5 ms·

Yes, There Is a Cure for Bullshit

39 points by politelemon 3y ago

reportgunner 3y ago
https://archive.is/P28Wd https://archive.is/P28Wd
aerzen 3y ago
[flagged]
- nerdchum 3y ago
  Hm I think both parties see the other party as having lack of critical/analytical thinking and not based in reality. the actual people who lack analytical thinking are the people who aren't aware of this.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    > the other party If we all agree that one party states are bad, why are two party states not almost as bad? (when compared with N party states, for N>>2) (in particular, an N party state gives more incentive for each of the parties to be for something, rather than degenerating to "against the other")
    - lesuorac 3y ago
      I think a lot of people would agree 2 parties are nearly as bad as 1. The rise in alternative voting methods I think is because people really want a third-party to do well but if we have A,B,C and you prefer C > A > B but A,B are most likely to win in a first-past-the-post scenario then by voting for C you're indirectly helping B (you're least favorite) win as opposed to voting for A where you're helping your second favorite.
    - nerdchum 3y ago
      I think your error is thinking that two parties actually exist and aren't just propaganda by the Oligolopoly.
  - Spooky23 3y ago
    The difference is that the authoritarian nature of the GOP allows it to march on 5-6 platform planks exclusively. They publicly focus on a few policy areas, but the masses are riled up about a few social issues the rich people don’t really care about. The Democratic Party is a big tent party that lacks that discipline because of the nature of the coalition. Black voters aren’t voting for the party of Jim Crow, but are socially conservative, for example. Retail politics isn’t a thinking man’s game, but conservatism by its nature is always going to be more craven, irrespective of party.
    - nerdchum 3y ago
      The difference is that the authoritarian nature of the Democrats allows it to march on 5-6 platform planks exclusively. They publicly focus on a few policy areas, but the masses are riled up about a few social issues the rich people don’t really care about. The Republican Party is a big tent party that lacks that discipline because of the nature of the coalition. California republicans aren’t voting for the party of religion, but are socially conservative, for example. Retail politics isn’t a thinking man’s game, but liberalism by its nature is always going to be the more craven, irrespective of party. > see what I did there? not trying to be preachy, but if you have the illusion that your party is superior be assured people from the other party feel the same way and both sides have fallen prey to tribalism.
      - garciasn 3y ago
        What you did here, while cute, for the most part is not at all based in reality or fact. - The GOP is NOT and has never been big tent; there is nothing to debate here. - The GOP generally does not lack in discipline; if anything, their politicians and most of their constituents immediately fall in line behind current dogma. Let's stop with the false balance, please; it really has no place here.
        nerdchum 3y ago
        > The GOP is NOT and has never been big tent that shows your limited knowledge. California Republicans are very different than Mississippi Republicans. > GOP generally does not lack in discipline Are you implying Democrats don't immediately fall in line behind the current issue du jour and vote for who they're told to vote for? Balance, critical thinking and empathy are important, tribalism and demonization really has no place here.
- mrangle 3y ago
  How so? Did you critique the paper? Or are you falling for science bullshit?
RecycledEle 3y ago
The cure for bullshit is not to read approved propaganda before reading the questionable text. The cure for bullshit is the Scientific Method. Find "facts" from that source that you can verify locally, and check them yourself. Asking someone is never verifying something. Only checking for yourself if verifying.
- strken 3y ago
  People can't do the hypothetical scientific method that everyone learned in school for every study, because it costs a huge amount of time and money. Most individuals can't follow 10k people for 20 years and see whether obesity goes away when doctors recommend high intensity interval training vs the normal standard of care. Worse, if you take facts from your life you'll inevitable draw a smaller and more biased sample size. Maybe the people you know are already doing HIIT. Maybe you know knowledgeable/ignorant people who are more/less aware of exercise. Maybe by random chance you know three people who actually listened to their doctor, and nobody who didn't listen will admit it. It's probably better to do the Actual Scientific Method and search Google Scholar to see if anyone made a funnel plot to check for publication bias, if the meta-analyses look okay, if there are replications by other people, if there's an ongoing war between two groups of scientists who both have good points and superficially-similar studies in opposite directions, and basically just trusting that if there are ten studies from different institutions they can't all be committing academic fraud.
- tjpnz 3y ago
  I've known people who practise what you describe. Some have come to the conclusion that viruses don't exist and that the earth is flat. When presented with "facts" they cannot verify they're more likely to pick those requiring excruciating feats of mental gymnastics over those that are simple, boring but ultimately more plausible.
- Clent 3y ago
  "Find "facts" from that source that you can verify locally, and check them yourself." No. No. No. This is confirmation bias.
imiric 3y ago
