Speaker 1: Okay, this thing on, I got a light. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: ready to go. Let's see here bubble bulls eye, here
Speaker 1: we go. Bullshit exclamation now complete nonsense, crazy stuff, no accuracy,
Speaker 1: and just nonsense. Information that makes you angry or annoyed.
Speaker 1: Verb to try to persuade someone or make humor her
Speaker 1: admire you by saying things that are not true. It's
Speaker 1: one someone maybe has like an angle, but it's not
Speaker 1: the full truth, like crap, like nothing makes sense, Like
Speaker 1: they're trying my intelligence. I've got the number one miracle
Speaker 1: in a bottle to burn your fact, and they're not
Speaker 1: really telling you the truth. We have been an international
Speaker 1: oil company for a hundred and twelve years. We want
Speaker 1: to transform ourselves into an integrated energy company. It's like,
Speaker 1: what the fuck are you saying? A lot of what's
Speaker 1: on the media this bullshit. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the politicians are bullshit. I'll tell you what you want
Speaker 1: to know and don't do anything about it. So many
Speaker 1: people seem to think that bullshit only comes from certain sources,
Speaker 1: you know, advertising, politicians, salesman. Not true. Bullshit is rampant.
Speaker 1: Is bullshitting simply human nature. Everybody's a bullshit oil is
Speaker 1: at one point or another, is there even a difference
Speaker 1: between bullshit and straight up wise? And the thing that
Speaker 1: I think we all need to do right now is
Speaker 1: work to bring people closer together. That we're going to
Speaker 1: change Facebook's whole mission as a company in order to
Speaker 1: focus on this. Parents are fullish it teaches, a fullish
Speaker 1: it clergyman, a fullish it law enforcement people are full
Speaker 1: of shit? Why is bullshit everywhere? Welcome to Calling Bullshit
Speaker 1: the podcast about purpose washing, the gap between what an
Speaker 1: organization says they stand for and what they actually do
Speaker 1: and what they would need to change to practice what
Speaker 1: they preach. I'm your host, Time Montogue, and I've spent
Speaker 1: over a decade helping organizations define what they stand for,
Speaker 1: their purpose and then help them to use that purpose
Speaker 1: to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot
Speaker 1: of institutions today, there's still a pretty wide gap between
Speaker 1: word and deed. That gap has a name, bullshit. But,
Speaker 1: and this is important, bullshit is serious, but it's also
Speaker 1: a treatable condition. So when our bullshit detector lights up,
Speaker 1: we're going to explore everything the organization should do to
Speaker 1: fix it. Hey, folks, Welcome to season two of Calling BS.
Speaker 1: In season one, we looked at a number of bullshitting organizations,
Speaker 1: We developed the BS index, and we worked with our
Speaker 1: guests to imagine a bunch of different ways to actually
Speaker 1: fight BS. Here on the show, we define bullshit as
Speaker 1: the gap between word. Indeed, it's in our intro and
Speaker 1: it's what the B S scale is all about. But
Speaker 1: not everybody defines BS in exactly the same way, and
Speaker 1: so we thought, let's kick off season two by dedicating
Speaker 1: an entire episode to the concept of BS itself. What
Speaker 1: is it? Where does it come from? And at what
Speaker 1: point does it become dangerous? How can we all keep
Speaker 1: our BS detectors in fighting shape bull detective? To begin with,
Speaker 1: let's examine the origins of the phrase. The first surprise,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have anything to do with cow boop. The
Speaker 1: bull in bullshit may actually reference the last name of
Speaker 1: Obadiah Bull, an Irish lawyer living in London in the
Speaker 1: late fourteen hundreds who was famous for spouting nonsense. It
Speaker 1: may also have originated back in the days when the
Speaker 1: Pope wrote decrees on parchment and authenticated them with a
Speaker 1: metal seal called a bulla, leading to the shorthand phrase
Speaker 1: papal bull and shit likely comes from shite, the staff
Speaker 1: carried by ancient Scottish warlocks. I'm kidding, Actually, shit likely
Speaker 1: comes from the Old English word shitta for dung, So
Speaker 1: no mystery there. But where there is a bit of
Speaker 1: mystery is when bullshit actually became slang. One thing we
Speaker 1: know for sure is that T. S. Eliot used the
Speaker 1: two words side by side in his poem The Triumph
Speaker 1: of Bullshit, written in the early nineteen hundreds. More recently,
Speaker 1: the concept was picked up by moral philosopher Harry G.
