The audience who would see this kind of course/site are likely people who pretty much already have their head screwed on the right way. It would be much better to train them in effective rhetoric so they can counter the bullshit in real arguments.
We keep forgetting that people tend to support policies and politicians for largely social and psychological reasons, not because of facts and ideology. The former are where the real battle is fought.
I spend a lot of time debating with people who disagree with me politically. It's nearly impossible to have a factual debate. So stop trying. Instead, make your point based on common morals, do it with compassion and generosity of spirit, and don't allow the goalposts of the debate to be moved. Throw in like two of couple of your choicest facts and sources, but don't expect them to help. Move on and repeat.
> Rational People: Use data and reason to arrive at truth. (This group is mostly imaginary.)
> Word-Thinkers: Use labels, word definitions, and analogies to create the illusion of rational thinking. This group is 99% of the world.
> Persuaders: Use simplicity, repetition, emotion, habit, aspirations, visual communication, and other tools of persuasion to program other people and themselves. This group is about 1% of the population and effectively control the word-thinkers of the world.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/147595892021/how-persuaders-see...
Over the last couple of years though, it seems that he's become obsessed with this whole "master persuader" idea. It made for interesting reading for the first month or so, but it's slowly taken over all of his other content to the point that he now seems afraid to actually express an opinion of his own, instead trying to angle his posts as a "persuasion". He actually seems to be spiralling into madness.
I just checked back and at least he's re-enabled comments now, so maybe there will be some entertaining reading there again (the comments were always the best part).
But then fact checking is too time consuming, many times I do it, but not often enough. And you can't just wipe clean from your memory whatever you heard. This is the genius behind repetition: if unchallenged, it sticks to your subconscious, whether you want it or not, especially when spoken by people you happen to respect.
So here's the problem, even those of us with a logical, science-oriented mind, that studied the right things in school, even us need help. Do you think that us developers are immune to yellow journalism? Think again. Here's one concrete proof that we can swallow bullshit whole, much like everybody else: https://twitter.com/timbray/status/810157215478755328
The answer is always education and even if you educate a tiny minority, those people can then educate others. And personally I feel like I need that education as well.
Are you saying we bought the bullshit when Oracle claimed they wouldn't monetize it? If that's the case, that was never a verifiable statement, or better yet, was never an immutable state either way. I don't think anyone convinced themselves they knew anything from that claim.
That's not the same thing as accepting that someone claims that man landed on the moon. While still hard to verify (really), it still either happened or not. Monetizing Java could change at any time, what was the case yesterday might be changed today, and could be back again tomorrow.
Newton is, I guess, an example of someone very critical in one context and less critical in another (scientific historians rush to correct me).
Still, though, I don't think we can all do enough work on training young people to at least have the tools to think critically. Studying medieval history at 17 changed my entire way of thinking about credibility. I think I'd be a much less critical thinker if I had not had that experience.
And that's something most people choose to ignore, that even "how to think" is something that evolves, and our current standards were created by many people improving on what came before them.
I observe that we tend to make an implicit assumption that most statements contain an opinion, perception, and anectotes. It gets harder to think everything in terms of data, e.g. I could ask "What people? Did you perform a study yourself?" for your statement, however, if it aligns with my perception or makes sense even without hard data, I'm not going to do it.
> Studying medieval history at 17 changed my entire way of thinking about credibility
Any books you would recommend?
You contextualize this as related to politics. But, I've noticed, in certain fora, that it's nigh-on impossible, even for something as measurable as energy production. And that's just inputs and outputs where the units of measurement are already agreed to! :-O
What's the difference? What causes some topics to be amenable to rational debate (or even discussion that doesn't go off the rails) and not? Politics, economics (because it's related to politics?), and religion - no. No rationality to be had there. Anything that have to do with harmful invisible vapors (vaccines, electromagnetics, radiation, environmental toxins) and health - no. Any form of "alternative lifestyle", including digital nomadicism (!) - no. Law - all over the map. Computer programming - all over the map.
In fact, right now, I'm trying to think of something that humans debate rationally, and I'm having a difficult time thinking of one (I'm sure they exist - but I'm only lightly caffeinated so far).
Regardless of my inability to think of topics that we (humans) can debate about rationally, why do some topics "work" for rationality and some not?
> Move on and repeat.
Why? You just said it almost never helps.
Yeah, great question! I didn't really address that part.
