The author's definition of bullshitter is "people I don't like".
The Trump and Musk cases are fairly obvious, IMO. Even many of their proponents would agree both have a propensity for "bullshit" at times.
Obama is already a bit more murky: I certainly share the author's disappointment in how the Obama presidency turned out, but it's not clear to me if he really was "bullshitting" or if he started out with genuine intentions and just overestimated the difficulties he would run in to – even if we assume Obama was bulshitting to some degree, the political difficulties he faced are no doubt a huge factor (I used to joke that the GOP could be replaced by an extremely advanced AI which consists of "if proposed_by('obama') then oppose() endif").
I haven't followed Pinker's more recent work very closely (I read two of his older books from the early 2000s), but the article that's linked to prove the point (by the same author) does not make a convincing case. Maybe he can come off as a bit arrogant at times, which is a fair enough criticism, but that does not make one a "bullshitter". He cites “Many social critics have expressed nostalgia for the era of factories, mines, and mills, probably because they never worked in one.” as the first example of "utterly irrational swipes at those to the left of him"? Seriously? My feelings about some of the other citation are a bit more mixed, but none of them seem "bullshitting" to me: just a guy voicing his opinion that you may or may not agree with in a way that you may or may not like.
In short, this is the umpteenth attempt to make "I don't like it" somehow sound more authoritative. Which sounds like ... ehm, bulshitting to me.
The Trump and Musk cases are fairly obvious, IMO. Even many of their proponents would agree both have a propensity for "bullshit" at times.
Obama is already a bit more murky: I certainly share the author's disappointment in how the Obama presidency turned out, but it's not clear to me if he really was "bullshitting" or if he started out with genuine intentions and just overestimated the difficulties he would run in to – even if we assume Obama was bulshitting to some degree, the political difficulties he faced are no doubt a huge factor (I used to joke that the GOP could be replaced by an extremely advanced AI which consists of "if proposed_by('obama') then oppose() endif").
I haven't followed Pinker's more recent work very closely (I read two of his older books from the early 2000s), but the article that's linked to prove the point (by the same author) does not make a convincing case. Maybe he can come off as a bit arrogant at times, which is a fair enough criticism, but that does not make one a "bullshitter". He cites “Many social critics have expressed nostalgia for the era of factories, mines, and mills, probably because they never worked in one.” as the first example of "utterly irrational swipes at those to the left of him"? Seriously? My feelings about some of the other citation are a bit more mixed, but none of them seem "bullshitting" to me: just a guy voicing his opinion that you may or may not agree with in a way that you may or may not like.
In short, this is the umpteenth attempt to make "I don't like it" somehow sound more authoritative. Which sounds like ... ehm, bulshitting to me.