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It might seem tempting to think of inartistic information and artistic information as

just fact vs. deduction, but the terms are actually a little more particular, and they
carry important implications.

Inartistic Information

Inartistic information is anything that you find in the world; however, this does not
mean that it is inherently true. To get a better idea of what this means, consider the

following examples:

Example #1: Person X asks Person Y what she did yesterday, and Person Y replies

that she fed her pet snake. This is a testimony, which means that the information is,

for Person X at least, "found" information. Let's say that in fact Person Y did not feed
her pet snake yesterday—the information is then untrue. Regardless, the

information is still inartistic for Person X because he did not invent it; it exists

independent of him.

Example #2: Scientist X is studying whether it is healthier to stay home and play

video games on Saturday nights or go out with friends. The problem is that Scientist
X loves video games. He has a bias and, unbeknownst to him, this bias affects his

ability to collect data. Since he doesn't know about the problem, he types up all his
data and publishes his conclusion that staying home playing video games is safer.

Even though the data may be inaccurate, because of his bias, it still constitutes

inartistic information, and his conclusion that staying home is safer constitutes
artistic information.

In this module, we will not focus on the impact of "truth" on the definitions of artistic
and inartistic information. Instead, for our purposes, we will say that inartistic

information is anything that exists independent of you.

TX Marketing II: Negotiation Techniques 11