Speaker 1: Frankfurt in his book on Bullshit, which was published in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five. Frankfort writes that one of the
Speaker 1: most salient features of our culture is that there is
Speaker 1: so much bullshit. To see how Frankfort's theory holds up today,
Speaker 1: we sent our producers Hailey Pascualites and Parker Silzer out
Speaker 1: to ask New Yorkers what they think. Would you agree
Speaker 1: or disagree with the following statement. One of the most
Speaker 1: common features of our culture is that there is so
Speaker 1: much bullshit. Oh yes, no, I'm an optimist. I have
Speaker 1: always been struck by how much people really care about
Speaker 1: the truth of the matter. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the time people are pretty bad at seeing past the bullshit,
Speaker 1: but they really care to the symbolism of bullshit is
Speaker 1: all wool suit. Don't they have the bull there? That's
Speaker 1: my case. They they are tress parents transparent in their bullshit. Um,
Speaker 1: do you agree with the statement one of the most
Speaker 1: common features in our culture is that there's so much
Speaker 1: bullshit nowadays? Yeah? Yeah, I agree with that. The government's
Speaker 1: definitely hiding a lot of things from us so that
Speaker 1: we don't know about politics everyone. Yeah, it's just everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's so common, like everyone every company is somewhat like
Speaker 1: bullshit something the idea of bullshit and bullshit and can
Speaker 1: seem harmless or even funny. But as a listener of
Speaker 1: this show, you know that BS is often used to
Speaker 1: deceive and confuse in ways that can cause real harm.
Speaker 1: So why do people b s and why is it
Speaker 1: so hard to stop it once it starts. To figure
Speaker 1: this out, I decided to call up a real expert. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm John Petric Shelley, Professor of psychology at Wake Forest University.
Speaker 1: My specific research has really focused on persuasion metic cognitions.
Speaker 1: Were thinking about thoughts that we have and of course
Speaker 1: bullshitting and bullshit detection. John runs the Bullshit Studies Lab. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an actual thing where he designs experiments to test
Speaker 1: how we're affected by the social world, just basic judgment
Speaker 1: and decision making. Basically, he tries to understand what influences
Speaker 1: people looking at external information and social environments as well
Speaker 1: as our internal biases. But the reason I first got
Speaker 1: in touch he wrote this book, The Life Changing Science
Speaker 1: of Detecting Bullshit. When I first saw that title, I thought, well,
Speaker 1: why would he write a book when he could just
Speaker 1: do a podcast? But after I read it, I had
Speaker 1: to call him up. I I gotta say, I loved
Speaker 1: your book, not surprisingly maybe given the show, but I
Speaker 1: noticed you draw a distinction between bullshitting and lying, which
Speaker 1: seems like an important distinction. Can you just unpack that difference? Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Bullshitting is often confused for lying, but it's very distinct
Speaker 1: from lying in some very important ways. So when someone
Speaker 1: lies to us, the liar is actually concerned about the truth, right,
Speaker 1: and their objective is to get us to believe something
Speaker 1: that they don't believe is true themselves. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the bullshitter, it doesn't really care at all about the truth.
Speaker 1: They're not paying attention to it at all. In fact,
Speaker 1: they have no idea what the truth is. It's weird
Speaker 1: to me that anybody wouldn't care about something as important
Speaker 1: as the truth. But John says, there are two major
Speaker 1: motives for bullshitting, and one of the motives is to
Speaker 1: be consistent with our actions and what we say. And
Speaker 1: we're also motivated to feel justified by the claims that
Speaker 1: we make and our behaviors. And once you publicly state something,
Speaker 1: you get a lot of social pressure added to those motivations.
Speaker 1: As John explained this, my mind immediately jumped to win.
