University Offers Course To Help Sniff Out and Refute 'Bullshit' (engadget.com) 402
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.
Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
I sexually identify as a snowflake, and this triggers me!
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I sexually identify as a gun. Trigger me all night long, baby!
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Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I was in middle and high school, we were taught basic aspects of conducting research, such as differentiating between primary and secondary source materials. We were also taught how to cite sources appropriately, and when our papers were graded, the biggest penalties (short of plagiarism) were for things like failure to cite, or to present opinion as fact.
Of course, being just lowly teenagers not yet at a university, things like peer review didn't really apply. At the end of the day, our projects were still shitty essays on familiar topics that were not even remotely close to being candidates for publication anywhere except the confines of the classroom. But my point is that these things are skills that can be taught, and are for the most part, generally taught to varying degrees of success, but in this day and age, I am not entirely sure it is enough, because I believe that students frequently fail to make the connection between the critical thinking processes behind academic research, and the critical thinking that should be applied when evaluating issues we encounter in real life.
And this, I would argue, is how educators should help their students to bridge this gap. Mere access to information is inadequate, because citing your sources and having peer review is not sufficient when one is not able to discern what is reliable and unreliable information. More information is not necessarily more ACCURATE information.
As for your emotional screed about safe spaces and "snowflakes," I find it quite telling that you chose to go that route, as it suggests an ideological agenda on your part. It certainly does not reflect a dispassionate or objective means to address the difficulty that the general public would appear to have in distinguishing what is credible information from propaganda.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Citing sources is no panacea, the BS artists will only cite each other in circular jerk of stupid citing.
Whether we like it or not, it comes to chains of trust. Sources such as proper news organizations need to be properly compensated for the money it takes to properly vet stories. And right and left wing-nuts shouldn't have any gravity associated by the rest of us with opinions about "fake" news from those sources they don't like.
The push for private grade school and high school education over public education will only make the problem worse. Many of those private schools are only interested in providing thought silos so that kids cannot ever get honest opposing views. Hiding behind "religious freedom" becomes merely a term for hiding behind ignorance.
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Kind of like how the public schools and colleges have been doing for decades now with the progressive views and agendas....?
Hell, you try to espouse anything remotely conservative in one of the public school "thought silos", and you get shouted down and silenced. At colleges, the situation is even more harsh where you risk violent protests and physical violence at worst, or pos
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when I was in school (when the Earth was still cooling) this was called, "Critical Thinking." It wasn't given its own dedicated program as it was intertwined with everything else being taught. It's not just citing sources and peer review, though. It requires one to analyze why someone is saying what they're saying. Put another way, it's critical to question the motivations of the communicator as much as it is to question the veracity of the message, itself. The best bullshitters are able to use cherry-picked, real, verifiable facts to back up their claims. Their messages only fall apart if one questions their motivation and looks for additional data to fill in a larger picture.
It seems as though this basic skill stopped being taught in primary and secondary schools and replaced with ignorant structures that teach only to standardized tests.
Basic comprehension and competency isn't really enough. A good education teaches you facts and provides knowledge. A GREAT education teaches you how to teach yourself. Having an open mind and being willing to admit being wrong in the face of new evidence is what separates the latter from the former.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
Back when I was in school (when the Earth was still cooling) this was called, "Critical Thinking."
Indeed. "Critical thinking" used to mean recognizing logical fallacies and other flaws in reasoning. Unfortunately, the term has become meaningless through misuse. Today, it is often used to describe normal deductive logic and problem solving, which is not the original meaning of the term. Wikipedia lists nine different definitions [wikipedia.org], some of which contradict each other.
I was taught Critical Thinking in English... (Score:2)
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Teaching critical thinking in school can't stand up to the power of indoctrination by Mom, Dad, and God at home. Religious parents actively work to ensure that their children see them (and the church) as the only authoritative source of truth. They may learn to question "authority", but not "Authority".
