Brandolini’s law, which states that “the amount of energy needed to refute BS is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it,” explains why there is so much BS in the world. As Uriel Fanelli put it, “an idiot can create more BS than you could ever hope to refute.”
So creating BS is easy; refuting it is hard. And it is precisely this asymmetry that explains why BS persists and how it can even grow over time.
So how can one hope to rid the world of increasing levels of BS? Since it’s easier to create BS than to refute it, simply refuting each new instance of BS seems like a losing battle. The better strategy is educational; if you can inoculate enough people against falling for BS in the first place, BS never gains enough traction to require costly efforts at refutation.
This, in essence, is the goal of the book. The authors want to immunize you against BS, with a focus on the quantitative variety. While it’s relatively easy to identify old-school BS based on flowery language and empty rhetoric, new-school BS is more insidious and sophisticated with its use of statistics, charts, graphs, and scientific-sounding claims. This is the BS that is more persuasive, harder to refute, and ultimately more dangerous.
The authors first note that while arguments based on statistical and scientific reasoning can appear intimidating, there are basic fallacies that one can look out for that do not require any advanced mathematical ability. It is rarely necessary to look into the “black box”—the authors’ term for complex equations, algorithms, or scientific processes—when the problem with BS is often the data that feeds into the black box. Recognizing that the data is biased or unrepresentative of the larger population, for example, is an easy method of spotting BS that does not require any skills in higher mathematics.
The authors then take the reader on a tour of quantitative fallacies with several examples, all explained clearly and with humor. The reader will learn how to differentiate between correlation and causation, spot biased and unrepresentative data and small sample sizes, identify selection biases in samples, understand how data can be manipulated visually, and more. The reader will also learn how to properly evaluate scientific claims, and how the anti-vaxx movement is based on a single, thoroughly-debunked scientific study that massively confuses correlation with causation, among many other problems.
One of my favorite chapters, chapter 8, has the authors calling BS on arguments that claim that artificial intelligence will take over the world. This has always been BS and likely always will be, as the authors demonstrate the limits of how machines are designed to “think.”
The book ends with a couple summary chapters on how to spot and refute BS, and also on the difference between calling legitimate BS and becoming what the authors refer to as a “well-actually guy.” Perhaps the most important point of the book is the idea that the goal of calling BS is not to demonstrate your intelligence and puff up your ego; it’s to counter the spread of misinformation in the world and its direct and indirect consequences.
Overall, I suppose that if the reader has a lot of experience with informal logic and spotting fallacies—particularly of a quantitative nature—then this book might not offer anything particularly new. Although even then the book is filled with interesting, updated examples and a ton of polemical humor which makes the book a fun read. If, on the other hand, the reader has limited experience with these concepts, this book is a must read as it shows how quantitative BS can be spotted and refuted with even the most limited of mathematical ability.
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Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
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Reviews with images
Deception is All Around Us
Misinformation is all around us. Sometimes, misleading information is purely an accident but other times, it is intentional in nature. False information is often fully intended to deceive, and its perpetrators have absolutely no regard for the truth. Their motive is to persuade by any means necessary and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. This problem is growing worse and worse every day and it is the subject of this book.Lots of people and organizations have agendas and if normal, honest means fail to achieve the intended results, then spreading false info is often the next step. For some, deception is such a common tool for them that they resort to it immediately. This book discusses several common types of deception, from cause and effect to distorted data visualization and much more.I like this book’s premise and I agree that spotting falsehoods- and using critical thinking in general- are important topics that need to be more thoroughly addressed. As I read, however, I started to feel a little pessimistic. When you think about all of the false information, fake news, deliberate deception, etc that exists all around us, it seems like an insurmountable task to try to wipe it out or at least diminish it from society. I still hold on to hope, but it is going to take a lot of education and effort to improve our collective critical thinking abilities so they we don’t so easily fall for these deceptions and this book is a good tool for this purpose.I enjoyed this book overall, but there is a section that discusses p- values that could cause some readers confusion. If you have ever worked in statistics or conducted research, you likely know what p-values are about. For everyone else, this chapter is going to go over their heads. I can understand why it was included, but it is a little much and its technical nature could cause some readers to conclude that the book and its topic are a little too complex for the average individual to understand.Still, this is an especially useful book overall and one that could benefit many members of the public who read it and absorb what it has to say. The use of deception is everywhere and we all need to do what we can to better develop our own deception detection system and help move the world in a more rational direction. Even if it means taking small baby steps at a time, it is imperative that we reverse the trend toward misinformation for a better tomorrow. This book can help accomplish exactly that.