Speaker 1: After Trump was sworn in on the National Mall, Sean
Speaker 1: Spicer told the world this was the largest audience to
Speaker 1: ever witness an inauguration period. It most assuredly was not,
Speaker 1: but the administration wouldn't cave, and then Senior Counselor Kellyanne
Speaker 1: Conway doubled down bigly on CNN the following day. Why
Speaker 1: did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the
Speaker 1: entire White House Press Office. Don't be so don't be
Speaker 1: so overly dramatic about it. Chuckle, what you're saying it's
Speaker 1: a falsehood, and they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary,
Speaker 1: gave alternative facts. They definitely didn't care about the real numbers.
Speaker 1: You sent the press secretary out there to utter us
Speaker 1: falsehood on the smallest pettiest thing. I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: can blame that. Look, I actually don't think that maybe
Speaker 1: this is me as a polster chuck and you know
Speaker 1: data well, I don't think you can prove those numbers
Speaker 1: one where the others. There's no way to really quantify crowds.
Speaker 1: We all know that you can laugh textbook bullshitting. So
Speaker 1: whereas the liar doesn't believe what it is that they
Speaker 1: say is true, the bullshit, it really has no idea
Speaker 1: whether or not it's true. It's very easy today to
Speaker 1: say something that's not very well thought out, that's not
Speaker 1: very well informed, and then to feel as though you
Speaker 1: have to support it, right, because now you're going to
Speaker 1: sound inconsistent and you're gonna sound stupid for for communicating
Speaker 1: something that either we know isn't true or isn't supported
Speaker 1: by the evidence. And it's very seductive once you publicize it.
Speaker 1: So it's it's much better to sort of think collect
Speaker 1: evidence and and and see whether or not well is
Speaker 1: is there evidence for against what what my opinion is
Speaker 1: on the issue. But and so I think those are
Speaker 1: sort of two major motives, especially once people start communicating
Speaker 1: their opinions and their beliefs. But the other key distinction
Speaker 1: here is that society treats liars differently than it treats bullshitters.
Speaker 1: When people lie to us, there's often a lot of
Speaker 1: great negative consequences. You know, we're very unhappy with liars
Speaker 1: when we catch them, yes, exactly. But but when we
Speaker 1: know kind of know someone's bullshitting us, we often assume
Speaker 1: that it's harmless. We pass it off as sort of
Speaker 1: a mild social offense. But this is where we can't
Speaker 1: be more wrong. Virtually all of our problems, whether they
Speaker 1: be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal, they appeared to stem
Speaker 1: from mindless bullshit reasoning and communications. So what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do was to sort of put something um together
Speaker 1: that puts the problem with bullshitting front and center, and
Speaker 1: to call attention to it and to expose how dangerous
Speaker 1: it can actually be. Right, and I totally agree we
Speaker 1: underestimate the seriousness of the impact of bullshit. And you
Speaker 1: list a number of ways that bs can be damaging,
Speaker 1: in some cases life threatening. And you use a scale.
Speaker 1: In the book which I love, John uses the fly index.
Speaker 1: One fly is harmless, two flies is bad, and three
Speaker 1: flies dangerous. So harmless might sound something like, you know,
Speaker 1: I could throw a football over a mountain in two
Speaker 1: you know, and you get that eye rolling. And in fact,
Speaker 1: some examples I think of bullshit actually have some benefits.
Speaker 1: We tell children in the summer at the pool, you know, tye,
Speaker 1: they put a compound in that swimming pool water to
Speaker 1: reveal the presence of urine almost immediately, you know, And
Speaker 1: as every kid knows, that really isn't true. But I
Speaker 1: think that's relatively harmless, and it's, if anything, it's potentially
Speaker 1: useful to the extent that keeps a few is from
Speaker 1: being in the pool. But then I contrast harmless with
Speaker 1: the two fly example of bad bullshit. My favorite example
Speaker 1: of this is did you see her face? Who would
Speaker 1: vote for a face like that? I think that kind
Speaker 1: of bullshit it dehumanizes, objectifies women. It suggests that they
Speaker 1: can't be good leaders unless unless they're attractive. I mean,
Speaker 1: what doesn't make much sense. But the three fly example
Speaker 1: might sound something like this. You know time, I can
Speaker 1: text while driving without any problems, and and you know what,
Speaker 1: everyone does it, and so I don't see the problem. Okay.
Speaker 1: My response that is no, no, no, but no. Not
Speaker 1: only are these things not all true, but they are
Speaker 1: able and likely to cause harm and injury to oneself
Speaker 1: and others to the extent that that you actually believe
Speaker 1: it is true. And so to say something like that
Speaker 1: just completely neglects true your established knowledge and genuine evidence.
