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Anti-BS Advice

Entry 2361, on 2024-08-31 at 21:21:28 (Rating 3, Skepticism)

There's a lot of BS out there. I know there always has been, but maybe it is worse now than ever, largely due to woke ideology. If anything, I think the biggest failure in coping with it, and this arguably arises from the education system, is that people just aren't skeptical enough. If we all had good skills in evaluating evidence and in being a bit suspicious about claims being made in advertising, the news, by politicians, on-line, etc then misinformation wouldn't be a problem, and we could have a greater commitment to free speech.

When I look at the material I see every day, some is labelled misinformation and some is thought of as the accepted truth. The problem is that about the same proportion in both of those categories seems to be untrue, at least to me, so it is important to be skeptical of everything.

So some of the claims supporting the COVID vaccine turned out to be just as wrong as many of those which criticised it. The only difference was the supporting claims were the "official position" of the establishment, and the others were deemed to be the deranged ranting of conspiracy theorists.

A similar argument applies to other politically contentious issues such as climate change, trans rights, and indigenous cultural claims.

So now I want to provide some techniques I use to filter the BS from the worthwhile material. It is often related to the presence of various words which are indicative of dishonesty or a tendency towards propganda, so let's look at some of these.

My first word is "supports", which is usually used in relation to alternative health products. You might see a claim like "our supplement supports a healthy immune system". The claim itself is very vague, but the key word here is "supports". This is often used to make a claim about a product without actually being specific enough that the claim can be tested or be controlled by laws applying to real medical statements.

Once you start looking for this word you will see it a lot. It is unusual for an alternative health product to be advertised without it, and it means almost nothing. In fact, the more often the word is used, the more suspicious you should be of the advert. I'm not saying this is an absolute rule - that if the word is used the product is BS - but it is a strong indication.

Related to this is the word "may". If you see an ad stating that a product may do something the implication is that it may not, as well. In fact I would suggest that the may not is far more likely than the may!

A similar argument applies to statements like "some people report" or "our users tell us". OK fine, those people might be right in what they are reporting, but they might also be deluded, or they might feel a commitment to the product after buying it, because most people don't want to admit they have been sucked into buying a fake product.

Reality is rarely simple. Generally anyone who states something with one hundred percent confidence is wrong, because almost nothing can ever be proved beyond doubt. So I would be fairly likely to believe someone who says that the potential risks of climate change are worth acting on. But another person who tells me that the "climate crisis" is an existential risk and that is an established fact is likely to be either less aware of the subject or maybe pushing a political ideology rather than a scientific fact.

Here's another warning sign: repeated claims with no justification or change over time. I often see claims by politically correct people that "trans women are real women". Sometimes you just see this statement repeated over and over in a post, and in some cases it is part of the person's signature. It's like the classic phrase from the Nazi propaganda minister that "if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth". No, it doesn't become the truth, it becomes a widely repeated lie that some people accept simply because they see it so much.

So yes, I'm 100% certain (yes, definitely 100%) that you may find this post supports your efforts in telling BS from facts; other people have told me it does. Ignore this, and we will all inevitably be heading towards an existential crisis.

Comment 1 (7712) by Jim Cable on 2024-09-01 at 08:12:41:

I not only support your contentions - I actively uphold them.

Comment 2 (7713) by OJB on 2024-09-01 at 12:37:20: Excellent, a fellow skeptic!

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