"whose goals get accomplished by believing this claim" is the biggest question to get into a habit of asking yourself. make it unconscious. make it follow every

"whose goals get accomplished by believing this claim" is the biggest question to get into a habit of asking yourself. make it unconscious. make it follow every line of written text and every sentence you hear. you will find that the answer is never "mine" when reading something you didn't write, but it might sometimes be "theirs, and mine" if you are reading something that is not bullshit. advanced techniques include making finer distinctions in your answer to the question. but the question is all you really need. then there's what i call the "10 year old" rule of thumb. if a 10 year old of average cleverness wanted to manipulate their parents into an action by repeating the claims that you read, would their rhetoric be similar to the claims that you suspect are bullshit? remember, just like adults, 10 year olds add a lot of noise to their manipulative signals but they aren't very good at subterfuge because they can't disguise their intent despite adding noise. this thought experiment is for getting you to read between the lines rather than reading the lines literally and accepting them as truth-- as the ten year old desperately wants you to do so that their trick is a success. this thought experiment is enough to resolve almost every tough call of "is it bullshit or not" when other methods fail. don't make this one into a habit, keep it handy for conscious mulling over of tough cases of ambiguous intentions. and don't share it, some 10 year olds are smart enough to know this trick already and they might get offended.