Bullshit
Bullshit is language, data, or other forms of presentation intended to distract, confuse, or mislead an audience — characterized by a blatant disregard for truth rather than an attempt to assert a specific falsehood. Unlike lying (which cares about truth enough to contradict it), bullshit is indifferent to the truth entirely. It aims to persuade, impress, overwhelm, or intimidate, not to accurately represent the world.
How It Appears Per Course
PHIL 252
Introduced in Unit 1 as the central adversary of critical thinking. Expanded in Unit 2 with a full taxonomy. The course treats bullshit detection as a practical skill requiring specific methods — argument analysis, cogency evaluation, and questioning the source.
Bullshit requires a Theory of Mind (understanding that others have perspectives) because it is designed to manipulate what others believe. It also obeys Brandolini’s Principle: it takes far more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it, which explains why misinformation spreads faster than corrections.
Taxonomy of Bullshit and Misinformation
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Bullshit (general) | Claims with blatant disregard for truth, designed to distract/overwhelm/impress |
| Nonsense Bullshit | Meaningless academic/technical language “so cloaked in rhetoric that no one can critique it” |
| Persuasive Bullshit | Conveys an exaggerated sense of competence or authority |
| Evasive Bullshit | Avoids directly answering a question the speaker prefers not to address |
| Misinformation | False claims not deliberately designed to deceive |
| Disinformation | Falsehoods spread deliberately, often through trusted networks |
| Firehose Strategy | Flooding channels with contradictory claims to exhaust fact-checking |
| Community Epistemology | Truth determined by group identity, not evidence (related to confirmation bias) |
| Black Box | Scientific claims too complex for non-experts to evaluate — exploited by bad-faith actors |
Language Manipulation Tactics (Unit 1)
- Implicature: the gap between literal meaning and what a statement is used to mean
- Paltering: misleading without technically lying
- Weasel Wording: exploiting implicature to avoid responsibility (e.g., “job creators”)
Social Signalling and Bullshit
Research by Judith Donath: news on social media is often shared not to inform, but as a marker of identity — signalling group membership. In this case, the person sharing is indifferent to the truth of the content; its value is social, not epistemic.
Cross-Course Connections
CriticalThinking — critical thinking is the antidote
Argument — formalizing reasoning into public arguments is how we resist bullshit
Bias — community epistemology and confirmation bias enable bullshit to spread
DataVisualization — new-school bullshit uses data graphics to mislead
Key Points for Exam/Study
- Bullshit ≠ lying: the liar cares about truth (to contradict it); the bullshitter is indifferent to truth
- Brandolini’s Principle explains the asymmetric spread of misinformation
- Two “flavours”: Old-School (fancy empty language) and New-School (misleading data)
- Firehose Strategy: not trying to convince of a specific falsehood, but to create confusion about what is true
- Three questions to always ask: Who is telling me this? How do they know? What’s in it for them?
Spotting Bullshit: Six Tools (Bergstrom & West, Ch. 10)
Six practical tools from Calling Bullshit (2021) for identifying misleading claims in media and everyday life:
| # | Tool | The Rule |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Question the source | Who is telling me this? How do they know? What are they trying to sell? |
| 2 | Beware unfair comparisons | Comparisons are only valid if the entities being compared are directly comparable |
| 3 | Too good/bad to be true? Dig to the source | Social media amplifies extreme, shocking claims — the most viral posts are often the most distorted |
| 4 | Think in orders of magnitude (Fermi estimation) | Back-of-envelope approximations to check plausibility; being off by 50% still keeps you within tenfold of the truth |
| 5 | Avoid confirmation bias | The tendency to notice, believe, and share information consistent with preexisting beliefs — “the chief source of bullshit you have to contend with is yourself” (Neil Postman) |
| 6 | Consider multiple hypotheses | Just because someone has an explanation for a pattern doesn’t mean it’s the explanation |
Illusory truth effect: The more often you see something, the more likely you are to believe it. Repeated exposure creates a false sense of credibility.
Online bullshit checklist:
- Corroborate and triangulate (check multiple independent sources)
- Dig back to the origin story; read the full article, not just the headline
- Use reverse image lookup (TinEye, Google Images)
- Use fact-checking sites: Snopes.com, PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org
- Be aware of deepfakes and synthetic media
- “Think more, share less”
Refuting Bullshit (Bergstrom & West, Ch. 11)
| Concept | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Calling bullshit | A performative utterance repudiating something objectionable; scope is broader than bullshit — you can call bullshit on lies, treachery, trickery, injustice | Finding a reputable source that refutes a rumour; citing Snopes |
| Reductio ad absurdum | Refuting a claim by deriving an absurdity from its logical extension or from the denial of it | Women’s running times: if the trend continued, they’d eventually run 100m in 0 seconds |
| Null model | A model showing what we would observe in a simple system where not much is going on; tests whether alternate explanations fit the same data | The fastest runner isn’t necessarily the oldest — it’s the one in the largest sample; the age effect disappears when sample size is controlled |
Open Questions
- How does the distinction between misinformation and disinformation matter for who is responsible?