Quantifying bollocks

One of the Great Issues of our time is the problem of how to quantify bollocks. Note that when speaking of bollocks in the sense of drivel, garbage or lies, we use term such as how much bollocks rather than how many. It’s more akin to weight than number.

The technical term is Bollocks Quotient, or BQ. The scale most commonly used is a simple unitless range of 0 to 100 devised by the Institute of Notions. On that basis, a speech by Nick Clegg is likely to have a BQ of 100 while the BBC news might be as low as 50.

The BBC news is in fact quite a good standard of inveracity here, closely tracking our general UK-wide BQ of 50.

It may be a surprise to many, but in medieval times, general BQ was probably no higher than ours. All those nonexistent demons, witches and bogies were offset by our politics, journalism, pervasive middle class drivel and faith in house prices.

So the real challenge for any society is to reduce its BQ from that prevailing in medieval times, after which all kinds of benefits should follow. However, we should not underestimate the challenge. According to recent research by the Institute of Notions we haven’t managed to reduce our general BQ since Sweyn Forkbeard died in 1014.

From the Institute of Notions

However, the interweb seems to have the potential to change all that. In fact I’m sure it has. Consider the following thought experiment.

My main environmental interests revolved around uncertainty of measurement. In the field there were many confounding factors from excessively granular drift factors to the differential morphology of measurement itself.

Before the interweb, the fact that this little paragraph has a BQ of almost 100 may not have been obvious to the general reader. Some would tacitly assume a BQ of zero. Today however, interweb is powerful enough to at least raise suspicions that its true BQ may be well over the social norm.

So is the interweb reducing the BQ of UK society by this kind of checkable transparency? Are all the scandals and suspicions simply a result of transparency and consequent decline in BQ?

Are we headed for a BQ as low as 40?