Bullshit is a numbers game, just like spam. Spam doesn't particularly try not to look like spam or avoid spam filters because the target audience isn't employing decent countermeasures.
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 ;)
This seems like a similar idea to Julian Baggini's "Edge of Reason"[1]. In the book he investigates how we've become very bad at using reason (in the philosophical sense of the word) to examine things around us. I'm about 1/2 way through and I've been finding it very interesting indeed.
Can we stop with the claims about a post-truth era?
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.
The fact that you are right about the possibility of taking other interpretations as non truth, does not mean that no opinions are simply misguided and not based on truth. In addition, there have been many articles that are simply made up, which has nothing to do with difference of opinion.
Sure but that does not mean that people don't care about the truth.
There have always been made up stories and lies and propaganda and conspiracy theories it's nothing new it's just become much more obvious now and thus actually allowed us to live in a more truth based world rather than the previous ignorant believe that there are only one way to look at things.
I think it's more simple than this. People have been trained over decades not to believe or trust politicians (e.g. Obama's "I will close down Guantanamo Bay"). So now they just don't bother any more.
Before the media/Democrats can credibly criticise "fake news", they first need to regain the people's trust.
Did people not have history lessons in school? Politics is full of shit since the dawn of time. Politics is war by other means; lies and half-truths are the primary arsenal in this conflict.
Are you implying that Obama didn't make a good faith effort to do what he promised and wasn't repeatedly thwarted by a leery Congress? Because that's not what happened.
What I have noticed recently is a rather shameless admission by many in politics that not only have they been lying but ultimately that "truth" doesn't matter.
In politics truth doesn't matter as such and never have. Politics is about getting it your way not about being right. It's about interest and choices.
The idea that politics is or should somehow be based on facts is misguided. We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
Ideally I'd expect politicians to pick and choose "facts" that suit there arguments (or on a rare occasion actually have their arguments informed by data) and to ideally reference the sources so they can be checked by anyone who cares.
Is that an "elite" approach then?
Of course, what I describe above is an ideal - politics is a mucky business and the essence of a democracy is essentially that we get to choose between the liars. However, what I do have difficulty with is the idea that reasoning from actual factual data or scientific hypotheses has no role in politics.
But thats the problem. You can have two argument which are both true but politically only one of them can win. This is why we argue.
Not because we are uniformed but because our perspectives are different and our perspectives are different because it affects us differently.
And so the real danger here is to go along with this romantic notion that facts used to be more meaningful when in fact it was only that perspectives were more aligned than they are today.
no thats not why people claim we are living in post-truth. They claim that because they claim that truth doesn't matter anymore but truth never mattered in politics and people aren't discarding truth.
I would urge you to give me examples in politics which can't have two different political outcomes both potentially true.
"You are right in that either one can win, but only one can be true."
Of course both sides can put forth true arguments in a political debate. I'm having a hard time coming up with a real world example, both because I don't want to push buttons that force you down a knee-jerk path on the button I push when I don't really care about it, and because we're really not used to seeing honest debates in the political arena.
But when society faces a decision A or B, each side can completely honestly tout the benefits of their decision and the costs of the other decision, both of which will exist. And God Almighty could come down from on high and hand us the exact, true, and full consequences of each decision, and those who benefit from one decision can completely honestly argue in its favor while those who may not benefit could completely honestly argue against it, which could be completely different sets of people for each decision. (There's almost never a decision that benefits everybody, even before we get into questions like relative amounts of benefit, or how society as a whole benefits.)
An argument containing elements of truth, or even somehow consisting entirely of truth, does not make it correct, because it still won't be the complete truth, which may well contain a superior argument for a different decision in it. But we don't have access to complete truth.
Sure, but those are then by definition not opposing arguments. They are opposing stances on some political issue, sure, but on the facts side one party puts more value in one variable where the other party values another.
I was stating that two opposing arguments can't both be true, because then there is no truth.
There is no truth but thats not really relevant. We are debating whether politics today is less fact based than it used to be and which is the reason we see claims of "post-truth".
We are not talking about some rhetorical analysis of language and I never meant it in that sense which the context of this discussion should have made clear. If not then I am remedying that now.
> The idea that politics is or should somehow be based on facts is misguided.
> We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
The second sentence explicitly contradicts the first one. By your second one you are saying that politics is based on the facts that science provides. Or rather, should be.
>It's not like people suddenly decided to disregard truth and not believe in actual truths.