Speaker 1: That would be the more dangerous form of bullshit. Why
Speaker 1: are we so vulnerable to b s? Why don't we
Speaker 1: all have better BS detectors? There are two primary reasons
Speaker 1: for why people are not generally good at the discerning
Speaker 1: bullshit from the good stuff. First, most people believe that
Speaker 1: there somehow immune to bullshit, and actually research suggests that
Speaker 1: the most confident people are often the most likely to
Speaker 1: be duped by bullshit. That's why one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I really love this new show on Netflix Bullshit The
Speaker 1: game show with with Howie Mandel. Let's play so that
Speaker 1: the main contestant is supposed to either answer questions correctly
Speaker 1: or to convince one of the three challengers that their
Speaker 1: incorrect answer is actually correct, and if they can either
Speaker 1: answer correctly or convince one of the three challengers that
Speaker 1: they're incorrect answers correct, then they can move on to
Speaker 1: the next stage and ultimately win a million dollars. But
Speaker 1: what's interesting is when they bring on each of the
Speaker 1: three challengers, each one of them talk smack about how
Speaker 1: good they are detecting BS. Right then the show proceeds
Speaker 1: and you can see how miserable most people are at
Speaker 1: actually detecting it. A lot of us have overconfident but
Speaker 1: underperforming BS detectors, and John says there are a few
Speaker 1: reasons for this. I mean, the research in in Cognitive
Speaker 1: Psychology by Janet Metcalf has shown that people do not
Speaker 1: study subjects they feel they've already mastered. They stopped, you know,
Speaker 1: they go onto something else. And and then the second
Speaker 1: reason is that even before we suspect we might be
Speaker 1: exposed to bullshit, we failed to ask the right questions.
Speaker 1: We failed to ask, well, what exactly is the claim?
Speaker 1: And then another question that's that's hardly ever asked is
Speaker 1: how does this person know that this claim is true?
Speaker 1: So if you ask someone how how do you know
Speaker 1: what you're saying is true ty. You know, most people
Speaker 1: will will tend to be surprised because that's not a
Speaker 1: common question to ask, and then they'll take a few
Speaker 1: steps backwards and they'll already start to kind of clean
Speaker 1: up their first answer, you know, let me give you
Speaker 1: some of the qualifiers, and and then when you you
Speaker 1: narrow back down, it's really good to ask how might
Speaker 1: the claim be wrong? People tend to answer the how
Speaker 1: do you know it's true? Only with confirming evidence, So
Speaker 1: you have to directly ask people and nudge them to
Speaker 1: consider the ways in which the claim might be wrong
Speaker 1: and just to draw a line under this for the audience.
Speaker 1: You make the distinction between why questions and how questions
Speaker 1: in the book and your thesis is that why questions
Speaker 1: are a little easier to slip out of than how questions.
Speaker 1: How forces somebody to really bring evidence into the conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: usually when you ask why questions, you kind of get
Speaker 1: a value laden, sort of a heady, abstract response. But
Speaker 1: when you focus people on how, it tends to elicit
Speaker 1: a more concrete response where they, maybe even for the
Speaker 1: very first time, take a few steps back and say, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what what are the actual reasons to have this opinion
Speaker 1: or this belief, and then you can make a better
Speaker 1: decision as to whether or not you're really buying what
Speaker 1: it is that they're selling. Right in the book, you
Speaker 1: you coined a term which I really liked, which is
Speaker 1: bull ability. I assume it's a comparison to gullibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is This is a word that I made up.
Speaker 1: So a gullible person is likely to believe something, you know,
Speaker 1: despite the signs of dishonesty. Somebody who's especially bulletble, we
Speaker 1: would say that, well, they tend to be a relatively
Speaker 1: lazy thinker who doesn't even care about the signs of dishonesty.