With Devos using the public school system to further the kingdom of God and maximize "Kingdom Gain" in this country, even the rational teacher will be powerless to stop the next generation of dogmatic, mindless drones from growing and running the country.
Religion, the simultaneously mocked and mildly feared boogeyman of Slashdot. Kids go their own ways. Most go through a rebellious phase in their teens where they reject their parents point of view and explore other views. Most things have an agenda, both public and private schools. Some parents have a religious agenda while others, who share your world view, have a religious phobia. Some are right leaning, others left leaning. Life still goes on and society hasn't died. For what it's worth I've found
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Protip: if your "truth" winds up offending lots of people, there's a good chance it's actually just your own shitty opinion. And, y'know, it's fine to have shitty opinions, it's even often fine to spout your shitty opinion out loud, it's just not a good idea to delude yourself into thinking that shitty opinion is "truth".
Furthermore, if you then feel the need to call people who object to your shitty opinion "snowflakes", there's a good chance that you're actually as sensitive, if not more so, than the people who are telling you where to stick your shitty opinion.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
Protip: if your "truth" winds up offending lots of people, there's a good chance it's actually just your own shitty opinion. And, y'know, it's fine to have shitty opinions, it's even often fine to spout your shitty opinion out loud, it's just not a good idea to delude yourself into thinking that shitty opinion is "truth".
Furthermore, if you then feel the need to call people who object to your shitty opinion "snowflakes", there's a good chance that you're actually as sensitive, if not more so, than the people who are telling you where to stick your shitty opinion.
Was this true when a minority spoke out about slavery, or segregation, etc?
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
"Good chance" != "Absolute certainty". I'm not saying every unpopular opinion ever has been wrong. I'm saying that, probably, an offensive "truth" is, in fact, just an unpopular, and shitty, opinion.
For example: I think you're trolling. I'm not saying it's true that you're trolling... I haven't done an extensive double-blind peer-reviewed independently-verified to confirm it, I'm not saying anyone who disagrees is an idiot, I'm just basing that on my (possibly inaccurate) perception that you're using those who fought against slavery as a defense for those who fight for racism. It's my shitty opinion, that's all it is, and I'd be an idiot to assume more right now.
If, in a few hundred years, society has rebuilt itself around a shared, accepted belief that you're trolling, then hey; maybe it turned out this shitty opinion was a truth. That doesn't mean I get to call it truth now.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
They already had this. It's called citing your sources and peer review.
Having read countless research papers that fit your criteria, I can tell you that citing your sources and being peer reviewed are not nearly sufficient. They're necessary steps, to be sure, but I've read more than my fair share of papers from conferences or journals, some even associated with reputable organizations, that were nothing but complete bunk. What you need are citations to trustworthy sources and to be reviewed by trustworthy peers.
And that's the crux of the issue: this is about establishing a network of trust. Citations and peer reviews are an important part of that process, but the notion that they are sufficient in and of themselves misses the point. After all, how is a layperson supposed to know that the American Society for Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is a reputable professional society that has strict ethical and legal obligations, and that the information attributable to it is likely to be trustworthy, but that the American Association for Mechanical Engineers (AAME, which I hope is a fictional entity, but who I apologize to if they actually exist) is a front that's been created by a group to push its own agenda? We see this sort of thing happening all the time in medical, environmental, and other fields that are overshadowed by partisan politics.
Moreover, even if we do manage to establish a network of trust, we still need people to actually trust it in order for it to be useful. How do we do that? By teaching them to think critically and to recognize BS. When they do, they'll naturally gravitate towards trustworthy sources that provide verifiable information. With a world full of people espousing "alternative facts", the very notion of a network of trust can become political, so it's important to train people to pursue the truth even when it doesn't jibe with what they want to believe, otherwise they'll be perfectly content reading peer-reviewed nonsense filled with citations to worthless publications.
It's a shame that fact-based reporting and analysis has become viewed as politically driven, but that's the world we live in. I do agree that citations and peer reviews are necessary, useful tools, but we need to train people to not only use those tools but to also recognize when there's a problem causing them to come up short.