"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.
It's never been. Perception have always been reality and politicians have always used that to get things their way. Thats why they study rhetorics not science.
There is no objective transcendence between facts and politics decisions.
You can believe that climate change is created by humans and still decide not to do anything about it because you also believe that technology will solve most of those problem, or that there are bigger problems (astroid hitting earth for instance) etc.
This is gaslighting. Facts used to matter. It used to be that politicians would substantially lose face for inconsistencies in policy (think John Kerry most recently). Now politicians claim to have never done things they are on film doing, and people believe them.
We are absolutely in a new mode of politics, one that transcends mere differences of opinion. To pretend otherwise does everyone a disservice.
This is exactly where you are going wrong and I believe not really understand what politics is all about.
People didn't vote on Trump because of those things that politfact measured. There weren't watching the debates to figure out who was the most well argued person based on some basic idea of their rhetorical skills.
They voted on trump for all the things that Politifacts didn't measure but which matter to people and on those he was not lying.
Also Hillary won the popular vote so even on that account she won and he didn't.
> No I am claiming the opposite. That people care as much today as they did back in the 90s.
> People didn't vote on Trump because of those things that politfact measured. There weren't watching the debates to figure out who was the most well argued person based on some basic idea of their rhetorical skills.
I have not mentioned "well argued" nor talked about rhetoric. I've talked about speaking the truth or lying. You can speak the truth as an illiterate 5 year old.
Are you deliberately changing your arguments/moving goal posts between all your responses?
Yes you have talked about the truth or lying but you have not yet made any argument pointing to where that have changed compared to before. Still waiting for that.
As if he was gonna practice after 2 terms as President?
Besides the question was whether truth mattered more in politics. The decision to take his law license was from some state bar, not related to some political process.
Or don't care. Some people in the US are so far under water, they are desperate for change; such that they'd back Trump whatever.
Sexual allegations? Who cares if he can actually tries to bring back my job...
Note, I say this without any implication of whether the allegations are true. My point is, people might not care either way. A sexual predator that fixes things is better than an someone virtuous that does nothing.
>"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.
It mostly means:
"Some people can't accept Trump got elected, so when e.g. criticism of him being sexist/rapist etc because of some comments back in the day is discarded, they call it a post-truth world. At the same time, it's not post-truth when the same people discard allegations of rape for Bill Clinton and his wife helping with cover up".
Or, as I'd put it:, both party voters could not give a rats arse about the truth, but the Democratic party has a better stronghold on academics, columnists, intellectuals and "hi-bro" journalists, etc., the sort of people who would just single out the others' disregard of the truth as "post-truth".
Well said. I would add that journalistic ethics have reached a new low. Astoundingly new low. On the other hand, I was not alive in the 1890s during the era of "yellow journalism" where everyone with a printing press was turning out nothing but bullshit on an hourly basis and hawking it to unsuspecting rubes.
Turns out there is good money in just making up crap and printing it.
I remain unconvinced that journalism has reached a new low, rather than our ability to detect its shoddiness has reached a new high.
The only two things I could identify as uniquely a problem today that weren't problems in the past are A: the money is coming out of journalism faster than it can adapt to it and B: the incredibly immediate pressures to be first and get the most clicks. The latter being a thing that has always been present to some degree, since journalists have always made money by attracting eyeballs in one form or another, but the immediacy of the pressure today I'd say is a quantitative change that becomes a qualitative change by sheer size.
But I'm still unconvinced this is a new low, rather than one that we're detecting. Journalism has some nasty stuff in its history. It certainly hasn't reached a new low if you step outside of the United States. The press still hasn't quite reached Pravda lows, but I will conceded it is currently engaged in a full burn towards it.
In Britain at least, popular use of the term "post-truth politics" predates Trump's run for power and was widely applied to campaigns run by the left as well. It's really less about whether specific allegations are true and far more about a rhetorical style in which a campaign proactively makes a high volume of brazenly false claims with the apparent purpose of forcing the opposition into rebutting them rather than the more traditional forms of political lies (denying uncomfortable truths, making promises not intended to be kept, stating hypotheses as facts). But yeah, which side tells the most lies has never been particularly high on voters' list of priority, not least because it's very rare for a campaign to be predominantly honest.
When iPhone was in 3rd or 4th iteration, people talked of post PC era, but at work or at home, you certainly have PC where most "work" is still done.
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.
