
Bullshit fighting - azuajef
https://stactivist.com/2016/05/29/bullshit-fighting/
======
RyanHamilton
The bullshit asimmetry: the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an
order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

~~~
socialist_coder
Definitely. It takes hours to properly argue. It takes minutes to bullshit.

How many times do you give up on a social media argument just because you
don't want to spend the next 30-60 minutes researching and building a solid
case for your argument? I've given up completely. The bullshitters win.

~~~
wpietri
And I think the more troubling problem is that bullshitters are generally
indifferent to or hostile to the truth, to the very inclination to seek truth.
The primary lens through which they evaluate statements is "personally useful
to me", not "true".

So even if I carefully build a case for "true", it won't make much of a
difference. At best, they decide their next personally useful statement is a
non sequitur or a topic change or just going to some other context that is
useful.

To me that's one of the really amazing things about Trump's rise. He really
doesn't care about facts or logic or consistency. Even among politicians, he's
a standout; none of his Republican opponents could come to grips with how
totally irrelevant accuracy or orthodoxy are to his game. People keep trying
to figure out what his true views are, but at this point I don't think that's
a meaningful question.

And I should add that this isn't a left vs right issue; a recent example of a
left-wing demagogue was Venezuela's Chavez. But Trump's rise is the first time
I've gotten to see it happen up close.

------
jkeler
[http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-
bullshit.pdf](http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/bullshit/pdf/on-bullshit.pdf)

> One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much
> bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend
> to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their
> ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the
> phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much
> sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what
> bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we
> lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In
> other words, we have no theory. I propose to begin the development of a
> theoretical understanding of bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative
> and exploratory philosophical analysis.

~~~
pixl97
> we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is

Information asymmetry. Bullshit is applied game theory.

------
dave2000
Hard to tell whether this is serious or not. What field is this describing?
Scientific papers? Random idiots just posting on websites? If the idea is to
challenge it everywhere you're setting yourself up to being that person who
never sleeps because "someone is wrong on the internet".

~~~
bnegreve
> What field is this describing? Scientific papers?

Most likely yes. The author works in a scientific institute and has number of
publications.

~~~
dave2000
So...peer review, then? I suppose you could rebut comments from muppets if you
were feeling a little bored but it's unclear what that would hope to achieve.
Could you imagine stopping the industry which talks rubbish about the lunar
landings and 9/11 with well written, carefully reasoned replies?

Don't wrestle with pigs; you both get muddy, and the pigs like it.

~~~
Houshalter
The problem with science is that it's findings get exaggerated by the media
and by politicians. People latch onto one positive result, and ignore all the
negative results. The media reports on findings that haven't been replicated
yet, and significantly distort and exaggerate them.

Even within science, there are problems like publication bias and political
bias.

------
sebastianconcpt
I tend to agree with the intention but I think this subject is way more
complex than this.

People form visions of the world based on their beliefs systems and they
pull/push that vision in their behavior and the things they build.

To show what I mean about this: in a way, many good entrepreneurs are reality
deniers. They need to refuse to believe that the current status quo is the
best that the world can be. They need to believe a reality that does not exist
(yet) in order to build it. For people with affinity they will be visionaries,
for people that antagonise with them they will be bullshitters.

But that's how disruption happens, with cultural and market irreverence. That
is pitched "selling smoke" (in the eyes of the cynic) or selling a new way to
experience X in life (in the eyes of its believers and users/clients)

~~~
tenkabuto
It may be useful to distinguish between things that are not true and never
will be, and things that are not true but could eventually be true. If one
were to try to present the former as though it were true, what they'd be
presenting is bullshit, whereas I would say that the latter is merely (note
the air quotes) "bullshit." To those who need everything to be true now, the
latter will be seen as bullshit, but it is not actual bullshit, as it may yet
become true.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
Good point!

------
brudgers
The greatest danger posed by bullshit is that powerful persons start believing
their own. The neutral ends justify the means form is relatively benign.

------
joelx
Trump is clearly on the cutting edge of this phenomenon.

~~~
jack9
I'm very sure he doesn't care one way or the other. He speaks with confidence
then reframes conversations as necessary. This passes for leadership in modern
society. Have you ever tried to listen to a US senator or a UK Lord or a
Japanese Diet member argue?

------
dreamsofdragons
I honestly thought this was about Trump for the first few paragraphs, and
almost quit reading.

While we've found the the scientific meathod doesn't scale, I suspect that a
Watson style application could seriously help one day. This is only compounded
this with the "publish or perish" mentality. This encourages falsifying
results, but also adds more noise to the pool of journals, decreasing your
chance of being called out. I don't think the issue is with liars, but with
the system.

What we really need now is Scienceology, (no not the religion) but a division
of science that analyzes science. Finding better ways than what we have now.

edit: Cleaned up to make it slightly less nonsensical. I really shouldn't make
a comment before having a coffee.

------
highCs
What are good methods to fight bullshit at work? Conversely, what are the bad
methods to fight bullshit at work?

EDIT: Let say it's not in the company DNA and that it's just some individuals
behaviours.

~~~
protomyth
Is the bullshit built into the company's DNA? Some places I have worked have
certain varieties of bullshit that have basically become company truths. If
this is the case, then you really aren't going to fight it.

~~~
highCs
Let say it's not and that it's just some individuals behaviours, in a
relatively good company culture.

~~~
protomyth
Its basically a rally the troops moment. One person can screw with a lot of
people, so you probably need to work with others to stop any outbreak.

I assume we aren't talking a technical argument. If we are, then do a
presentation and it will all come out in the Q&A.

------
jack9
> If something is not true, who cares? All the same. These attributes make
> bullshitting worse than lying.

It makes bullshitting clearly BETTER. Being overly defensive about it, misses
the point. BS is hard to combat, which is why it's a successful approach (not
even a learned strategy because then it would be lying).

------
carapace
Love of bullshit is the root of all evil.

------
jmpeax
You've linked to the main page, which at this moment in time happens to have
the bullshit blog post at the top. It's better to link to the actual blog
post: [https://stactivist.com/2016/05/29/bullshit-
fighting/](https://stactivist.com/2016/05/29/bullshit-fighting/)

~~~
euphemize
Agreed, I'm quite sensitive to the scrollbar size when I land on a new
article, and in this case I almost closed the window, thinking this would take
the whole day to read :)

