207. John Petrocelli — The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit

The Michael Shermer Show

Michael Shermer

Dialogue, Science, Reason, Michaelshermer, Natural Sciences, Skeptic

4.4 • 921 Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2021

⏱️ 96 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bullshit is the foundation of contaminated thinking and bad decisions that leads to health consequences, financial losses, legal consequences, broken relationships, and wasted time and resources. No matter how smart we believe ourselves to be, we’re all susceptible to bullshit — and we all engage in it. While we may brush it off as harmless marketing sales speak or as humorous, embellished claims, it’s actually much more dangerous and insidious. It’s how Bernie Madoff successfully swindled billions of dollars from even the most experienced financial experts with his Ponzi scheme. In episode # 207, Michael Shermer speaks with experimental social psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Wake Forest University, John Petrocelli about his research that examines the causes and consequences of bullshit and bullshitting in the way of better understanding and improving bullshit detection and disposal. Petrocelli provides invaluable strategies not only to recognize and protect yourself from everyday bullshit, but to accept your own lack of knowledge about subjects and avoid engaging in bullshit just for societal conformity.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Michael Shurmer Show.
0:08.0	Welcome to the Michael Shurmer Show.
0:10.0	I'm your host. Michael Shurmer, my guest today is John Petruchelli. He is an experimental
0:16.4	social psychologist and professor of psychology at Wake Forest University. His research
0:22.3	examines the causes and consequences of
0:24.6	BS and BSing in a way of better understanding and improving BS detection
0:30.3	and disposal. Oh I've got to introduce this book.
0:33.0	It's called The Life Changing Science of detecting bullshit.
0:36.9	So bullshit, believe it or not, it's now a technical, scientific, scholarly field of study study and it's important because we're surrounded by bullshit
0:47.2	Petruchelli's research contributions also include attitudes and persuasion
0:51.9	and the intersections of counterfactual thinking with learning, memory, and decision-making.
0:57.0	His research has appeared in the top journals of his field, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
1:04.2	Petruchelli also serves as an associate editor of Personality and Social Psychology
1:09.9	Bulletin.
1:10.9	Well, we cover a lot of topics obviously the recent turn of in the last four or five years of this kind of increase in bullshitting.
1:19.0	So bullshitting is different than lying. The liars know what the truth is and they're
1:23.7	intentionally distorting it. Bullshitters are doing something different. And so
1:27.8	John and I talk about the you know the difference
1:35.0	there, what the role, purpose of bullshit is, the effects it it has on people.
1:36.0	We start off talking about magic and the difference between magicians and so-called
1:41.0	psychics, and then we enter into you know much more serious topics of you know how do we know what anything is true
1:48.2	What's the basis of reliable knowledge and and belief in anything.
	...

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