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University Offers Course To Help Sniff Out and Refute 'Bullshit' (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Engadget report: There's now a course at the University of Washington, "Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data" that helps you find bad information and show others why it's bad. The instructors, Professors Jevin D. West and Carl T. Bergstrom, jokingly write that "we will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful ... that you acquire during the course of your college education." They add that the intention is not to be political, as "both sides of the aisle have proven themselves facile at creating and spreading bullshit." The intention, then, is to arm students (and the public if they want) with the tools to combat a scourge of misinformation that's aided and abetted by social media.
They already had this. It's called citing your sources and peer review. We also used to have open discussions but those got shut down in favor of safe spaces. Now you can't say shit without some snowflake getting their feelings hurt because, you know, feelings are more important than the truth and stuff.
You think more curriculum and snobbery will solve this problem? Do tell!
I call bullshit on this...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Schools should teach all pupils to be able to spot fallacies, and encourage them to castigate those who use them. A world without fallacies would be a world where trump couldn't be president.
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Among members of the football and basketball teams, and pre-meds trying to preserve their 4.0.
A so-called "classic" book called "How to Lie With Statistics" was published before I was born (and I'm old). That book has had plenty of successors.
In previous generations, the course would have been called something like "Identifying Propaganda and Testing the Accuracy of Information". But for me, when I see the phrase "calling bullshit" in the course title, I can't help but suspect that the course itself is bullshit.
A conventional lie is detectable because of the network of falsehoods that must necessarily support a consistent sounding alternative picture of the world. Often the best way to detect a liar is to invite him to elaborate on his statements, until the entire fabric of falsehood is unsupportable.
Bullshit doesn't try to create an elaborately self-consistent fabric of false beliefs. Bullshit doesn't even bother being consistent with itself. Bullshit persuade through the power of how it makes you feel in the moment, and as a bullshitter rattles on he keeps his audience enthralled moment by moment even as he contradicts himself.
So to detect lies you need epistemological skills. To detect bullshit you need strength of character.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1. College is the only means of success in modern society. trade schools and vocational professions are unsuccessful.
2. college debt is normal, and shouldnt be questioned. you will become successful after college.
3. college atheletes are students and not paid performers, despite lucrative contract deals with advertisers and meaningless classes.
4. college deans command high salaries because they work hard and get results.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies which will occupy you for two years. Together, they form a noble adventure. But I would like to remind you of an important point. Nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life, save only this, that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education".
- John Alexander Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford University, 1914.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Now I can get my official degree as a bullshit-detector.
So they're going to do a grounding in statistics and graphing then? I've seen both regularly used to deceive the public.
Part of the problem is that people can't detect BS. The other part is that they don't care. Once people have chosen a side, they tend to ignore information that disproves their assumed position. How do we deal with that problem?
This seems like a good exercise in critical thinking, but it's a bit late ... shouldn't this be taught as a part of, say, language arts, sciences, etc. in the earlier grades? Even math should be poking at fallacious "divide by zero yields anything" proofs.
Still, better late ...
This kind of course is amazing for those who are already looking to stretch their minds and fact-check their own beliefs. For people who are new to the idea and attend the course, it could potentially inoculate them against falling for stupid shit again and again.
... why a claim is bullshit." It won't help with the constant stream of false, gut-reactionary posts and images that are shared on Facebook.
The big problem is that this inoculation is non-transferrable. This course will not be as helpful as you would think in showing your "casually racist uncle
First you have the Backfire Effect, where when someone's deepest convictions are challenged their beliefs get stronger. Your uncle probably shared that stupid post because it "felt right". Arguing against the facts of that particular post will often alienate him and cause his beliefs to be more firmly entrenched.
Still, I am glad this kind of class is being offered.
"Anything you say can and will be used against you in a targeted advertisement" - Adam Harvey
If kids could detect bullshit, wouldn't that undermine the entire student debt serf system?
What we need is AI that can do automated story/fact credibility analysis.
Google is in the best position to develop this these days, maybe in a collaboration with IBM.
Then is should be released as OpenAI so that people will believe the system's results.
The system should consider factors such as:
1) Logical/factual compatibility of statement/story elements with scientific/subject expert well accepted consensus knowledge.