The whole book is essential reading. Sagan mostly picks easy targets (supernatural claims), but the process is enlightening. For example he lays out the general uselessness of witness testimony and memory, which has extremely broad implications.
You need to want to know what is true first, to care enough to take the trouble of knowing how to detect bullshit. I think the reason why bullshit is flourishing is because those that actually give a damn are the minority. The majority is composed of the useful idiots and those that manipulate them. Of course reality is never black and white, and it is much more nuanced than I've stated here, but I think that's the general gist of things
A big problem is that for most people, truth has no direct or measurable value in lives. Information is mostly used as social objects - something to talk about and share with other people. It doesn't matter whether e.g. that GMO-causes-cancer paper is solid or a hoax, what matters is that as the story circulates, you can play the relative status game with your friends by showing who's more into GMO-causes-cancer belief.
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).
I really like this idea, though struggle to understand the effectiveness.
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.
This is a good point. It's like half of the course needs to be about how to talk about bullshit in a way that makes more people want to get aboard the anti-bullshit train.
I think everyone, engaged and skeptical or otherwise can miss falsehoods if it aligns with their values/beliefs already. Taking something like this should, in theory, give you tools to make sure that even if you really want to believe what you are reading/hearing because it aligns with your world view (or worse, comes from a source you respect and trust) then you can still determine how honest or accurate it is.
The latest SGU (Skeptics Guide to the Universe) podcast touched on your point, and how everyone is susceptible to false hoods particularly when those opinions make up a persons identity. Someone who identifies as 'liberal' or 'conservative' is more likely to fight facts that go against their beliefs. One possible solution presented, was to always attempt to self identify as a skeptic who is okay changing opinions as new facts come in. It is not an easy thing to do because 1) it's a lot of work and 2) you're outside of most of the big popular groups.
I see what you're saying, but since I really strongly think my being skeptical guards me from missing falsehoods regardless, I'm not going to take this.
Like Climate Science? I have never seen so much bullshit and bullshit artists in one place except for DC, which is all bullshit all the time. Academia is the same, almost 100% bullshit these days--not much real science going on outside of medical research, physics, math, stuff you can't readily fake or make up as you desire. The software business runs on unbelievable amounts of bullshit and bullshit's brother, hype.
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.
No, we were not talking about climate science. Actually, we were talking about people like you who miss falsehoods and believe fashionable political propaganda instead of peer reviewed settled science, because it aligns with their prejudices and world views. So thanks for illustrating the point so unwittingly.
> 'Bullshit' thinking has been largely successful because its an effortless pathway to establishing an opinion on something (queue System 1/System 2 thinking).
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.
Is it going to solve the problem of bullshit? Probably not.
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?
There are different ranks of bullshit. But it regularly pops up even in fields populated almost exclusively with smart and critical people (e.g. academia).
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.
>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
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.
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 :)
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").
This is a course on being intelligent, it seems. If you are able to teach people how to be intelligent without making them actually intelligent (= to know a lot of things) then it is magic.
Isn't "to know a lot of things" just being wise? Being intelligent, to me, is more about being able to process information, arrive at conclusions - or, in simple words: to think well.
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. :)
Yep, its one of the best essays I read during my undergrad, and in the era of Trump's never ending bullshit generation it has never been a more relevant a topic for study. 16 page PDF of the original article:
It isn't about identifying bullshit so much as coming up with a subjective preference set to carry out and seek out that leads to a better world regardless of the circumstances.
yes, it is implicit in my comment that this perspective can be intellectually dismantled if you prefer, but the original point of course is that indulging this urge gets less than nothing done for my idea and makes no progress at all on yours while still consuming your time.
I suspect this course is teaching you how to do this type of deconstruction rather than to provide examples that are entertaining or controversial. Teach a person to fish, etc.
Have a look at case studies. Opinions, anecdotal evidence, no sources. There is not even basic fact checking on their sources (they just took a number from Fox News and ran with it).
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"...
> (they just took a number from Fox News and ran with it).
I don't know what you think that case study was about, but it isn't about whether the number was true or not. It is about whether that number represents something that is in line with the point of the article.
> And I am not sure what to expect from a statistical course build around TED Talks, blog posts and NY Times articles.
I wouldn't either, but it isn't a statistical course and it isn't build around TED Talks.
It is not about learning what they are saying in a TED Talk, but about dissecting the TED Talk and understanding why you shouldn't just accept the content of it.