Speaker 1: And one of my favorite examples of this has to
Speaker 1: do with a clip that sixty minutes aired in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven of Bernie made Off kind of sitting around
Speaker 1: and recruiting new investors and his hedge fund, and one
Speaker 1: of the things he said was, I'm very close with
Speaker 1: the regulators, so I'm not trying to say that they
Speaker 1: can't you know that what they do is bad. And
Speaker 1: he was talking about the sec You know, in today's
Speaker 1: regulatory environment, it's virtually impossible to to violate rules. When
Speaker 1: this is something that the public really doesn't understand. But
Speaker 1: you it's impossible for you to go into for a
Speaker 1: violation to go in detected, certainly not for a considerable
Speaker 1: periodyt of talk it. It's impossible for a violation to
Speaker 1: go undetected, you know, certainly not for a considerable period
Speaker 1: of time. Right, Well, that clearly wasn't true. I mean,
Speaker 1: made off proved that for eighteen years, made off truly
Speaker 1: as a cautionary tale. Everyone was investing and made off,
Speaker 1: so no one really thought to look at the facts.
Speaker 1: And this is where things get sticky. Even people with
Speaker 1: the most discerning minds want to belong. And when John
Speaker 1: brought up a study done in the nineteen forties, I
Speaker 1: realized that this desire can be even stronger than our
Speaker 1: sense of right and wrong. The experiment was conducted by
Speaker 1: the psychologist Solomon Ash. He brought in one participant for
Speaker 1: a number of trials. This one real participant would be
Speaker 1: joined by a handful of assistants or confederates posing as
Speaker 1: other participants, and they would set it up such that
Speaker 1: the actual participant always thought they were late to experiment,
Speaker 1: and there was one seat open, and each trial in
Speaker 1: the experiment just consisted of a very obvious answer to
Speaker 1: a question. They were shown a line of a certain
Speaker 1: length and then presented with three other lines labeled A,
Speaker 1: B or C. And one of these lines was exactly
Speaker 1: the same length as the original line. The other two
Speaker 1: mismatches were completely wrong, very obvious. And what would happen
Speaker 1: is the first four or five confederates working with the
Speaker 1: experimenter would start to respond incorrectly intentionally to these trials,
Speaker 1: and the actual participant would look dumbfounded and be like,
Speaker 1: what in the world's checking their glasses and kind of squinting,
Speaker 1: and and they knew that the response that was verbally
Speaker 1: given by the other confederates was wrong. But what Nash
Speaker 1: found was that people tend to feel pressure to go
Speaker 1: along with the group. In other words, even when the
Speaker 1: real participant clearly saw the wrong answer being given by
Speaker 1: everyone else, they still went along with it. They did
Speaker 1: not go along with the group when they had a
Speaker 1: chance to respond privately, but when they had to respond publicly,
Speaker 1: they tended to go along. They tended to conform to
Speaker 1: the group. So what is that about, Well, especially when
Speaker 1: situations are ambiguous, you can even magnify this difference. When
Speaker 1: it's not clear what the the The answer is people
Speaker 1: conform to the group. Even more so, we tend to
Speaker 1: think that the group knows something that we don't. But
Speaker 1: what's wilder to me is that even when the other
Speaker 1: people in the group are complete strangers to us, our
Speaker 1: fear of group projection can cause us to override indisputable facts.
Speaker 1: All of the participants were complete strangers, but they were peers,
Speaker 1: And you know, if you get peers together, even peers
Speaker 1: that you don't know personally, there's that general sense of
Speaker 1: pressure to go along with the group because there's a
Speaker 1: fear of being rejected, a fear of being avoided. It's
Speaker 1: much more impactful than most people would believe. So what
Speaker 1: does this say about the proliferation of BS in our society?
Speaker 1: Even when we see it, it's hard to call it out.
