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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.
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.
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?