The problem is that educating people to do critical thinking doesn't scale. This should be taught in elementary school when children are learning to learn, but adults are mostly a lost cause. Psyops and information warfare work to a frightening degree, and today the internet is the primary weapon of delivery. It takes decades to destabilize a nation, but it also takes decades to bring it back on track. The latter to my knowledge has never been done. The affected nation is in a state of confusion and desbelief about its actual situation, and it takes time to even realize they're under attack. We've already seen the effects of this: unfit political leaders elected, breakdown of democratic processes, rejection of nationalism, increase in internal sociopolitical conflict and belief in conspiracy theories, etc. Modern warfare is waged online, not on the battlefield.
- jpadkins 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare Also note that since 2012, it is now legal for US IC to use propaganda on US citizens https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-s...
- awesomeMilou 3y ago
  The whole idea of "information warfare" is based on the assumption that people are rational and have a vested interest in learning the truth. What if they don't? Nazism doesn't only work because of misinformation, it works because people are happy and content with accepting easy answers to complex problems. This has such far reaching consequences that people leave school with a feeling of contentedness, believing because they attended an institution that claims to teach critical thinking, they're now able to categorize information with total clarity, forever, without any major effort. The reality is, you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking. You can expose them to knowledge and challenge them to verify whether said knowledge is true, but in the end you can only hope that they start questioning their own beliefs. I don't want to sound pretentious, because I know that I follow the same fallacy, but realistically: How many people question the information they absorb from their environment? And with an outlook into the future, how many people will have the facilities to do so in an effective way? It's a stupid example, but ask people around you on what factual basis they believe the planet Mars exist. If they do, ask them how they can verify their knowledge and whether they have ever seen it with their own eyes. Mars is visible to the naked Eye in both hemispheres, which is why I find it so fascinating to ask: It's easy to verify by just looking up at night. If they can't give you a plan on how to verify it after a while (just look up!) I like to ask how they know that Mars isn't an elaborate hoax created by the government to fool them.
blanketcitrus 3y ago
Two more weeks
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
squarefoot 3y ago
People believing bullshit are easier to lure with advertising into buying something they don't need, or vote the wrong person in power. Yes, there is a cure, but the cynical me doesn't see a therapy anytime soon: bullshit brings power.
mrangle 3y ago
My bullshit is not bullshit and we need to stop anyone from challenging it because not bullshit shouldn't have to defend itself. Which we largely but imperfectly prevent, currently.
siraben 3y ago
Prediction markets could help.[0] If you create a financial incentive to evaluate probabilities more accurately (conversely, expensive to manipulate), and force market participants to come to an agreement, then people who are seemingly confident could "put their money where their mouth is" quite literally, or admit that they were bullshitting in the first place. There's also the opportunity to use prediction markets to hold policymakers accountable.[1] Claiming you can reduce emissions by X year is easy, but what's harder is convincing a prediction market to agree with the statement "If X is implemented, will X policy lower emissions by 10% by the year Y?" [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/instead-of-pledging-to-change-the https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/instead-of-pledging-to...
BryanBigs 3y ago
Does anyone have access to the questions/headlines they asked about COVID? Is it in the paper mentioned in the article (which is behind a paywall)?
snyda 3y ago
[flagged]
amts 3y ago
The neuroscience-based literal cures for bullshit are the following: 1) temporal reduction of serotoninergic transmission in the right hemisphere of the human brain; 2) caloric vestibular stimulation (of the left ear); all of which are supposed to induce some critical thought. Caloric vestibular stimulation is basically pouring cold water into the left ear, which is supposed to induce a specific pattern of activity in the right hemisphere, which have been shown to reverse pattern non-recognition. Why can't psychiatrists prescribe those treatments for politicians etc? Because psychiatry itself is a bullshit medicine.
effed3 3y ago
hard to say if there is a -cure- (apart study, culture, empaty..) but maybe finding what fuel BS can reveal how to reduce the trouble.. just an idea: In a small human group (in the last, say 50k years, but probably a lot more), there are no space for BS, apart jokes, or seriously consequences on survival will occur. Today billion of humas live in a global group, words/information/data come fast and in quantity unmanageable. Reason has to work hard, and BS in the flux come and has spaces to stay, and consequences are delayed and indirect, damped by so many complexity/levels in the social structures (to simplify a lot). At the beginning of newspapers era, come also some BS (propaganda), but action was manageable, it was not too fast, too much/per-day, we have time to rethink about the news of the past day, bu neverthles bring nations in wars and begin revolutions.. Now simply is an overload, we can't manage it. It's like a virus (pardon L.Anderson), and any cure is totally on the peculiarity of the intellectual-immune-system of the single, but for the humankind exposed is a caos, litterally, like pollution, is simple too much.