What I really meant is that I almost never "win" the argument. I've overtly changed someone's mind before, but that's like 10% of the time, at best. So making that my goal wouldn't be a good idea.
More often, I can get the other person to expand their point of view, even just a little bit. I can gain some credibility in their minds as someone they may disagree with, but can respect. And it opens the door to the perception that maybe the point of view I represent isn't directly opposed to their tribe. For people I tend to debate repeatedly, I can tell there's a shift over time.
Not to mention the fact that I'm not always right. I learn a lot from people who aren't already inclined to mindlessly Like everything I post. Debating people makes me a better thinker and persuader.
But I think most importantly, I do it for the audience. I suspect that in many of these debates, the lurkers are much less entrenched in their point of view than me or the person I'm debating with. Those are the people I really want to move. And that's a big reason why it's crucial to be civil, sincere, and avoid blowing up on people. Nothing turns off a neutral onlooker like someone being an asshole, even if it's righteous.
Most people don't know how to think critically. You're right about the target audience, people who are already interested will take it.
As an aside, I read a book on rhetoric (Thank You for Arguing) written by a guy who is extremely passionate about it, to the point where he persuaded me to teach it to my 4yo. It was extremely effective. He picked up negotiation quickly, and has been analyzing (if you ask him, he can tell you whether his argument is ethos, pathos, or logos) and tuning his arguments as he gets older. Now he uses negotiation and reasoning for everything. While I feel like sometimes it works against me (I have to negotiate everything with him), he now knows how to compromise in a negotiation so that arguments don't end in tantrums. And I honestly feel like he'll be better off with that one skill than he ever would with a trust fund or inheritance.
I mean, you can argue facts all day long but if someone believes that having a bigger gun makes them right -- what's the point? You really think Kim Jong-un is going to listen to reason when he has nukes?
This statement, my friends, is how most persuasion works in the world.
No facts, just statements like:
"You really think...?"
If the person responds with "It's plausible - why not?", then you say:
"I mean, Come On!"
While it may be hard for some to believe, I write this comment with full seriousness and not as a joke. This really is how most persuasion works.
It's been mentioned multiple times on HN, but Influence, by Cialdini, is a great read. Especially the chapter on Social Proof.
I've seen this in action in the engineering world. You can have your data, as well as your error-free mathematics (no calculus, I promise! Just a few lines of algebra) to back your argument up. And the other person (PhD, no less) only needs to look at someone who shares his view of how the system under examination works to reject my mathematics.
Hence, his social proof was stronger than my mathematical proof.
I used to get upset about how I was working amongst the top engineers in one of the top companies in the world, and how illogical they seemed. But then I read the book and realized that's the "natural" order of things, and most people will not escape it.
Academia was a nice place where this was less of a problem.
Your comment was perfect as a lead up to this story about this Table of Knowledge group in Iowa:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/donald-trump-iowa-cons...
I bet there are a large number of these informal groups around the country. Listening to how they reason and what their units of reasoning are, which are not necessarily facts, is elucidating.
Problem is, the truth is pretty hard to determine based on the usual suspects (studies, facts etc):
"I worry that most smart people have not learned that a list of dozens of studies, several meta-analyses, hundreds of experts, and expert surveys showing almost all academics support your thesis – can still be bullshit." -- http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-s...
Yikes. what we really need is to discuss the practicality of citing studies performed by third-parties, and of trying to "prove" truth individually rather than collect evidence over time, as a community.
> do it with compassion and generosity of spirit
This is just good-faith, and it needn't be "compassion and generosity" which can easily be abused.
I'd worry a lot about the personal/existential implications. Gramsci says that the demagogue is the first one bitten by the snake of his own demagoguery.
I'd like to see the principle of calling bullshit taught in high schools.
Things can improve, and in fact, they have improved quite a bit over the last several centuries.
The appeal to authority of the ancient Greeks is sometimes a good one I guess, but not always. For instance, the Greeks "knew" a lot of things that they were flat wrong about.
My guess is that the type of person who falls victim to 'bullshit' theory or messages is not the kind of person who is willing to dedicate time to an online course about learning to be more critical in thought. 'Bullshit' thinking has been largely successful because its an effortless pathway to establishing an opinion on something (queue System 1/System 2 thinking).
Conversely, the people who would be willing to read this sort of content are likely the people who are already reasonable skeptical about what they take as face value.
