Calling Bullshit
Bullshit isn’t what it used to be. Now, two science professors give us the tools to dismantle misinformation and think clearly in a world of fake news and bad data. Misinformation, disinformation, and fake news abound and it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s true. Our media environment has become hyperpartisan. Science is conducted by press release. Startup culture elevates bullshit to high art. We are fairly well equipped to spot the sort of old-school bullshit that is based in fancy rhetoric and weasel words, but most of us don’t feel qualified to challenge the avalanche of new-school bullshit presented in the language of math, science, or statistics. In Calling Bullshit, Professors Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West give us a set of powerful tools to cut through the most intimidating data. You don’t need a lot of technical expertise to call out problems with data. Are the numbers or results too good or too dramatic to be true? Is the claim comparing like with like? Is it confirming your personal bias? Drawing on a deep well of expertise in statistics and computational biology, Bergstrom and West exuberantly unpack examples of selection bias and muddled data visualization, distinguish between correlation and causation, and examine the susceptibility of science to modern bullshit. We have always needed people who call bullshit when necessary, whether within a circle of friends, a community of scholars, or the citizenry of a nation.
Stats for nerds
9recommend
11mentions
10people
2019–2024years
91% recommend9% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I appreciate the reply and discussion. I am aggressively data driven, so I must ask “How did we get here?” because if we want to do better, we have to ask why. Don’t feel bad, I’m a terrible judge of character myself (too much empathy and trust makes me not skeptical enough until “fool me twice”). The people who desperately want the job…sometimes shouldn’t have the job. Why do they want the job? we must ask.
I highly recommend the book “Calling Bullshit: The Art of Scepticism in a Data-Driven World” by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin D. West on the topic of seeking truth in discussions.
With regards to the topic at hand, the cuts available are…military spending. Also, most tragically, taxes will need to go up to pay off tens of trillions of dollars of debt. It is impossible to cut our way to fiscal responsibility.
> The federal government allocates funds across a wide range of programs and services. About 18% was spent on defense and veterans, and another 18% went to state and local governments. Other spending categories include debt interest payments and benefit programs such as SNAP.
> Social Security and Medicare are two of the largest individual programs funded by the federal government. In FY 2023, 22% of the federal budget went to Social Security and 14% went to Medicare. These programs are part of the government's “mandatory spending,” which is required by law and is not subject to annual congressional appropriations. For example, the federal government is required to provide Social Security payments to all eligible beneficiaries at levels specified in the Social Security Act, regardless of cost. Congress does not have the power to reduce mandatory program spending unless it changes the rules or laws regarding the programs themselves. Mandatory spending has increased from 45% of the budget in FY 1980 to 62% in FY 2023.
https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-debt-does-the-us-have/...
> How much debt does the US have?
> About $34.3 trillion as of September 2024.
> $102K in debt was held by the US government per person.
- A great initiative! Among other things, they promote an inventory with guidelines such as as:
"While the assignment is open-ended and we want you to be creative, you might consider keeping track of:
"Bullshit that you are exposed to Bullshit that you produce yourself Bullshit that you debunk or try to debunkThey have also great Venn diagrams for this:
- Calling Bullshit: https://www.callingbullshit.org/videos.html
To quote from the syllabus of the course:
" Our learning objectives are straightforward. After taking the course, you should be able to:
- Remain vigilant for bullshit contaminating your information diet.
- Recognize said bullshit whenever and wherever you encounter it.
- Figure out for yourself precisely why a particular bit of bullshit is bullshit.
- Provide a statistician or fellow scientist with a technical explanation of why a claim is bullshit.
- Provide your crystals-and-homeopathy aunt or casually racist uncle with an accessible and persuasive explanation of why a claim is bullshit.
We will be astonished if these skills do not turn out to be among the most useful and most broadly applicable of those that you acquire during the course of your college education."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
It wouldn't need a name if it wasn't common.
And here's a book on it for you:
- I solely read non-fiction and try to break out of the coding/business book bubble :D
A few of my favorites this year:
- Immune: A book about how our Immune system works..amazing to learn about it
- Calling Bullshit: A book about how to lie with data. (has quite some overlap with thinking fast, thinking slow)
- Quiet: Figured out due to this book that introvert/extrovert is no black/white scale and that I indeed have introvert tendencies in me
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Shameless self plug: Most of the books I read are covered in my (german) book podcast: https://www.swpodcast.de/
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