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As the poster had in fact said: >It's NOT just citing sources and peer review...
I don't see anyone saying that in this thread, nor in the summary. Where did you pull that quote from?
As for the central idea I was trying to convey, I said it right at the start of my post: citations and peer reviews are necessary but insufficient. I suppose the shorter version of what I then went on to say is that citations and peer reviews are tools that enable us to build a network of trust, and a network of trust is a tool that can be used to establish the credibility of information, but at the end of
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
Holy shit dude, you didn't even read the first sentence of the summary. Is this the new normal on Slashdot, only reading the headline?
Since you missed it, the course is called "Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data". So it's about making unfounded conclusions from big data sets. Citations won't help, peer review might but there have to be some clued up peers first and that's what this course is about.
I guess somehow even the headline triggered you and you went off on a rant about safe spaces and snowflakes, but actually it's much more interesting than that.
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Holy shit dude, you didn't even read the first sentence of the summary. Is this the new normal on Slashdot, only reading the headline?
Yes, and with an ID of 196126, you really shouldn't be that surprised by this. Seems 140 chars is the new limit on attention spans.
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"So it's about making unfounded conclusions from big data sets"
Lets look at the syllabus. http://callingbullshit.org/syl... [callingbullshit.org]
I don't draw the same conclusion as you. Do you still hold the same conclusion?
I believe "Age of Big Data" is just a catchy title.
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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.
Yes, Trump (the biggest snowflake of all) and his followers are easily upset by things like the Truth and "things they don't like / understand".
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Nice bait and switch. Citing sources and peer review, pretty much the antithesis of the new right that claims global warming is a hoax, Trump inherited a mess, U.S. have been practically inviting terrorists into the country, etc. The ones who call any news they don't like "Fake News", which now includes the entire mainstream media and select parts of Fox News.
"feelings more important than truth" Give me a break. In what universe are you living that "conservatives", who apparently are all on Breitbart an
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It's also all those damned trump fanatics maintaining their The_Donald safe space and shutting down anyone who even has the slightest idea that they might be wrong, but like the submission said, let's not get political.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
It's applicable to BOTH sides, however, and its fucking up our elections. For your consideration [nytimes.com]:
Jeffrey Medford, a small-business owner in South Carolina, voted reluctantly for Donald Trump. As a conservative, he felt the need to choose the Republican. But some things are making him feel uncomfortable — parts of Mr. Trump’s travel ban, for example, and the recurring theme of his apparent affinity for Russia.
Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.
“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”
He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”
The Washington Post has a similar article [washingtonpost.com] centering on Milo Yiannopoulos' backfiring at CPAC, but more broadly about how many of today's conservatives consider themselves "reactionaries" to what they see as smug, liberal intellectuals hell-bent on making even the most moderate conservative feel like an asshole, only to find themselves embraced by an "extremely lucrative... conservative-media industrial complex" which encourages bullshit-artists like Anne Coulter and Yiannopoulos because being an asshole grabs air-time and sells books. Whether it's all in their heads is beside the point. The point is enough people think this way to turn an election, either because they voted Trump as above, or they stayed home [washingtonpost.com].
Until the U.S. can get past this finger-pointing you're-an-asshole no-you're-an-asshole bullshit, we can only expect more of the same. Fuck all I hope for is that Trump doesn't start a fucking war on account of his completely dissing the nation's intelligence community [washingtonpost.com]: "[Trump] has little need for intelligence professionals who, in speaking truth to power, might challenge the 'America First' orthodoxy that sees Russia as an ally and Australia as a punching bag. That’s why the president’s trusted White House advisers, not career professionals, reportedly have final say over what intelligence reaches his desk." This ain't no shit - the last time a (vice) president ignored intelligence, like there seriously ain't no WMD's in Iraq, we wound up in a war which we are STILL paying for. The only question worth asking is, how in fuck did we get here, and the answer is both sides blaming each other and calling each other assholes, grossing out all the "normal people" until almost HALF feel too disgusted to bother casting a vote.
