Opinion Science is at its best when it makes manifest radical ideas that change our worldview. This is the flag all sane people salute, under which we march to war. Yet in our hearts, we know that the very tastiest science is that which confirms our prejudices and validates what we've known all along. Cornell University has just served up a plate of the finest yet. Tuck in.
In an inventive, incisive study into the anthropology of business linguistics, researchers at that institution have proven the old adage, "bullshit baffles brains." Those most impressed by the use of corporate jargon are those least well-equipped for analytical thinking. They ranked nonsensical statements more highly when composed of the finest business bovine byproduct, as ranked on the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale or CBRS. This new learning is doubly delightful, not only confirming what so many of us have noted in our own studies of management and the managed, but also inferring superior analytical awesomeness on those who instinctively loathe the stuff.
Jargon is not inherently bad. It has many essential functions, especially in tech with its vast appetite for new inventions and novel reuse of older ideas. There is no crime in using butteriness instead of low latency touch enabled graphical user interface responsiveness. Four syllables beat twenty. The use of jargon can also be a good thing in itself. When geeks first meet, their initial conversation often resembles modem talking to modem, a training and negotiation sequence when the highest level of communication is established. The use of the right jargon is a strong guide to the depth of interest in a knowledge domain, and the right use of the right jargon marks concomitant expertise.
Management jargon misappropriates these uses, because the business of business is not technical but desperately wants to be. It is primarily people dealing with people in that wonderful game of encouraging cooperation through status, something that hasn't really changed since we picked lice off each other. But it must seem to progress, so it needs new words for old ideas. Architecting instead of designing. Drilling down instead of exploring. Granularity instead of detail. Bio-break instead of taking a leak.
Those who use such words mark their higher status within the business environment and the superior nature of their ideas. Those who lap this up understand the dangers of over-analyzing the boss, and the importance of accepting tribal signifiers. There's a reason this stuff exists, and resists whatever criticism and mockery rightly arise. It is in the fields of academe, technology, and business journalism in which criticism and mockery blossom most brightly.
These places prioritize analytic thinking and creativity, producing output of clarity and efficiency, among people who management finds hard to control. It's not that other places lack widespread recognition of and cynicism about business jargon – these are ubiquitous – but tech and journalism are well placed to mock it publicly.
Take bullshit bingo, the game of quietly ticking off obnoxious jargon during meetings on bingo cards. You can't actually yell "Bingo!" if you win, but the right sort of cough works just as well. This can be traced back to Turkey Bingo in colleges in the early '90s, thence to Buzzword Bingo in business schools. It finally broke out under its current name and form by being hosted on the earliest web through Silicon Graphics employees. The Register knows from first-hand reports that the game quickly established itself across Silicon Valley. Intel and Microsoft employees also claimed an advanced variant where the challenge was to introduce new jargon and get it taken up by management at the meeting. Business jargon does have genuine uses after all.
Despite the long tradition of business bullshit and its critics, the Cornell study comes at an apposite time. Tech and consultancy marketing has always had a peculiarly strong love for bad jargon, given the industry's habit of relaunching old ideas in new guises, and of disguising mediocre ideas in glamorous clothes. There's been more than one major new business methodology launched in a cavalcade of infographics, white papers, and shiny graphics that boils down to "have more meetings, we can show you how." Such tendencies have now been hyper-accelerated by the need to sell us all AI, and sell it hard.
The term "AI" is itself prime slime, often used as a synonym for software but never for the actual sentience it coyly implies. That over-promotion soaks all the way down with LLMs, with promised efficiency benefits poisoned by the need to check it for the mistakes it continues to make. Or by the consequences of not checking for those mistakes, which happens when you believe the claims and are too tired, too overworked, or too lazy to disbelieve the jargon. Forget the fog of war, it's the miasma of bullshit that needs to be dispelled.
This is where we call upon the team at Cornell to expand and extend their science beyond the general skewering of business jargon and those who create and consume it, welcome and valuable as it is. The use of the stuff as a diagnostic is great – now use that as the basis for identifying and dissecting the stuff itself, and the mechanisms by which it affects choices and actions.
The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale is a great start. Now we need the ABRC, the AI Bullshit Receptivity Scale. Heroes of Cornell, you know your allies in technology and journalism are standing by to applaud and amplify your efforts. Doubtless there are entire Nobel Prize awarding committees anxiously awaiting your future endeavors here, such is their potential importance. Existential threat may be just another piece of corporate jargon, but just because something's a cliché doesn't mean it's not true. ®
Source: The register