Speaker 1: The Ash experiment is like the snowflake on the tip
Speaker 1: of the iceberg of harm that can be done when
Speaker 1: people go along with bs that they privately disagree with.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that this is part of why whistleblowers that
Speaker 1: high BS companies are so few and far between. How
Speaker 1: can we expect to fight the rising tide of real
Speaker 1: BS when it's so hard for us to call BS
Speaker 1: on the length of an arbitrary line. How can we
Speaker 1: trust anything or anyone if this is the default setting
Speaker 1: on our internal BS detector. Answers to these questions and
Speaker 1: more right after the break. All right, so now we're
Speaker 1: pushing into just another area of interest for us. There
Speaker 1: have been a lot of many assertions in the media,
Speaker 1: in particular that we're actually experiencing a crisis of trust
Speaker 1: in the world, especially among young people. First of all,
Speaker 1: have you have you seen any of those assertions and
Speaker 1: do you agree, and if so, do you feel like
Speaker 1: BS is one of the culprits I I do think
Speaker 1: are late millennials and Gen zs. They I mean, they
Speaker 1: grew up hearing about concerns with the environment. Even I
Speaker 1: sort of our late generation exerts, you know, we grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, concerned about greenhouse gases and aerosol spray cans
Speaker 1: and things like that. And I think it's developed a
Speaker 1: more socially conscious group than than ever before. And I
Speaker 1: think there's a little bit of evidence that tend to
Speaker 1: have a better memory for bullshit and lies. I mean,
Speaker 1: this sort of the underpinnings I think of cancel culture,
Speaker 1: um I think there are some benefits to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: what we would usually call that in social psychology is accountability.
Speaker 1: When you have to justify, you know, you have to
Speaker 1: justify your beliefs in your opinions. People tend to uh
Speaker 1: feel feel that social pressure and they don't bullshit as much.
Speaker 1: You know, if if someone like Nike President and CEO
Speaker 1: John Donahoe or Phil Knight, you know, again, if they
Speaker 1: say we're gonna address the carbon footprint problem by doing this,
Speaker 1: We're gonna address sweatshop problems by doing that. If they
Speaker 1: don't do it, you know, there's a major base of
Speaker 1: the consumers that are not going to be happy and
Speaker 1: they'll cancel them. It's basic accountability, but I think it's
Speaker 1: one of the major things that is going to combat
Speaker 1: the unwanted effects of bullshit. Yeah, we completely agree. I
Speaker 1: think that's a good segue point to some some questions
Speaker 1: that I have that directly relate to the work that
Speaker 1: we're trying to do on this podcast, because you know,
Speaker 1: our show was was born out of reflections on the
Speaker 1: attack on the US Capitol and the role that bullshit
Speaker 1: as we define it played in its specifically fomented by
Speaker 1: by our friends at Facebook. You know, they claim that
Speaker 1: their purpose as a company is to empower all of
Speaker 1: us to build community and bring the world closer together.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, what they're really doing is feeding us deceptive
Speaker 1: and polarizing content that clearly in some cases whips us
Speaker 1: into a violent frenzy. And so it's that gap between
Speaker 1: what they say they stand for and the actions that
Speaker 1: they're actually taking that we define as bs on a show.
Speaker 1: So what do you think of our definition, because in
Speaker 1: some ways it seems very much the same. I sense
Speaker 1: a kinship with your work, but is it in some
Speaker 1: ways different? I think what what you are actually hitting
Speaker 1: on is is a special case of bullshit. In most cases,
Speaker 1: I think you're hitting on what we call pseudo profound bullshit.
Speaker 1: Pseudo profound bullshit or flowery, catchy language that can be
Speaker 1: hard to decipher. Is everywhere in the marketing landscape, and
Speaker 1: one a company's purpose is treated as marketing, it can
Speaker 1: fall into this category as well. It's clever language because
Speaker 1: it could it could actually mean all sorts of things
Speaker 1: hard to pin down exactly. It doesn't have to mean
Speaker 1: what you think it means, or maybe it could. Here's
Speaker 1: where it's really clever though, if you ask for clarification,
Speaker 1: and now I can gauge what you think it should mean,
Speaker 1: you know, and I could say, yeah, you know, you
Speaker 1: got it, that's what it means. I recall this. This
Speaker 1: this classic conversation between the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and
Speaker 1: Deepark Chopra, and Darkens challenged Chopra to explain the mystification
Speaker 1: of quantum mechanics in aging reversal sort of theory. Where
Speaker 1: did the quantum theory come into that? Oh, it's just
Speaker 1: a metaphor. Just like an electron or a photon is
Speaker 1: an indivisible unit of information and energy. Thought is an
Speaker 1: indivisible unit of consciousness. So it's an it's a metaphor
Speaker 1: for very unit and nothing to do with quantum theory
Speaker 1: as in physics. So I think quantum theory has a
Speaker 1: lot of things to say about observer effect. There are
Speaker 1: a school of physicists who believe that quantum leaps, for example,
Speaker 1: are examples of discontinuity and creativity, and consciousness is also
Speaker 1: an example of discontinuity, and that healing may be a
Speaker 1: biological phenomenon that relies on biological creativity. So it sounds
Speaker 1: like a sort of poetic use of the word discontinuity.