Yes, we need bullshit-detectors in a world that churns out so much of it, but we also need to learn how to be civil to each other... or we'll just wind up with more blow-hards running things as we just pray that the markets don't collapse or we don't wind up in another war (and Trumps' just crazy enough to re-instate the draft... you 16-to-twenty-something-year-olds put that in your bowl and smoke it).
Re: Umm (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama threw away his chance to railroad the Repug's when he had the super-majority in both houses of Congress during the first half of his first term in office. If he had executed the mandate he was elected under, he might have held on to this super-majority for the entirety of both of his terms. He was elected "Like a Boss" but behaved like a mouse. tRumpf OTOH was barely elected and is behaving like he owned the damned country. I strongly wish Obama had a much stronger asshole streak that both dubya and the orange troll did.
Re: Umm (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean like Obama telling Republicans "Elections have consequences" and "I won"?
Or like when he told Republicans that they could sit in the back of the bus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25HN1kZtRIw
Or like when the Democrats locked Republicans out of Obamacare meetings: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/10/22/dem-senator-on-closed-door-meetings.html
Or like how the Democrats "railroaded" Obamacare through a reconciliation process because they lost Ted Kennedy's seat to a Republican (Scott Brown).
Obama used all his political capital to pass Obamacare over the objections of millions of Americans. He did so based on a foundation of lies: you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan, and the average family will save $2500 per year: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/obameter/promise/521/cut-cost-typical-familys-health-insurance-premium-/
Democrats lost over 1000 political seats under Obama.
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He might have said a lot of things but he didn't follow through. Did not follow through with his weak-ass threats. From the beginning his stupid offerings were already watered down "so they could pass" and get some repugnicant approval. As if that mattered. He was weak from the start due to his desire to "bring the country together". That's not what we voted for, we voted for a guy that claimed to be skinny but scrappy. He proved to be not at all scrappy, and disappointed a great many people.
Obamacare
Re:Umm (Score:5, Insightful)
Your daily reminder that the participation trophy is an invention of the boomers who awarded them, not the millennials that received them.
Technique Applied! (Score:3)
Their course was singled out as Bullshit as a result.
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I didn't realize that "NAZI" was an acronym, what does it stand for? Is it something meaningful in German?
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The hatred is aimed at the ideologies, not at them due to their race. Not the same thing at all, not even close. Work on your reading comprehension.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Informative)
The last presidency that didn't distribute significant amounts of misinformation was the Coolidge presidency.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yes every President lies at some point. But few lie about things so easily disproved.
Right. Like "If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan." Or, "It wasn't a preplanned terrorist attack - it was a demonstration against an internet video that got out of hand spontaneously." I could go on and on, but you get the point. Thanks to that stupid crap, we ended up with Trump.
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You do know he got fewer votes, right?
One of the topics that I find interesting is the sheer volume of protest over voter ID laws. I need ID to drive, to fly, to move into or out of the country, etc. Why is it so odd that I would need ID to vote? However I hear it compared to everything from a racist scheme to prevent poor people from voting to a modern day Jim Crow. However it fails the common sense test that ID should be a problem. There was even a very funny video of that that I cited below. However the level of protest is so extreme t
Re: Umm (Score:5, Informative)
You cite an anecdotal article which does not apply to where most people are complaining about voter ID. Many elderly people, for example, lack an ID. In some rural areas it is also difficult to get an ID since the DMV is often a significant distance away and is open for a limited number of hours, often during working hours. Harlem has a very different makeup than rural areas and access to an ID is far easier.
Here [washingtonpost.com] is a better article. About 11% of Americans do not have government issued photo identification cards. A federal court in Texas found that 608,740 registered voters didn't have the forms of identification required for voting.
The amount of voter fraud in the United States is exceedingly low [pbs.org] so the whole voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem. Out of 1 billion votes cast there were 44 cases of fraud, a rate of 0.0000044%.
