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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

You have a ton of respect for people who will lie through their teeth to make a sale?

Why should we not assume his HTML5 knowledge is roughly equivalent to his hydrogen car knowledge?

In another window I have a thesaurus open looking for a word that conveys only the subset of meanings of respect that don't intersect with approval, something that captures the fascination, the horror of the carnival barker personality and the way we are seduced and bamboozled by their spectacle of bullshit. I think we have to admit that we actually enjoy aspects of this seduction. We love listening to a raconteur, stories of a con man, but the rock star we love from a hundred feet back in the throng of the crowd, smells like their own urine up close. I think if we're going to find a way to build a society wide immune response against bullshit we need to be honest that we enjoy a performance, and a sure fire way to improve a performance is to unshackle it from the constraints of reality and integrity.

Would you withdraw your savings from a bank because the cashier didn't understand HTML 5? Why should we not assume operating a cash drawer is roughly equivalent to HTML 5 knowledge?

1. He’s a vastly more senior person than a cashier.

2. It’s not the lack of understanding that’s concerning. It’s the confident wrongness.

I wouldn't expect the cashier to be selling me a product they didn't understand either. If my bank tried to sell me a new security because it was backed by custom chips running HTML, I would probably switch banks as well.

Lying with confidence is, after all, where the "con" in con man comes from.

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