39 points by politelemon 3y ago

reportgunner 3y ago

https://archive.is/P28Wd https://archive.is/P28Wd

aerzen 3y ago

[flagged]

nerdchum 3y ago
Hm I think both parties see the other party as having lack of critical/analytical thinking and not based in reality. the actual people who lack analytical thinking are the people who aren't aware of this.
- 082349872349872 3y ago
  > the other party If we all agree that one party states are bad, why are two party states not almost as bad? (when compared with N party states, for N>>2) (in particular, an N party state gives more incentive for each of the parties to be for something, rather than degenerating to "against the other")
  - lesuorac 3y ago
    I think a lot of people would agree 2 parties are nearly as bad as 1. The rise in alternative voting methods I think is because people really want a third-party to do well but if we have A,B,C and you prefer C > A > B but A,B are most likely to win in a first-past-the-post scenario then by voting for C you're indirectly helping B (you're least favorite) win as opposed to voting for A where you're helping your second favorite.
  - nerdchum 3y ago
    I think your error is thinking that two parties actually exist and aren't just propaganda by the Oligolopoly.
- Spooky23 3y ago
  The difference is that the authoritarian nature of the GOP allows it to march on 5-6 platform planks exclusively. They publicly focus on a few policy areas, but the masses are riled up about a few social issues the rich people don’t really care about. The Democratic Party is a big tent party that lacks that discipline because of the nature of the coalition. Black voters aren’t voting for the party of Jim Crow, but are socially conservative, for example. Retail politics isn’t a thinking man’s game, but conservatism by its nature is always going to be more craven, irrespective of party.
  - nerdchum 3y ago
    The difference is that the authoritarian nature of the Democrats allows it to march on 5-6 platform planks exclusively. They publicly focus on a few policy areas, but the masses are riled up about a few social issues the rich people don’t really care about. The Republican Party is a big tent party that lacks that discipline because of the nature of the coalition. California republicans aren’t voting for the party of religion, but are socially conservative, for example. Retail politics isn’t a thinking man’s game, but liberalism by its nature is always going to be the more craven, irrespective of party. > see what I did there? not trying to be preachy, but if you have the illusion that your party is superior be assured people from the other party feel the same way and both sides have fallen prey to tribalism.
    - garciasn 3y ago
      What you did here, while cute, for the most part is not at all based in reality or fact. - The GOP is NOT and has never been big tent; there is nothing to debate here. - The GOP generally does not lack in discipline; if anything, their politicians and most of their constituents immediately fall in line behind current dogma. Let's stop with the false balance, please; it really has no place here.
      - nerdchum 3y ago
        > The GOP is NOT and has never been big tent that shows your limited knowledge. California Republicans are very different than Mississippi Republicans. > GOP generally does not lack in discipline Are you implying Democrats don't immediately fall in line behind the current issue du jour and vote for who they're told to vote for? Balance, critical thinking and empathy are important, tribalism and demonization really has no place here.
mrangle 3y ago
How so? Did you critique the paper? Or are you falling for science bullshit?

RecycledEle 3y ago

The cure for bullshit is not to read approved propaganda before reading the questionable text. The cure for bullshit is the Scientific Method. Find "facts" from that source that you can verify locally, and check them yourself. Asking someone is never verifying something. Only checking for yourself if verifying.

strken 3y ago
People can't do the hypothetical scientific method that everyone learned in school for every study, because it costs a huge amount of time and money. Most individuals can't follow 10k people for 20 years and see whether obesity goes away when doctors recommend high intensity interval training vs the normal standard of care. Worse, if you take facts from your life you'll inevitable draw a smaller and more biased sample size. Maybe the people you know are already doing HIIT. Maybe you know knowledgeable/ignorant people who are more/less aware of exercise. Maybe by random chance you know three people who actually listened to their doctor, and nobody who didn't listen will admit it. It's probably better to do the Actual Scientific Method and search Google Scholar to see if anyone made a funnel plot to check for publication bias, if the meta-analyses look okay, if there are replications by other people, if there's an ongoing war between two groups of scientists who both have good points and superficially-similar studies in opposite directions, and basically just trusting that if there are ten studies from different institutions they can't all be committing academic fraud.
tjpnz 3y ago
I've known people who practise what you describe. Some have come to the conclusion that viruses don't exist and that the earth is flat. When presented with "facts" they cannot verify they're more likely to pick those requiring excruciating feats of mental gymnastics over those that are simple, boring but ultimately more plausible.
Clent 3y ago
"Find "facts" from that source that you can verify locally, and check them yourself." No. No. No. This is confirmation bias.