2) Logical coherence of statement/story
3) Use of terms with clear unambiguous meanings from well-accepted theories/models of the world or aspects of it.
4) Utterance theory: a theory of people and organizations as motivated actors with preferences and goals.
Of course in human society one way to achieve one's goals is to influence the focus of attention, beliefs and behavours of other people and organizations.
Uttering particular statements or stories (in particular situation contexts) is an effective way of influencing focus of attention, beliefs, and behaviours of others.
So any system assessing credibility of statements/stories must be able to reason about who the utterer / source is, what their situation is, what their goals for attention, belief, behaviour influence are, and what the situation, disposition, and prior knowledge of the intended audience is.
5) Theories of framing as a means of belief crafting and attention focussing and behavour influence. This is a particular sub-part of 2.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Happy that someone has stepped up and offered something meet an obvious need.
Sad because the need exists. When did basic critical thinking stop being something that even freshmen university students came already equipped with?
Detecting the difference between lies, exaggerations, BS, sincere-but-false claims, and facts should be taught on an age-appropriate basis from birth through adulthood, at home, in school, and in life.
For school-aged children and teenagers, this doesn't have to be a formal class every year, it can be integrated into the curriculum across most or all disciplines.
Ditto for detecting the difference between a sound argument and an unsound argument and the difference between an unsound argument that leads to a false conclusion and an unsound argument that leads to a conclusion that happens to be true anyway.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Next year we find out that everyone who took the course has since dropped out of college...and no one bats an eye at the irony.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
When I was in college in the early 1990's, students had the choice of two instructors for the Intro to Psychology course: the instructor who taught it straight up or the instructor who screamed bullshit all the time. I took the instructor who taught it straight up and enjoyed the class. I had a friend who took the other class and she hated it because of the bullshit that the instructor pulled all the time.
The greatest benefit Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could leave to human kind is to use most of their money to fund a global free press foundation.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
never stand for it.
Their younger kids would learn to question Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the line "because I said so!" from their parents. Then when they got into more advanced classes in BS detection, they would start to raise uncomfortable questions regarding DARE classes, pep rallies, flag salutes, and religion.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
"nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest use to you in after life â" save only this â" that if you work hard and intelligently you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view is the main, if not the sole purpose of education"
Well, the nature of a certain type of complex system (e.g. governance of a herd of cats/human society) dictates a lot of the necessary behaviours of those attempting to gain leadership position by convincing people to back them. So there will be a lot of commonality of behaviour in the camapaigning politician, no matter their position on the policy/values spectrum.
There are some universals:
For example:
1. You can't get elected by promising only what you could actually deliver (given the realities of the finances and ability to shift the supertanker of state). That would be too little to meet expectations, and you would lose to your exaggerating, over-promising opponent.
In business, the corollary is, you can never win the competitive contract by bidding what it will actually take to do the job. Your dishonestly underbidding competitor will win. Instead, you have to bid low and make up the difference by charging for change requests when the customer realizes they didn't order what they really wanted.
2. A huge state with its bureaucracy and laws has enormous inertia, and any leader of it, in their short term of office, and with constitutional restrictions on power, can at best introduce a very slight leftward or rightward angle of a few degrees in the state's direction of operation. This must be contrasted with the hyperbole of election rhetoric about how sweeping the change they're going to institute will be.
3. Many people think of themselves as being in a camp or a tribe, and think there are competing camps/tribes trying to eat their lunch. Politicians often have to resort to issue-framing that paints matters in these terms, and that often works. An alternative strategy is to claim to be the great unifier, but only a few can pull this off. Anyway, when they get in office, they'll just be tweaking (landscaping) a mountain-like entrenched system rather than moving the mountain.
4. Most people for whatever reason, are still religious, so even intelligent politicans have to pretend to be religious to win. See camps above.
So it's understandable why people think politicans lie all the time. They kind of have to, to get elected. That's just how we are, as electors.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Well played, most excellent troll! I laughed a hearty guffaw, and for that I thank you.
Your old adage is a reasonable first assumption, but like any generalization, is riddled with exceptions. In the end, the only way to actually tell is to research it yourself.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Politicians in general have not been very good at the truth and stuff. Now at least there's some transparency.
