How Bullshit Works

Here's a copy paste of a response I wrote a few years ago to explain to my friends why I don't readily except every wild claim made by some fringe expert on the internet.

Begin post:

I’m going to take a moment to teach you how bullshit works. It will explain to you how the Dr. Ozzes and Deepak Chopras come into being. As part of this lesson, I’m about to lie to you. Yep, I’m going to flat out bullshit you. My bullshit will be plausible and backed up by the claims of an expert in the field – an expert whom you’ve all come to understand and trust as knowledgeable – myself on the subject of Systems Administration and IT.

Up until this point, I’ve never lied to you. I’ve spent time and effort to establish myself as someone who is trustworthy and credible. Many of you have come to me with broken computers and I’ve fixed them, over the phone or with the assistance of an online tool, or with the follow up of prescriptions to fix issues that I couldn’t resolve at the time due to lack of resources. You’ve also watched me as I’ve gone through various certification classes. I’m a data recovery specialist who has taken apart, and repaired broken hard drives – a class I shared my progress with.

But today all that is going to change. I’m just going to flat out lie to you. Instead you’re going to pretend I never confessed what I’m about to do. Are you ready? Here’s comes the bullshit. But as I begin to bullshit you, I’m going to identify the parts of my claims which are actually true, as well as the parts which are total bullshit.

Fact: A hard drive is a magnetic device. Just like the old fashioned record players where the needle converted vibrations from grooves on a vinyl disc back into sound, a hard drive is a series of metal platters with magnetic heads. Although they never actually touch the platter, they convert North and South poles to 1s and 0s which is the binary basis of all computing.

Fact: There is a deviation of Magnetic North and South from True North and South. This is known as “magnetic declination” Navigation equipment corrects and accounts for these differences between magnetic north and true north.

Fact: The amount of magnetic declination between magnetic north and true north varies based upon where you are on the globe. There are even calculators and detailed maps to show you the amount of declination of any given location.

[ngdc.noaa.gov]

(Semi-Bullshit) – Although this is technically true, it’s an irrelevant fact that I’m going to tell you is relevant.

Fact: Very often a hard drive is manufactured and its heads aligned in a location where the magnetic declination is significantly different from the location where that drive is ultimately shipped and used for the life as the main component of a computer.

Fact: In addition, the magnetic poles of the Earth are constantly shifting, albeit slightly because of our tidally locked relationship with the moon. The Earth does wobble on its access, but that wobble is significantly minimized because it is held in place by the tidal forces between the earth and the moon. Without the moon, the Eastern Caribbean could be in the North Pole in as little as a month.

Bullshit: Because of this difference in magnetic declination, the magnetic heads of hard drives are pulled out of alignment with the metal platters of the drives, the further away they get from the location with which they were manufactured. The hard drive manufacturers DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW THIS!! Over time, this results in decreased hard drive performance and data integrity. You may have noticed the change in your computer’s performance over time, and the gradual loss of files that you swear you’ve saved. The hard drive manufacturers post anonymously in tech support forums and newsgroups to make you believe this is YOUR fault or the fault of some software you downloaded. This is NOT true! It is NOT YOUR FAULT!

Bullshit: To correct for the inevitable loss of performance and data due to magnetic declination and our earth’s shifting poles, I have invented a device which will release the stress on the heads of the drive, forcing them back into their original alignment position with which they were originally calibrated, based upon the location they were manufactured.

Bullshit: Using patented and tested anti-declination technology which uses neodymium magnets along with patented automatic realignment software, the heads of your drives are repositioned and pulled back into their original manufactured alignment position. The device is called the “Compass Realignment Attenuation Processor” ( CRAP )

Bullshit: Some of my customers tell me the life of their hard drives has more than doubled and as a result never experience the encroaching, gradual decrease in performance and data loss which is caused by magnetic declination. ...