I know exactly how and why it happens, too. It's human nature to want to be liked and be successful. It is human nature to go with the flow when funding is at stake. It is human nature to want to be accepted by one's peers and to impress one's superiors. Also, it is extremely hard to innovate these days when so many people are out there doing the exact same things as you are.
Unfortunately, all that behavior has taken humanity down some dark paths before.
Obviously it's not about them. There are still millions that understand the problem and are willing to think more critically -- but don't have all the skills, expertise etc to distinguish bullshit in its myriad forms.
Some statistics bullshit in the media for example is obvious, but other is so well hidden, it takes deeper knowledge of math and statistics, or abstract reasoning etc to recognize it.
>Conversely, the people who would be willing to read this sort of content are likely the people who are already reasonable skeptical about what they take as face value.
Reasonable skeptical people are getting duped every day in all kinds of subtle ways. Having the skills to recognize those, would be nice.
Is it going to help the situation, by providing some accessible resources that will help some people? I'd say so. There'll be more people with a better understanding of bullshit.
What more can you really expect from an initiative?
I agree that the demographic coverage is not even remotely 100%. Would it be fair to generalize your 'target audience critique' as "this can not possibly be of help to the unwashed masses"?
Here's my take on the general demographic critique. (This equally and critically applies to 'encryption & privacy' efforts that we geeks keep circling back to here and elsewhere.)
First a categorical definition from uncle Marx so that attendant HN Marxists do not accuse me of 'petite bourgoise' biases :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpenproletariat
I agree with Marx: The lumpen proletariat, as you note, are "not the kind of [people] who [are] willing to dedicate time to an online course." Equally, as we famously know, they remain unmoved by the fact that their idle chatter and exchanges of pixelated naughty bits are recorded and reviewed by "public servants" in service of the establishment class.
Thus, per this view, it is (as you point out) a /waste/ of effort to either try to equip them with cognitive tools, or, "user friendly" privacy tools.
One of my little pet theories is that the 1% -- the ratios are rough/symbolic -- require the psychological assent of the 10%. And, in my view, the 1% are critically depdendent on them for the operation and maintenance of the establishment order.
This 10% is courted, conditioned, and then integrated into the establishment order. Sometimes they are identified in school, taken under the wing of a mentor who gently shape their thoughts into a form suitable for fitting into the available slots. Others effectively auto-integrate by identifying with the 'attractive' propaganda of the establishment order. All end up as useful servants of the establishment.
Most of us are not familiar with mechanics and psychology of power.
To affect change in society, whether in 1000BC, or 2017 AD, the participation of the 10% is of absolute critical importance. The lumpen proletariat are moved to action only under the duress of severe hunger. Anything else, they don't budge.
All our efforts towards the betterment of our society should focus attention on the 10%.
Educate the young potential, and recovering older, members of 10%, and, provide them secure communication (which most certainly must not sacrifice technical rigour at the alter of the false god of "[general] usability").
May I suggest that maybe you are not attuned to nth-order bullshit? It's relatively harmless, but it's out there.
In a way, seeing through all the bullshit is a feat of almost superhuman strength, even more so without falling prey to cynicism or nihilism.
Even? I'd say mostly -- or at least on par.
And if anything does go wrong you can blame the original bullshitter so you don't have to take responsibility when it turns out you were wrong.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-k...
Anyway here is one that isn't on their list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Thing...
And to this I asked:
- Is there even a definition of "critical thinking"?
- (As a psychology major) Is there evidence that this is a sound objective concept (rather than something everyone thinks only they have)?
- Is there any objective measure of critical thinking? If not, how can you have any objective reason to believe your courses increases critical thinking?
And to this they said various forms of "I don't know." I guess they had never really thought about it critically.
Nothing like some Youtube channels, where presenter spends one hour deconstructing some study, to its sources and sources of the sources.
"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman
And I am not sure what to expect from a statistical course build around TED Talks, blog posts and NY Times articles. With chapters named like "The natural ecology of bullshit"...
[1] http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?k=9780300208238 - There's a brief interview with the author that introduces the book on there.
It's laudable to fight this, just very prone to disillusion.
The things which do matter to them however they care deeply about. And so it's much more accurate IMO to talk about misaligned perspectives rather than whether people don't care about the truth.
Maybe marketing can be elevated to the same standard as phishing, where effort is put into deceiving our filters?
