On “On Bullshit,” an essay first published in 1986, the Princeton philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt offered a distinction between lies and BS. He argued that while a liar clearly isn’t adhering to the truth, by choosing to lie he is at least acknowledging that some truth exists.

The bullshitter, on the other hand, “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false,” Frankfurt wrote. “He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”

Frankfurt’s essay was published before most people heard of Ray Dalio, the now billionaire founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, but the philosopher might well have written it with Dalio in mind. And the CEO, who fashions himself an investment savant and has compared himself to both the Dalai Lama and Steve Jobs (Dalio even had his team pitch his life story to Walter Isaacson, Jobs’s biographer), might well have enjoyed the attention of such an Ivy League philosopher.