You might be a bullshitter if:
by Steve PetermannPhilosopher Harry G. Frankfurt has recently written a very interesting and popular book called On Bullshit. It's only 67 pages but perhaps it can provide some insight into a problem that Dilbert Cartoonist, Scott Adams laments about of the difficulty for the unbiased curious public to come to understand ID/Darwinist positions. He states:
I've been doing lots of reading on the subject, trying to gather comic fodder. I fully expected to validate my preconceived notion that the Darwinists had a mountain of credible evidence and the Intelligent Design folks were creationist kooks disguising themselves as scientists. That's the way the media paints it. I had no reason to believe otherwise. The truth is a lot more interesting. Allow me to set you straight. (Note: I'm not a believer in Intelligent Design, Creationism, Darwinism, free will, non-monetary compensation, or anything else I can't eat if I try hard enough.)
First of all, you'd be hard pressed to find a useful debate about Darwinism and Intelligent Design, of the sort that you could use to form your own opinion. I can't find one, and I've looked. What you have instead is each side misrepresenting the other's position and then making a good argument for why the misrepresentation is wrong. (If you don't believe me, just watch the comments I get to this post.)
Including this quote, I felt that Scott's post was very unbiased and accusatory of both sides of the debate. However, if you'll look at the comments to his post, some were Darwinists misrepresenting and lambasting him for various unfounded reasons. In particular PZ Myers dedicated an entire post to refuting the article. In his next post, Scott pointed out the multitude of misrepresentations and labeled Myers a poster boy for the point he was making:
That makes him the poster child for my point that the average person (me) has no credible source of information on the topic of evolution.
This brings me back to the topic of this post: bullshit. Is the reason it is so hard for the average Josephine to get the straight scoop on the debate because the bullshit is so deep? Let's see how well Frankfurt's exploration of bullshit fits the current situation?
First of all Frankfurt distinguishes bullshitting from lying.
The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is the truth. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of truth.
On the other hand the essence of bullshit is not lying or even whether the information is true or false. It is rather the bullshitter's lack of interest in the truth at all. As Frankfurt puts it:
It is just his lack of connection to a concern with the truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as the essence of bullshit.
and
The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his attention is neither to report the truth or conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks are true.
and relative to the constraints of the honest person or liar:
For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as are the eyes of the honest man and the liar, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.
What this bullshitter's attitude invariably leads to first is shoddy work. If the real truth of things is of no concern then no hard work need be done weighing and evaluating the different positions thoroughly and objectively. The result is not well crafted arguments but:
It does seem fitting to construe carelessly made, shoddy goods as in some way analogous to bullshit. But in what way? Is the resemblance that bullshit itself is invariably produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner, that it is never finely crafted, that in the making of it there is never the meticulously attentive concern with detail to which Longfellow alludes?
He then goes on to strike rather vivid analogy:
The word shit does, to be sure, suggest this. Excrement is not designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted or dumped. It may have a more or less coherent shape, or it may not, but it is in any case not wrought.
Frankfurt goes on to describe other aspects of bullshit, but let me summarize in a Jeff Foxworthy manner:
- You might be a bullshitter if the truth-values of your statements are of no particular interest to you.
- You might be a bullshitter if you don't take the time to thoroughly understand the debate or get your facts straight before you pontificate. Have you actually read or studied what you are criticizing?
- You might be a bullshitter if you don't rigorously craft and substantiate your arguments in a well founded way.
- You might be a bullshitter if you think that bluffing is a powerful tactic.
- You might be a bullshitter if it never occured to you that you might be wrong or even worse that it didn't matter.
- You might be a bullshitter if people are constantly disputing your facts and complaining about you misrepresenting them.
- You might be a bullshitter if occurences of the above are not just isolated instances.
- You might be a bullshitter if you think that none of this ever applies to you.
Now no one is above creating bullshit from time to time. And it's certainly true that both sides of the debate have done it. I'll leave it to the readers to determine where the bullshit is coming from these days.
November 16th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
I'm sorry but this post is complete and utter bull#*&!! :-0)
Comment by willo — November 16, 2005 @ 11:45 pm
November 17th, 2005 at 2:35 am
Detecting bullshit should be part of the high school curriculum; the average person is not trained nearly enough to detect it although we encounter it all the time. They can call it "critical analysis" or whatever they want so it won't offend people but bullshit is much more offensive anyway. People who regularly use bullshit are just insulting the intelligence of the public, yet much of the public remains oblivious to this. From past experience, the media generally can't be trusted with reporting certain things accurately, one obviously being ID.