Wow, thank you for sharing this. It's one of the more entertaining essays I've read, especially since I've recently come into contact with some of the literary critics and deconstructionists he's writing about.
This is a really good effort! In analytics and data science world where I work, it's difficult to train our junior people to think through all the reasons their conclusions might be misleading. The cases are likely to be very helpful to get the thinking process started.
My biggest concern about data science is that a lot of people who lack basic skills at doing science are racing into the field. My other concern is that this happened because an article said that there would be a huge demand for data scientists in the future, a matter I am also skeptical of. Repeat after me: Correlation is not causation.
Actually I find that commoditization of computing power and dirt cheap storage combined with the rise of digital as an advertising and sales medium are primarily responsible for the rise in demand. Some of the demand comes from beyond the tech sector in companies like mine which are in the traditional consumer goods busines.
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.
The trollometer Plumpfmeter 2.1 can actively be turned into a bullshit detector by using a post anaphylactic reaction using the original designed http://la.buvette.org/tech/reseau/prumpleffer-2.html based on deep machine learning with the latest green powder AI.
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> In this course we aim to teach you how to think critically about the data and models that constitute evidence in the social and natural sciences
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".
> So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combatting it with effective analysis and argument.
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.
This looks fairly similar to the psychology course, "Everything is Fucked" [1]. EiF has a stellar syllabus, while this one seems a bit lighter (maybe it's for fewer credits). Seems like a pretty useful course, in any event.
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].
I think this is an effort towards the people that don't need such effort. The people really needing this course will never willingly read - or understand - such educated content.
286 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 64.5 ms ] threadMaybe 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 ;)
[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 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.
There have always been made up stories and lies and propaganda and conspiracy theories it's nothing new it's just become much more obvious now and thus actually allowed us to live in a more truth based world rather than the previous ignorant believe that there are only one way to look at things.
Politics is about choice not about truth.
Before the media/Democrats can credibly criticise "fake news", they first need to regain the people's trust.
The idea that politics is or should somehow be based on facts is misguided. We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
What you seem to want to have is a technocratic system.
Is that an "elite" approach then?
Of course, what I describe above is an ideal - politics is a mucky business and the essence of a democracy is essentially that we get to choose between the liars. However, what I do have difficulty with is the idea that reasoning from actual factual data or scientific hypotheses has no role in politics.
Not because we are uniformed but because our perspectives are different and our perspectives are different because it affects us differently.
And so the real danger here is to go along with this romantic notion that facts used to be more meaningful when in fact it was only that perspectives were more aligned than they are today.
No you can't. This is why we are living in "post-truth". Meaning it's not truth anymore.
You are right in that either one can win, but only one can be true.
I would urge you to give me examples in politics which can't have two different political outcomes both potentially true.
Climate change.
Of course both sides can put forth true arguments in a political debate. I'm having a hard time coming up with a real world example, both because I don't want to push buttons that force you down a knee-jerk path on the button I push when I don't really care about it, and because we're really not used to seeing honest debates in the political arena.
But when society faces a decision A or B, each side can completely honestly tout the benefits of their decision and the costs of the other decision, both of which will exist. And God Almighty could come down from on high and hand us the exact, true, and full consequences of each decision, and those who benefit from one decision can completely honestly argue in its favor while those who may not benefit could completely honestly argue against it, which could be completely different sets of people for each decision. (There's almost never a decision that benefits everybody, even before we get into questions like relative amounts of benefit, or how society as a whole benefits.)
An argument containing elements of truth, or even somehow consisting entirely of truth, does not make it correct, because it still won't be the complete truth, which may well contain a superior argument for a different decision in it. But we don't have access to complete truth.
I was stating that two opposing arguments can't both be true, because then there is no truth.
We are not talking about some rhetorical analysis of language and I never meant it in that sense which the context of this discussion should have made clear. If not then I am remedying that now.
> We have science for facts what we choose to do with those facts is were politics come in.
The second sentence explicitly contradicts the first one. By your second one you are saying that politics is based on the facts that science provides. Or rather, should be.
But facts aren't the only things which are used in politics.
"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.
There is no objective transcendence between facts and politics decisions.
You can believe that climate change is created by humans and still decide not to do anything about it because you also believe that technology will solve most of those problem, or that there are bigger problems (astroid hitting earth for instance) etc.
We are absolutely in a new mode of politics, one that transcends mere differences of opinion. To pretend otherwise does everyone a disservice.
The only disservice is to claim that things are somehow different when they are in fact the same.
