In this episode we’re talking about bullshit: What it is, how to detect it, and how to call it out. First, staff writer Nick Douglas joins us for a rousing game of “Two Truths and a Lie”. Then we talk to Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West, professors at the University of Washington who teach a course called Calling Bullshit. Finally, Alice talks about why we’re so susceptible to bullshit with staff writer Beth Skwarecki, who writes the Bullshit Resistance School column right here on Lifehacker.
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Discussed in This Episode
- Why you might get a potato tattoo
- Mensa for Kids
- Trypophobia
- How to lie convincingly
- The Calling Bullshit class
- The categories of bullshit
- Brandoloni’s Bullshit Asymmetry Principle
- TED talks and bullshit
- The “arsenic-life” hoax
- P-hacking
- How a Fermi estimation can help you identify bullshit
- Why yoga mats were unfairly maligned
- Causal fallacies and other ways to determine whether a study is bullshit
And so much more. Honestly.
Our Upgrades of the Week
Every week we like to let you in on the upgrades we’ve made in our own lives. This week we talked about Checker Plus for Chrome, the advantages of scheduling and linking deadlines, and this pillow.
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