If so, this would be a very useful course for a marketeer to attend ;)
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122...
http://callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html#Introduction
(Funny little story, btw: The NYT reviewed that book, without being able to ever mention its title or, well, subject :-)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/books/between-truth-and-li...
https://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf
And Cohen's "Deeper into Bullshit":
http://learning.hccs.edu/faculty/robert.tierney/phil1301-6/b...
edit: now that the site is back up, I can see both are part of the week 1 syllabus!
That said, why does it have to be set up like a college course? Not only did looking at the site bring back memories of freshman year crit analysis courses, the way in which their proposed structure is laid out is completely out of sync with the way in which people absorb information today.
Fake news is shared widely because it's easy and doesn't require much mental exertion of the sharer/reader. The people most likely to share this kind of provocative "viral" content do not even have a working common-sense bullshit meter. Yet the well-meaning people behind the course think they're ready move from 200 word blog posts with a black-and-white view of the world to college-level reading?
I'd suggest looking at the UX/UI of an app like Google Primer (bite sized lessons on digital marketing) and see if that model can be applied here. Probably not Primer is designed to provide on-the-go info while this is designed as an actual college course.
I'm definitely curious about Susan Fiske's article, about how social networks encourage unmoderated academic "trash talk" [2]. Andy Gelman has a pretty negative critique of the article here [3].
[1] https://hardsci.wordpress.com/2016/08/11/everything-is-fucke...
[2] http://callingbullshit.org/readings/fiske2016mob.pdf
[3] http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-he...
edit: why the downvote?
This is exactly what public education systems should be teaching. I'd almost say that next to basic literacy and mathematics, this is the most valuable subject to teach. It lays the groundwork for so much else.
Or putting in other words: analysis is an art not a science.
It's not like people suddenly decided to disregard truth and not believe in actual truths.
It's that we have just realized that interpretation is not the same as truth and have now been made aware that there are other interpretations of the facts than our own.
We don't live in a post-truth world, we live in a world were the truth is confused with difference of opinion.
"post-truth" doesn't mean people have decided to disregard truth, it means that factual truth is no longer a relevant factor in in the effectiveness of political arguments for many people. See Karl Rove's quote about the "reality-based" community (which may or may not be apocryphal) versus the American empire which simply creates whatever reality it likes.
Before the media/Democrats can credibly criticise "fake news", they first need to regain the people's trust.
When Obama was elected they said Post-racial america, and we now know how much it is not.
So, now some butt-hurt people from election came up with Post-Truth, even though people were constantly conned into stuff that is untrue, like WMDs or you can keep your doctor.
After much thought, I forward the motion for Post-Post-Prepending Era.
This made me chortle
Marketing opinion. This page: http://callingbullshit.org/case_studies.html should be made homepage content, for it is their most compelling and clear value statement and takes little space. It took me too long to find naturally, and I didn't feel fulfilled on the bullshit pitch till I did. If you don't want to move it, perhaps call them examples instead of case studies, if you want to reach a general audience.
Serendipity. These professors made a course/website "bullshit" the title. Which I think's funny because I just uploaded a youtube video in a tophat/leopard print about how smart people should be more aggressive spreading their ideas.
Interestingly enough, the claim about bullshit lacking an exact synonym is false. Not only does bull by itself mean precisely the same thing, but in fact its use predates the compound formation by three centuries. The use of shit in bullshit is an intensifier, as in shitstorm or shitfit, though presumably the rather evocative image of bovine excrement was also a factor.
From the Google dictionary:
bull (3)
bo͝ol/
noun informal
noun: bull
stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.
"much of what he says is sheer bull"
Origin
early 17th century: of unknown origin.
bull·shit
ˈbo͝olˌSHit/
vulgar slang
noun
noun: bullshit
1. stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.
Origin
early 20th century: from bull (3) + shit.I call BS.
There's a lot of depth of analytics required when you're spending a billion dollar marketing budget that goes well beyond correlation causation basics.
Sigh, I miss Jon Stewart.
[1]. http://www.cc.com/video-clips/ss6u07/the-daily-show-with-jon...
Am a little disappointed actually, that would be a handy reference. Though naturally such a thing would almost immediately devolve into arguments about the degree to which anything is bullshit, but that could still be valuable.
We all have blind spots, we just have different blind spots.