There is also widespread evidence that such laws are designed to target democratic voters and that they tend to target the poor and minorities.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Informative)
The last President who wasn't an utter inveterate lying sack of shit was probably George H. W. Bush,
Note that H W had the most famous, "Read My Lips" lie.
Re:Umm (Score:5, Interesting)
"A lovely young girl was seated next to Coolidge at a state dinner. She began acting rather flirtatious, batting her eyes, brushing up against his arm. She looked deeply in his eyes, with pouty lips, and said, "Mr Coolidge, my editor bet me that I couldn't get you to say more than two words tonight."
Coolidge pushed her hand off his arm, then without blinking said, "You lose."
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Sniffing out Bull was pretty much the overarching goal of all degrees when I went to college.
When was that? When I went to college 35 years ago, it was about convincing all the students that capitalism is evil, Karl Marx was right about everything, we needed to advocate for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the way to get an "A" in the class was to parrot the propaganda back in all your essays.
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When I went to college 40 years ago, parroting the professors would've gotten me a D at best. And while there were plenty of students advocating various communistic/socialistic views, they were already in decline and no professors I ran into advocated that (or any other particular political view) in class.
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Several Swedish friends confirm that this is bullshit.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Judge for yourself on one of his three allegations and then report back to us.
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You know what's scary. He said this on a Saturday. (Right?)
And there is now news about a riot that happened on Monday.
Almost like he knew this ahead in time.
Now... I seriously doubt the guy has any seer abilities.
throwing gas on the fire (Score:2, Insightful)
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You think more curriculum and snobbery will solve this problem? Do tell!
Thank you for standing up and showing that ignorance is just as valuable as education.
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Yea... (Score:2)
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Totally saw that coming and am slightly annoyed you beat me to it...
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Universities are currently where critical thinking goes to die in in many departments. So pardon my skepticism at their ability to teach something they don't PRACTICE within their halls.
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Universities are currently where critical thinking goes to die in in many departments.
(and Mama Grizzly [wikipedia.org] is reportedly concerned about attending parent/teacher night)
detecting fallacies = detecting bs (Score:5, Insightful)
Schools should teach all pupils to be able to spot fallacies, and encourage them to castigate those who use them. A world without fallacies would be a world where trump couldn't be president.
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There are formal fallacies and informal fallacies. Outside of rigidly defined formal logic like math or restructuring into syllogism, there are no formal fallacies.
For a person with that handle you really ought to learn the difference and why it matters. Even in your post, there are several to choose from including the fallacy fallacy, non sequitur, ex post facto, appeal to consequence, appeal to popularity, appeal to ad hominem, non sequitur, and an existential fallacy.
Formal fallacies are difficult to app
Re:detecting fallacies = detecting bs (Score:5, Funny)
I run into the same issues with my wife - who does not understand things like the limitations of the conversion of a proposition; consequently, she does not understand me, for how can a woman expect to appreciate a professor of logic, if the simplest cloth-eared syllogism causes her to flounder?
For example, given the premise, 'all fish live underwater' and 'all mackerel are fish', my wife will conclude, not that 'all mackerel live underwater', but that 'if she buys kippers it will not rain', or that 'trout live in trees', or even that 'I do not love her any more.' This she calls 'using her intuition'.
I call it 'crap', and it gets me very irritated because it is not logical.
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Schools should teach all pupils to be able to spot fallacies, and encourage them to castigate those who use them.
Fair enough. But let's not go too far with castigating, lest it become another logical fallacy known as ad hominem.
In a perfect world it would be enough to point out the flaws in the argument, not the argumenter. Alas, the argumenter's reputation, good or bad, can be relevant if we want avoid wasting time on those who are disingenuous or incompetent. But when addressing an argument, let's not make the error of ad hominem or the opposite error of argumentum ad verecundiam (argument to authority.) In short:
1.