Speaker 1: It's it's actually confusion, isn't it to bring in quantum
Speaker 1: theory other than as a metaphor. It designs that you're
Speaker 1: both doing to a metaphor and a little tinge of
Speaker 1: something like what physicists are talking about as well. Dark
Speaker 1: And it's kind of accepted Chopra's retreat. I mean, Choper
Speaker 1: just moved the goalposts. So this is this is the
Speaker 1: problem with this type of language, and you see it
Speaker 1: especially in business, in the corporate world. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just everywhere. Yeah, And that's what we're trying to wade
Speaker 1: into and hopefully clarify for some folks, because we have
Speaker 1: our own our own scale which is slightly different. Rather
Speaker 1: than measuring BS in flies, our scale is a hundred
Speaker 1: point scale, zero being the best zero gap between word
Speaker 1: indeed zero bs and one being the worst total bullshit.
Speaker 1: So we rate all the companies that we feature on
Speaker 1: the show. And as I read your okay, I realized
Speaker 1: that on our scale we might be combining B s
Speaker 1: ing and lying um and lying might live on the
Speaker 1: upper end of all our scale. So what's your take
Speaker 1: on that is knowingly b sing in that way the
Speaker 1: same as lying, or is there a distinction to be
Speaker 1: made there? Yeah? Well, I I think, well, there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with your scale. It's perfect for expressing a social
Speaker 1: perceiver's guestimate of lying. I think, because once it's intentional
Speaker 1: and you know something isn't true, then I think you're
Speaker 1: moving into two lying and further away from bullshitting. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I think the scale of sort of like, well,
Speaker 1: what you know based on what they say and what
Speaker 1: they actually do. I think it's very useful scale You've got.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate that. So do you have a daughter,
Speaker 1: what what advice do you give her? Or would you
Speaker 1: give any young people today who faced this you know
Speaker 1: what feels like a rising tide of b s in
Speaker 1: the world. How should they think about fighting this fight? Yeah? Well,
Speaker 1: you much of my daughter. I mean, she's one of
Speaker 1: my best bullshit detectors. I'm not permitted to bullshit at all.
Speaker 1: I remember when she was four, for whatever reason, I
Speaker 1: told her, you know, when I played high school football,
Speaker 1: we won all of our games, and at age four,
Speaker 1: she's yeah, no, come on, now, you did not win
Speaker 1: all of your games. You know. But what I would
Speaker 1: advise her and anyone to do now is just to
Speaker 1: sort of take a step back. When you hear something,
Speaker 1: you read something, you see something that may or may
Speaker 1: not be true, think about the consequences that it has
Speaker 1: if you actually believe it. What consequence would it have
Speaker 1: for your behavior? How might it change your decisions? How
Speaker 1: might it change your beliefs in your opinions? And then
Speaker 1: to simply start asking questions. You could kind of flip
Speaker 1: some of those questions onto the self and say, well,
Speaker 1: who is telling me this, you know, how do they
Speaker 1: know it, how could they possibly know it? And what
Speaker 1: are they trying to sell me? What agenda do they have?
Speaker 1: These are like just basic critical thinking skills. But but
Speaker 1: I would say, just stick with the claim, you know,
Speaker 1: don't attack the person, attack the claim and then suggest, Okay,
Speaker 1: I used to think of it that way too, sort
Speaker 1: of misery loves company kind of approach. Well yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's just an easier pill to swallow if it's
Speaker 1: just kind of an error and reasoning than it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're just misinformed and they're guilty of bullshitting. But another
Speaker 1: thing I think is good to admit was that we
Speaker 1: we all contribute our own amount of bullshit, and to
Speaker 1: not double down on the bullshit, but just kind of
Speaker 1: admit it when we're guilty of it. Finally, be ready,
Speaker 1: you know, be ready to model a better behavior, you know,
Speaker 1: be willing to provide and offer evidence based reasoning to
Speaker 1: counter and combat bullshit. You know, the hope and the
Speaker 1: dream is to really reduce bullshit and it's unwanted effects.
