We Live In The Age of The Bullshitter

there is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of individuals who have both large platforms and ill-informed opinions.

What’s the difference between lying and bullshitting?

A liar knows what they are saying is false. A bullshitter doesn’t care whether it is true or false. The liar has not abandoned all understanding of truth, but they are deliberately trying to manipulate people into thinking things are otherwise than they actually are, whereas the bullshitter has simply stopped checking whether the statements they are making have any resemblance to reality.

Rather than look inside ourselves for the confidence, we can be so desperate to look to others to tell us we’re doing The Right Thing™️

many of us are far too easily swayed by confident people who pose as experts, especially on subjects where we don’t have the knowledge ourselves to evaluate the claims being made. I suspect that the careers of [bullshitters] have been made possible in large part by [their] astonishing levels of confidence in themselves.

This is so true too:

Intelligence is not actually, of course, a single quality, and plenty of people who know how to do one thing well (such as trade cryptocurrencies or develop real estate) know precious little else. In fact, if someone has devoted their entire life to the pathological pursuit of riches, they are likely to be very ignorant of a lot of the world’s knowledge, because much of it simply won’t have been relevant to their area of interest.

The sad reality is: bullshitting is rewarded.

the problem is far deeper than the algorithms of Twitter and Facebook feeds. We also have a culture in which arrogance is rewarded rather than kept in check, and people can see that with enough shameless bluster you might become the richest person in the world or the president of the United States.

What can we do?

We are trying to create a culture of thoughtfulness and insight, where people check carefully to see whether what they’re saying is true, and excessively egotistical people are looked upon with deep suspicion. With time and patient effort, perhaps we can create a world in which the people who rise to the highest offices and reap the greatest rewards are not also the ones who are most full of shit.