Some people say that this age was in the '50s. Others, the 1880s. Some even claim it was the 1790s.
Mostly, they're just barking mad.
"I never had sexual relations with that woman".
"Read my lips: there will be no more taxes".
"It depends on what the definition of is is".
"I will close down Guantanamo Bay".
> "I never had sexual relations with that woman".
Wait, there's a sex tape of Bill Clinton?
In all seriousness, quotes are all good, but you would benefit from saying what it is you hope to achieve by them.
Because no one sure didn't seem to care about the numerous Trump ones.
Apparently not.
So by all means. Prove me wrong.
I would love for you to show me how people cared as much about truth now.
People didn't vote on Trump because of those things that politfact measured. There weren't watching the debates to figure out who was the most well argued person based on some basic idea of their rhetorical skills.
They voted on trump for all the things that Politifacts didn't measure but which matter to people and on those he was not lying.
Also Hillary won the popular vote so even on that account she won and he didn't.
Nothing new here.
> People didn't vote on Trump because of those things that politfact measured. There weren't watching the debates to figure out who was the most well argued person based on some basic idea of their rhetorical skills.
I have not mentioned "well argued" nor talked about rhetoric. I've talked about speaking the truth or lying. You can speak the truth as an illiterate 5 year old.
Are you deliberately changing your arguments/moving goal posts between all your responses?
which is meaningless.
And he was impeached for that, which is exactly the point.
Nothing's changed.
Besides the question was whether truth mattered more in politics. The decision to take his law license was from some state bar, not related to some political process.
To be fair, it seems like he tried. He just failed?
He was playing it too safe to bring about the drastic measures needed to close gitmo.
Or don't care. Some people in the US are so far under water, they are desperate for change; such that they'd back Trump whatever.
Sexual allegations? Who cares if he can actually tries to bring back my job...
Note, I say this without any implication of whether the allegations are true. My point is, people might not care either way. A sexual predator that fixes things is better than an someone virtuous that does nothing.
It mostly means:
"Some people can't accept Trump got elected, so when e.g. criticism of him being sexist/rapist etc because of some comments back in the day is discarded, they call it a post-truth world. At the same time, it's not post-truth when the same people discard allegations of rape for Bill Clinton and his wife helping with cover up".
Or, as I'd put it:, both party voters could not give a rats arse about the truth, but the Democratic party has a better stronghold on academics, columnists, intellectuals and "hi-bro" journalists, etc., the sort of people who would just single out the others' disregard of the truth as "post-truth".
Turns out there is good money in just making up crap and printing it.
The only two things I could identify as uniquely a problem today that weren't problems in the past are A: the money is coming out of journalism faster than it can adapt to it and B: the incredibly immediate pressures to be first and get the most clicks. The latter being a thing that has always been present to some degree, since journalists have always made money by attracting eyeballs in one form or another, but the immediacy of the pressure today I'd say is a quantitative change that becomes a qualitative change by sheer size.
But I'm still unconvinced this is a new low, rather than one that we're detecting. Journalism has some nasty stuff in its history. It certainly hasn't reached a new low if you step outside of the United States. The press still hasn't quite reached Pravda lows, but I will conceded it is currently engaged in a full burn towards it.
What people often forget is that at the same token lies can be spread so can corrections to those lies.
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.
https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/03/baloney-detection-k...
http://callingbullshit.org/syllabus.html#Spotting
Anyway here is one that isn't on their list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_People_Believe_Weird_Thing...
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).
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.
>you're outside of most of the big popular groups
Story of my life
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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").
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. :)
https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122...
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!
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...
Nothing like some Youtube channels, where presenter spends one hour deconstructing some study, to its sources and sources of the sources.
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"...
I don't know what you think that case study was about, but it isn't about whether the number was true or not. It is about whether that number represents something that is in line with the point of the article.
> And I am not sure what to expect from a statistical course build around TED Talks, blog posts and NY Times articles.
I wouldn't either, but it isn't a statistical course and it isn't build around TED Talks.
It is not about learning what they are saying in a TED Talk, but about dissecting the TED Talk and understanding why you shouldn't just accept the content of it.
All the case studies are examples of bullshit.
"Academics get paid for being clever, not for being right." -- Donald Norman
http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html
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.
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> but recently a fake news story actually provoked nuclear threats issued by twitter.
Nuclear threats issued by Twitter. What a world we live in.
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.
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.
I call BS.
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?