Speaker 1: But it's gotta have to be a collective effort. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we completely agree. You know, there is a whole generation
Speaker 1: of young people who are taking a very activist stance
Speaker 1: on these things. They're not putting up with the bullshit anymore,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the audiences that we most want
Speaker 1: to provide information for on this podcast. I love the
Speaker 1: concept of your podcast. I think it shines a lot
Speaker 1: of sunlight on problems, and I believe that what we
Speaker 1: need to advocate is treating bullshit like lies. If we
Speaker 1: treat bullshit, even though I say, Okay, well it's bullshit,
Speaker 1: don't assume that it doesn't have a negative effect. Don't
Speaker 1: that it's harmless. John, this was a fantastic conversation. I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for coming on the show today,
Speaker 1: al Ti, thanks for having me. So this is the
Speaker 1: part of the show when I would usually rate an
Speaker 1: organization on the B S scale, But instead of giving
Speaker 1: a score today, I want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about how the BS scale actually the works. We
Speaker 1: define bullshit as the gap between word indeed, and we
Speaker 1: measure that gap by looking at the evidence, talking with
Speaker 1: experts who can help us understand the actions that companies
Speaker 1: are taking to live or not their purpose. Once we've
Speaker 1: asked as many questions as we can, we construct the
Speaker 1: final score using these three guide posts. One action. Does
Speaker 1: an organization's purpose exist to solve a real problem? Are
Speaker 1: they taking concrete action to make it real in the
Speaker 1: world or is it just flowery pseudo profound business speak.
Speaker 1: Are they ignoring glaring gaps between word indeed or taking
Speaker 1: steps to remediate them. Are they considering all of their stakeholders.
Speaker 1: Looking at actions helps us to gauge intention. If we
Speaker 1: find that an organization is willing to correct course or
Speaker 1: engage with criticism, we can see their real intentions shining through.
Speaker 1: To transparency, we always look to see how much information
Speaker 1: a company discloses. Do they publish their goals as well
Speaker 1: as track progress toward them. Are they as quick to
Speaker 1: call out their own shortcomings as they are to claim
Speaker 1: their victories. When an organization is truly purpose led, they
Speaker 1: hold themselves accountable by showing their work. And three, harm
Speaker 1: a gap between word indeed that threatens democracy or the
Speaker 1: future of the entire planet will always be high BS.
Speaker 1: In this way, we're super aligned with John and his
Speaker 1: fly index. More harm always means a higher BS score.
Speaker 1: And if you're a future or current purpose led business
Speaker 1: leader or a conscious consumer, here are three takeaways from
Speaker 1: John that will keep your BS detector in great shape.
Speaker 1: Detective One, ask how, and not why. Why questions are
Speaker 1: easier to answer vaguely, but how questions cut right through
Speaker 1: the b S. How is this company making its purpose real?
Speaker 1: How is it seeing to its stakeholder needs? Two? Don't
Speaker 1: attack the bullshitter, attack the claim challenging b S shouldn't
Speaker 1: feel personal. If your attack feels personal, it's more likely
Speaker 1: to be ignored. B S is a treatable condition, but
Speaker 1: only if the b s R wants to treat it,
Speaker 1: So bring them in on it, Engage them as an ally.
Speaker 1: And three, don't get swept up in group think. We
Speaker 1: are social creatures, and John showed us that there is
Speaker 1: a powerful urge within all of us to just get
Speaker 1: along and go along, keep your personal BS detector sharp,
Speaker 1: and don't assume that if it's going off, there's something
Speaker 1: wrong with you. A lot of folks are going along
Speaker 1: with all the BS in their lives just because they
Speaker 1: don't want to go against the group or ruffle any feathers.
Speaker 1: Come on, get out there and ruffle some feathers. And
Speaker 1: if you want in on the fight against b s,
Speaker 1: subscribe to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people
Speaker 1: speaking to your ears. Thanks to our production team Hannah Beal,
Speaker 1: Amanda Ginsburg, Andy Kim d s Moss Hailey, Pascalites, Parker Silzer,
Speaker 1: Basil Soaper, and me jehan Zulu. Calling Bullshit was created
Speaker 1: by co Collective and it's hosted by Me Time Monto.
Speaker 1: You thanks for listening.