good enough’ is almost always good enough,” advises Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice.

He reacts as though he perceives her to be speaking about her feeling thoughtlessly, without conscientious attention to the relevant facts.