Slashdot Mirror
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!
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.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
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.
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.
I call bullshit on this...
Totally saw that coming and am slightly annoyed you beat me to it...
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?
Universities are currently where critical thinking goes to die in in many departments. So pardon my skepticism at their ability to teach something they don't PRACTICE within their halls.
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?
Once you've got a couple of jobs under your belt, nobody will ever again look at your college transcript.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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?
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
"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?
Universities are currently where critical thinking goes to die in in many departments.
(and Mama Grizzly is reportedly concerned about attending parent/teacher night)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
It's not as if B.G. and W.B. weren't themselves biased...
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.
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.
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.