Truth or Truthiness?

Does your story pass the test?

Is it truth or truthiness?

Truthiness is a "truth" that a person claims to know intuitively "from the gut" or that it "feels right" without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts#.

A graduate student at the MIT Media Lab is writing software that can highlight false claims in articles, just like spell check.

The software is not designed to determine lies from truth on its own. That remains primarily the province of real humans. The software is being designed to detect words and phrases that show up in PolitiFact’s database, relying on PolitiFact’s researchers for the truth-telling.

To critics of the software, Daniel Shultz responds the purpose is to inspire people to think and then provide information that will help them do that thinking (e.g., leverage the analysis of 3rd parties like Politifact).

A way to tell the truth in business

Truthiness happens whenever you don't know what you're really trading.

Ever slogged through a company "mission statement", only to wonder what the hell it was you just read? Or listened to some conference speaker, spinning the latest buzzwords and marketing jargon?

Contracts are part of doing business (and one could argue also a form of marketing) and they should be as simple as possible so people know what promises they are trading.

The problem in business is that when people don’t know what they’re seeking to describe and the promise they're making, they hide in buzzwords and jargon that is unintelligible.

In the end, the better question is: are/is what you're looking at of real value or just hope?

 

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Comments

[twitter.com/wmougayar]

Yes, it's a subtle nuance for some, but it's the authenticity part that makes the truth part come alive. Being authentic is important to being true.

[Brian Driggs]

I think truth is saying what you mean and meaning what you say. If you don't really know why what you're saying (truly) matters in the long term, you can't really communicate the promise, which means truthiness is the best you can do.

[Valeria Maltoni]

I hesitate to use terms that are getting a bit overused. I see honesty as part of the intent - wanting to trade the best promise possible.

[Valeria Maltoni]

keeping the best of promises is where the conversation around model and what things to do more centers.

[Serena]

Very interesting. The majority of internet content definitely seems to fit into the "truthiness" category, but hopefully articles like this will help people wise-up to the deceptiveness of this type of copy. Writers on the internet need to take a hint from trained journalists and start focusing on the truth!

[Peter]

I think what we need is big purposeful who cares if its true or not kind of stuff.

Everyone seems so caught up in truth that we forget the future is never particulary truthful or realistic to the present.

I say it is better to beat the truth of today with disciplined imagination than blog aboutits victories.

We need a better class of untruth.

[Sheila Starz]

You can distinguish truthiness from a real truth, all you have to do is read between the lines and feel the emotion or lack of emotion behind the text. I guess a takeway too is, if we are going to write or do something, we might as well be all out or nothing at all.