I laughed hard after reading Week 3:
Week 3. The natural ecology of bullshit. Where do we find bullshit? Why news media provide bullshit. TED talks and the marketplace for upscale bullshit. Why social media provide ideal conditions for the growth and spread of bullshit.
> but recently a fake news story actually provoked nuclear threats issued by twitter.
Nuclear threats issued by Twitter. What a world we live in.
Perhaps only in British use (?) - but 'rubbish' and 'nonsense' can both be used to replace 'bullshit', other than qua faeces.
"SILENT RISK :NASSIM NICHOLAS TALEB" ( pdf )
http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/SilentRisk.pdf
and
"Taleb: The Intellectual Yet Idiot"
https://medium.com/incerto/the-intellectual-yet-idiot-13211e...
Shallow "facting" does not help the the cause.
I call bullshit on the existence of "social sciences". Even the best attempts at controlled, reproducible experiments were laughable, so at most we can call them "social studies".
I am calling bullshit on this.
However I made a more efficient approach at solving this : http://TrumpTweets.io
The manifesto : http://TrumpTweets.io/manifesto
It feels like preaching to the choir. It is also fairly antagonistic, which people generally respond defensively too.
It looks like it was pretty fun to build though!
http://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpuppe...
Scott Adams, talking about Scott Adams in the third person, while pretending not to be Scott Adams:
- [0] plannedchaos -21 points 4 months ago
If an idiot and a genius disagree, the idiot generally thinks the genius is wrong. He also has a lot of idiot reasons to back his idiot belief. That's how the idiot mind is wired.
It's fair to say you disagree with Adams. But you can't rule out the hypothesis that you're too dumb to understand what he's saying.
And he's a certified genius. Just sayin'.
He is a climate change denier with the senseless circular reasoning, that if he can't understand the science of climate change himself, why should he ever trust climate scientists and other experts in the field, because their models are complicated. https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/814133681711263744
Later in the thread, when presented with any scientific explanation of climate change, he reverts to repeating "how can I trust it?", all the while accusing climate scientists of having a financial incentive to push climate change, not providing proof himself.
I'm no denier either, but you'll have to pardon me if I choose to not join the unthinking hordes who insist we must do something now, and no we will not think while we are doing this. Dissension is explicitly not allowed.
Oh, is that not exaaaaaaaaaaaactly what the message is? Of course not, but there is some truth there. There are highly trained scientists who don't fully support the party line, and they are not allowed to speak. I believe it is not an intellectually honest conversation, and I'm old enough to remember other situations where dissent was not allowed and it turned out not so good.
Also, don't forget that Scott is a humorist author, and part of his schtick is to deliberately cause outrage, especially with people who take themselves way too seriously.
If you were thinking in terms of word associations and analogies, this disclaimer wouldn't matter because it's the association of words that's important, not the argument itself. And here you're ignoring the argument and focusing on word associations which he explains clearly are not his point. I see people making this kind of argument all the time, and it makes using analogies in any way other than emotional association usually pointless because someone will always find a way to focus on their emotional response to the words rather than the arguments. Doesn't this perfectly illustrate his point?
It seems like he was manipulating people into having this kind of negative reaction to prove his point that people don't focus on arguments.
Literally, or he just used a metaphor?
I can say "black people are like bowling balls, they are both black".
You could respond "oh my god! black people are people, not objects! How dare you!"
But this would not be a reasonable response - The implication of the metaphor was not that black people share the property of being an object. That would be a purposeful mis-interpretation.
Granted, the use of metaphor can sometimes be suspect, precisely because of the ambiguity of implication, but that's all it is - ambiguous in meaning/intent.
In this case also, it would be seen as arrogant to tell someone they aren't smart enough to understand your argument, but not so with a third party, i.e. maybe it's appropriate for playing devils advocate informally.
That said, he was also antagonizing if using "idiot", rather than being more polite himself. If he spoke through his own handle, he might have cared more about civility.
Meanwhile, the rest of this thread devolves to pedantry about definitions and analogies.
Good persuasion :)
In the areas where "getting things right" has a direct impact on someone's life, people turn out to be surprisingly good at catering for their own interests (though not perfect, and the whole advertising industry is based around the desire to screw people in this area).
You could be wise without being intelligent (someone who learned a lot by rote learning, but doesn't understand much of it), or vice versa, although the latter is somewhat questionable - an intelligent person will likely use the intelligence to know more and more things. :)
Edit: heck, even D&D had separate wisdom and intelligence stats. :)
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