You've made good progress.
The first step in getting un-addicted to bullshit is to recognize that you're swimming in it.
Worthy goal: Design means of facilitating harmonious prosperous global (tribe-de-emphasized) human society with
-ethos of decreasing inequality
-ethos of decreasing ecological harm of human civilization
-ethos of maximum liberty consistent with previous two tenets
-ethos of recognizing and denigrating bullshit in all its vari-shaded brown forms.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a bullshit course.
#DeleteFacebook
It's not as if B.G. and W.B. weren't themselves biased...
The greatest benefit Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could leave to human kind is to use most of their money to fund a global free press foundation.
Yeah, with Democrat cronyist leftists like Gates and Buffet funding it there's no way it would have an ideological bias.
Do you have ESP?
Really? Were you a victim of the Bowling Green Massacre?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The name itself is a lie. I mean, "Human Resources"... those who work in that department aren't human.
#DeleteFacebook
Smells like bullshit.
Now where is my certificate of course completion?
In our post-modern society, we are shaped by our family and friends. To determine what is true, we rely on family and friends to help us. There is no longer any authority that we trust to tell us the truth. That make it harder to fight against fake news. I still believe that the facts are the facts and the truth is the truth, but we end up in these larger bubbles with friends and family miss out on hearing alternate viewpoints. That makes it easier for fake news to delude us and harder for us to determine the truth. We need to listen to the alternate viewpoints even if we disagree. I think that broad background along with critical thinking will help us determine whether a story is fake news or not.
If someone uses fake news then by definition they're not a progressive.
Thank you so much. Funniest thing I've read all day. Whew! Good one.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
And they called it that. Recently there's been a movement to cut down on this kind of teaching in favor of more on the job training. This is a reaction to that.
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that you have to teach people how to detect bullshit.
Their course was singled out as Bullshit as a result.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
You really think it makes a difference?Tell me, just how far has all this fact checking bullshit gotten us?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Other than the weather* and maybe traffic reports, quit reading / watching what passes for the news these days.
It ceased being ' news ' a long time ago and evolved into sensationalism designed to grab as many viewers as it can.
Even the Weather portion you have to take with a grain of salt. Especially if there is a hurricane or similar event going on. The media tend to cause more hysteria than anything.
In my opinion, being misinformed is worse than being non-informed. The latter doesn't tend to whip folks into a frenzy like the former can.
Quit watching / reading their bullshit and the problem will quickly fix itself.
I think the millions of lives they've saved in the Third World count for something too...
When I was in college back in the 80s, I took a humanities course that studied the manipulations and deceptions of MSM. Boy were my eyes opened. I learned real fast how to weed out misinformation.
A course like this should be mandatory in grade school. But as long as public schools are under control of the liberals, they won't allow it.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
This past election cycle both of the major parties used weaponized BS spreaders, carpet bombing the American public into submission or indifference. In a better world (perfect seems not to be an option..) people would have tools at their disposal to create functioning BS detectors of their own and call it when it flies by.
Well, ok, but for the sake of argument, between Trump's NS (natural stupidity) and the AI of a decade from now, I know which one I would pick.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
the first to welcome our new automated overlords, and I hope they keep that in mind.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Here is the link to the actual course.
Put the BS filter on a politician's output (or most CEOs for that matter) and resultant output would be silence.
This made me think of Karl Pilkington's super power https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
Find the Gender Studies classroom. You've hit the mother-load of bullshit.
-- Will program for bandwidth
was
If the school educated it's students, students could sort out the BS themselves.
The phrase "both sides of the aisle" is itself a political statement, and a bullshit one at that. The majority of the US are independent voters. The "first past the post" voting system is allowing this duopoly and false dichotomy to keep gasping for air. We need real chances for other parties and a real representational voting system to allow that. I support approve/disapprove voting.
The best part of this course is their extremely useful advice: Don't Read The Comments
Basically, it's verify, don't trust, and realize the biases of your sources, establishing trust chains.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Um - libraries have been teaching this for decades. It used to be called research skills, then information literacy or media literacy or whatever ... But really, all it has always been is getting students familiar with the characteristics of reliable vs unreliable information. This is not new.
Of course you provide no citations.
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