That course is sure to be a favorite (Score:3, Informative)
Among members of the football and basketball teams, and pre-meds trying to preserve their 4.0.
A so-called "classic" book called "How to Lie With Statistics" was published before I was born (and I'm old). That book has had plenty of successors.
Bullshit isn't the same as "lie". (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Bullshit isn't the same as "lie". (Score:5, Interesting)
As I get older I realize how big and difficult objective "truth" is. It's easy to get hold of bits of the truth, the challenge is to get hold of enough of the truth and enough kinds of truth to make sound judgments.
That said, detecting bullshit is not intellectually challenging -- in fact I'd argue that's the defining characteristic of bullshit. Bullshit is easy to detect when it's aimed at other people. So why is bullshit so hard to resist when it's aimed at you?
Because bullshit tempts you to believe what is easy, convenient and apparently self-serving. A person with perfect moral courage, who is incorruptibly fair-minded and objective, such a person would be completely impervious to bullshit. But all of us, no matter where we fall on the political spectrum, fall far short of that ideal.
That's why advance-fee scams hoodwink people who manifestly have the intellectual ability to see through them ... when they're directed at other people. But as soon as the opportunity for personal gain enters the picture it becomes a struggle between greed and intellect. Even if your intellect is formidable it's useless to you once your greed is engaged.
That's why I say detecting bullshit is an exercise in moral character.
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As someone else said, lies are pretty easy to detect but you have to go find sources. It is amazing how media today does not provide actual sources, but layers of links to other sites repeating the same lie they themselves repeat. It is very time consuming to find actual truths, but I find it necessary today. Media has become masterful, sadly, at removing context to create a narrative based on a sliver of truth. Unfortunately, that is not the only way they lie (see below).
You are right that good bullshi
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Actually the defining characteristic of conspiracy theories is that they get you to believe things which contradict things common sense tells you are so unlikely they're bound to be false, e.g., that people do things that are against their interests, that mutual enemies act with perfect trust in each other.
It is no conspiracy theory that the Nixon White House covered up Watergate, even though that is a theory about a conspiracy. In fact Watergate shows you the problem with most conspiracy theories: massive
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You clearly aren't particularly familiar with bullshit and conspiracy theories. The problem with them is they try to force the data to fit a world view that everything is under control (because the alternative, i.e. chaos, is scary) by connecting unrelated events with a common theme to fill in the gaps in the fabric of reality with malevolent intent.
You can get rid of a whole ton of conspiracy theorist merely by avoiding the ones who don't propose anything. They say, "How do you explain this? How do you explain that jet fuel burns at a cooler temperature than steel melts? How do you explain.......X......?" A lot of times they'll even state their point in the form of a question, "Do you see these points of light on the tower? Don't they look like controlled demolition to you?"
Ignore those kinds of people and you miss a bunch of bullshit.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:suggestions for the course (Score:4, Funny)
7. Having no taxation, and a completely powerless central government, leads to harmony and prosperity.
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5. Lowering taxes on the wealthy will create jobs.
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7. Additional item that was slipped in by that one guy nobody likes, and now everyone is too embarrassed to notice.
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8. Profits!
There is nothing new under the sun (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
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It seems like this particular wheel gets regularly reinvented
Indeed. The college-prep school I attended in 7th grade back in 1980 had a unit in the Social Studies class everyone had to take and pass on Propaganda [wikipedia.org]. Roughly the same thing, as near as I can tell.
At last! (Score:4, Interesting)
Now I can get my official degree as a bullshit-detector.
People have to *want* to know the truth first (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that people can't detect BS. The other part is that they don't care. Once people have chosen a side, they tend to ignore information that disproves their assumed position. How do we deal with that problem?
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How do we deal with that problem?
Name-calling seems to be the preferred method - "Alarmist", "Denier", "Racist", "SJW", and of course "Deplorable".