imiric 3y ago

The problem is that educating people to do critical thinking doesn't scale. This should be taught in elementary school when children are learning to learn, but adults are mostly a lost cause. Psyops and information warfare work to a frightening degree, and today the internet is the primary weapon of delivery. It takes decades to destabilize a nation, but it also takes decades to bring it back on track. The latter to my knowledge has never been done. The affected nation is in a state of confusion and desbelief about its actual situation, and it takes time to even realize they're under attack. We've already seen the effects of this: unfit political leaders elected, breakdown of democratic processes, rejection of nationalism, increase in internal sociopolitical conflict and belief in conspiracy theories, etc. Modern warfare is waged online, not on the battlefield.

jpadkins 3y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_warfare Also note that since 2012, it is now legal for US IC to use propaganda on US citizens https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-seek-to-lift-propaganda-ban https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mhastings/congressmen-s...
awesomeMilou 3y ago
The whole idea of "information warfare" is based on the assumption that people are rational and have a vested interest in learning the truth. What if they don't? Nazism doesn't only work because of misinformation, it works because people are happy and content with accepting easy answers to complex problems. This has such far reaching consequences that people leave school with a feeling of contentedness, believing because they attended an institution that claims to teach critical thinking, they're now able to categorize information with total clarity, forever, without any major effort. The reality is, you cannot "educate" people to do critical thinking. You can expose them to knowledge and challenge them to verify whether said knowledge is true, but in the end you can only hope that they start questioning their own beliefs. I don't want to sound pretentious, because I know that I follow the same fallacy, but realistically: How many people question the information they absorb from their environment? And with an outlook into the future, how many people will have the facilities to do so in an effective way? It's a stupid example, but ask people around you on what factual basis they believe the planet Mars exist. If they do, ask them how they can verify their knowledge and whether they have ever seen it with their own eyes. Mars is visible to the naked Eye in both hemispheres, which is why I find it so fascinating to ask: It's easy to verify by just looking up at night. If they can't give you a plan on how to verify it after a while (just look up!) I like to ask how they know that Mars isn't an elaborate hoax created by the government to fool them.

blanketcitrus 3y ago

Two more weeks

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

squarefoot 3y ago

People believing bullshit are easier to lure with advertising into buying something they don't need, or vote the wrong person in power. Yes, there is a cure, but the cynical me doesn't see a therapy anytime soon: bullshit brings power.

mrangle 3y ago

My bullshit is not bullshit and we need to stop anyone from challenging it because not bullshit shouldn't have to defend itself. Which we largely but imperfectly prevent, currently.

siraben 3y ago

Prediction markets could help.[0] If you create a financial incentive to evaluate probabilities more accurately (conversely, expensive to manipulate), and force market participants to come to an agreement, then people who are seemingly confident could "put their money where their mouth is" quite literally, or admit that they were bullshitting in the first place. There's also the opportunity to use prediction markets to hold policymakers accountable.[1] Claiming you can reduce emissions by X year is easy, but what's harder is convincing a prediction market to agree with the statement "If X is implemented, will X policy lower emissions by 10% by the year Y?" [0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/prediction-market-faq [1] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/instead-of-pledging-to-change-the https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/instead-of-pledging-to...

BryanBigs 3y ago

Does anyone have access to the questions/headlines they asked about COVID? Is it in the paper mentioned in the article (which is behind a paywall)?

snyda 3y ago

[flagged]

amts 3y ago

The neuroscience-based literal cures for bullshit are the following: 1) temporal reduction of serotoninergic transmission in the right hemisphere of the human brain; 2) caloric vestibular stimulation (of the left ear); all of which are supposed to induce some critical thought. Caloric vestibular stimulation is basically pouring cold water into the left ear, which is supposed to induce a specific pattern of activity in the right hemisphere, which have been shown to reverse pattern non-recognition. Why can't psychiatrists prescribe those treatments for politicians etc? Because psychiatry itself is a bullshit medicine.

effed3 3y ago

hard to say if there is a -cure- (apart study, culture, empaty..) but maybe finding what fuel BS can reveal how to reduce the trouble.. just an idea: In a small human group (in the last, say 50k years, but probably a lot more), there are no space for BS, apart jokes, or seriously consequences on survival will occur. Today billion of humas live in a global group, words/information/data come fast and in quantity unmanageable. Reason has to work hard, and BS in the flux come and has spaces to stay, and consequences are delayed and indirect, damped by so many complexity/levels in the social structures (to simplify a lot). At the beginning of newspapers era, come also some BS (propaganda), but action was manageable, it was not too fast, too much/per-day, we have time to rethink about the news of the past day, bu neverthles bring nations in wars and begin revolutions.. Now simply is an overload, we can't manage it. It's like a virus (pardon L.Anderson), and any cure is totally on the peculiarity of the intellectual-immune-system of the single, but for the humankind exposed is a caos, litterally, like pollution, is simple too much.