Comment by jasonng — November 17, 2005 @ 2:35 am
November 17th, 2005 at 2:04 pm
Hi Jason,
I agree completely. I think what may be missing not only in high school but also university is some sort of training in creating good arguments that are well substantiate. Most people may have an intuitive sense about what a good argument is like but without the knowledge of how to detect logical fallacies, claims that beg the question, and what strong substantiation is they can easily be duped. Not only would such training help folks spot the bullshit, but it would also help them to point a critical eye towards their own tendencies to bullshit.
Comment by Steve Petermann — November 17, 2005 @ 2:04 pm
November 17th, 2005 at 8:47 pm
Actually, we do have a bullshit curriculum here in our inbred little Appalachian 'burb. It's called "Media Awareness," and deals with the kind of bullshit aimed at getting kids to whine loud and long enough to get their overworked parents to dish out for $120 tennis shoes, $90 jeans so big they drag the ground and hang somewhere around the knees, etc.
Sort of a course in "smart consumerism" for the post-MTV generation Nike would just love to convince tennis shoes made in Asian sweat shops at 40 cents apiece are really worth the $120 bucks. I think it should be standard in every public school in the nation. We start teaching this, 30 minutes a day, one semester a year (pre-Christmas) in 6th grade. I think that's a little late, but it's a start…
Comment by Joy — November 17, 2005 @ 8:47 pm
November 18th, 2005 at 12:03 am
Yeah I think it's all too common that someone just "knows" that something is bullshit but they can't say why so they end up accepting it reluctantly. One thing we certainly need no more of is intellectual laziness; we can't expect everyone to research something into great detail but they've also got to learn to think for themselves and not blindly follow what they're told. The internet has helped so much in this respect, no one group can claim a dominance over information anymore.
It's never too late to save this (and future) generations of children, since people for the first time in history have the opportunity to learn from a young age from a variety of sources instead of being indoctrinated by their school system, family, religion or local newspaper to a certain worldview. If we send kids in the right direction it'll discourage mindless conformism and raise their intellectual potential.
Comment by jasonng — November 18, 2005 @ 12:03 am
November 18th, 2005 at 12:11 am
The easiest way to detect bullshit is to plug yourself in to a debate. For example, jason plugs himself in with his lead comment. If I replied by arguing that jason wants to teach the Bible in high school, jason would now know I am a bullshitter. He can dissect me later, but that's just the post-mortem.
Of course, if more people begin to see just how much bullshit exists out there, they're likely to unplug and go take a shower.
Comment by MikeGene — November 18, 2005 @ 12:11 am
November 18th, 2005 at 10:07 am
It appears that the schools which have adopted the "teach the controversy" approach are in the process of instilling BS detection in their students.
Comment by Joe G — November 18, 2005 @ 10:07 am
November 18th, 2005 at 10:30 am
One thing to consider, I think, is the demographics of society. Meyers-Briggs and Keirsey personality tests show that no more than about 18% of the population are good abstract thinkers. Whether this is primarily nature or nuture, who knows. Certainly education in abstract thinking could increase that number significantly. What it does suggest, however, is that most of the population may not get the conceptual side of bullshit, but that does not mean they can be totally duped. Being primarily concrete thinkers they can still develop a sense of bullshit even if they don't understand very well conceptually why it is such. I'm not trying to be elitist, but it may be that whatever percentage of the 18% are dedicated to flushing out and exposing the patterns of bullshit can help the rest of the populace. Once those patterns are exposed the concrete thinkers can utilize them as well.
One thing that the ID debate has really exposed to me is how much bullshit the press puts out. It seems that many in the press fit the bullshit category perfectly in that they are not all that concerned with doing the hard work to find the truth or even present it fairly. They just want to make their deadlines and hope they can get away with their lack of depth. I don't know if any of you saw "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" Sunday but both conservatives and liberals didn't hestitate to pontificate and lambast ID even though none of them knew what they were talking about. I really don't know how this is to be combated. I know that Denyse O'Leary is doing her part but there doesn't seem to be many calling the press to task.
Comment by Steve Petermann — November 18, 2005 @ 10:30 am
November 19th, 2005 at 12:45 am
Even getting just that 18% to be more actively engaged in detecting bullshit and telling others about it will increase awareness. I think nurture is more responsible for this, it's often detrimental to have a definitive right and wrong for almost everything although that's how people are taught these days. Basically "right" is what the answer key says, and if there isn't one then it's the teacher's opinion. Controversy is squelched by the intellectual authorities who often go out of their league (from personal experience: English teachers speaking out against religion), intellectual dissent is severely punished and there's no one to stand up for students who just want to say that they think differently.
It's really disappointing to see otherwise highly prestigious publications spew out more bullshit than I can handle. I won't scream conspiracy but what's clear is ignorance (or maybe… fear) is more prevalent than ever in the media.
Comment by jasonng — November 19, 2005 @ 12:45 am
August 16th, 2006 at 12:09 am
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