Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World

When facts are few, persuading the ignorant is relatively easy. But information abundance, already characteristic of early modern societies, engenders a degree of skepticism: The more there is to know, the more likely we feel that truth is elusive. Information super-abundance, or the condition of “digital plenitude,” as media scholar Jay David Bolt... See more

The end result is a world where the ability for anyone to post any idea has, paradoxically, meant far greater mass adoption of popular ideas and far more effective suppression of “bad” ideas. That is invigorating when one feels the dominant idea is righteous; it seems reasonable to worry about the potential of said sense of righteousness overwhelmi... See more

Clear and unbiased truth in our information ecology is seriously limited by the amount of bullshit we consume every day, in part a result of the overwhelming intensity of marketing motives and the conformity demands of our in-group. Furthermore, the intentions of our information sources are as often as not based on clickbait or ideology rather than... See more

“Bullshit,” as we define it here, is any expression that holds outcome in higher regard than truth.

In conversation, we can feel someone is bullshitting us when they aren’t exactly lying, but their entire way of conversing is more centered on making a point or achieving a certain outcome than it is about accurately representing what’s true for them... See more