Too Late (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Works for me but not for thee (Score:2)
The big problem is that this inoculation is non-transferrable. This course will not be as helpful as you would think in showing your "casually racist uncle
Sounds like a good idea (Score:2)
Google should be on this (Score:3)
What we need is AI that can do automated story/fact credibility analysis.
Google is in the best position to develop this these days, maybe in a collaboration with IBM.
Then is should be released as OpenAI so that people will believe the system's results.
The system should consider factors such as:
1) Logical/factual compatibility of statement/story elements with scientific/subject expert well accepted consensus knowledge.
2) Logical coherence of statement/story
3) Use of terms with clear unambiguous meanings from well-accepted theories/models of the world or aspects of it.
4) Utterance theory: a theory of people and organizations as motivated actors with preferences and goals.
Of course in human society one way to achieve one's goals is to influence the focus of attention, beliefs and behavours of other people and organizations.
Uttering particular statements or stories (in particular situation contexts) is an effective way of influencing focus of attention, beliefs, and behaviours of others.
So any system assessing credibility of statements/stories must be able to reason about who the utterer / source is, what their situation is, what their goals for attention, belief, behaviour influence are, and what the situation, disposition, and prior knowledge of the intended audience is.
5) Theories of framing as a means of belief crafting and attention focussing and behavour influence. This is a particular sub-part of 2.
Happy... and Sad (Score:3)
Sad because the need exists. When did basic critical thinking stop being something that even freshmen university students came already equipped with?
New from the Future (Score:3)
Next year we find out that everyone who took the course has since dropped out of college...and no one bats an eye at the irony.
How the times have changed... (Score:3)
I'll keep saying it - Global Free Press Foundation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The greatest benefit Bill Gates or Warren Buffet could leave to human kind is to use most of their money to fund a global free press foundation.
Yeah, with Democrat cronyist leftists like Gates and Buffet funding it there's no way it would have an ideological bias.
From an unnamed Oxford lecturer (Score:3)
"nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest use to you in after life â" save only this â" 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"
"Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data" (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's a bullshit course.
*sniffs* (Score:2)
Smells like bullshit.
Now where is my certificate of course completion?
These Days (Score:4, Interesting)
Kinda sad (Score:2)
that you have to teach people how to detect bullshit.
Easier Solution (Score:3)
Other than the weather* and maybe traffic reports, quit reading / watching what passes for the news these days.
It ceased being ' news ' a long time ago and evolved into sensationalism designed to grab as many viewers as it can.
Even the Weather portion you have to take with a grain of salt. Especially if there is a hurricane or similar event going on. The media tend to cause more hysteria than anything.
In my opinion, being misinformed is worse than being non-informed. The latter doesn't tend to whip folks into a frenzy like the former can.
Quit watching / reading their bullshit and the problem will quickly fix itself.
Re: (Score:3)
Once you've got a couple of jobs under your belt, nobody will ever again look at your college transcript.
Re: (Score:2)
Never thought much about the name until I had to write it down for all posterity to see, then it seemed wildly inappropriate.
If you did this in schools, the parents would (Score:2)
never stand for it.
Their younger kids would learn to question Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the line "because I said so!" from their parents. Then when they got into more advanced classes in BS detection, they would start to raise uncomfortable questions regarding DARE classes, pep rallies, flag salutes, and religion.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I don't need a course on this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: Considering it's the conservatives... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If someone uses fake news then by definition they're not a progressive.
Thank you so much. Funniest thing I've read all day. Whew! Good one.
Re: (Score:2)
You've made good progress.
The first step in getting un-addicted to bullshit is to recognize that you're swimming in it.
Worthy goal: Design means of facilitating harmonious prosperous global (tribe-de-emphasized) human society with
-ethos of decreasing inequality
-ethos of decreasing ecological harm of human civilization
-ethos of maximum liberty consistent with previous two tenets
-ethos of recognizing and denigrating bullshit in all its vari-shaded brown forms.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Were you a victim of the Bowling Green Massacre?
Re: (Score:2)
The name itself is a lie. I mean, "Human Resources"... those who work in that department aren't human.