a neurodivergent guide to spotting bullshit
5 interlocking philosophical principles
This article was sparked by reading The Autistic Burnout Project article, The Cost of “Innovation” At My Child’s School Is Exploitation. This bit stood out,
When Chris Lehman the founding principal […] speaks about education, the buzzwords flow seamlessly: inquiry-driven, project-based, student-agency.
He’s an innovator who talks like I think.
And this image floated into my head of this charismatic man, and I could sense the kinds of words he would use, and then the red alerts went of, and I went, oh I know what that is, that’s bullshit. And then I thought, how do I know so clearly it’s bullshit? What gives it away?
I have over time learned how to spot bullshit. I do not rely on intuition, instead I do it through a careful reading of language.
Last year I needed a structural survey to produce drawings for a renovation which needed structural steels to be put in. I searched a review site, and then tried a few people with decent ratings. One of them rang back. He seemed to be knowledgeable and confident. About 5 to 10 minutes into the conversation, he was describing how he worked in an office with other surveyors, and followed it up with this phrase, “With me you get the brains, not the beauty!”
It was intended to be humorous, but for me it is an immediate ‘red flag’. To cut a long story short, he ended up producing drawings which were unsuitable, and would have breached building regulations. It could of cost me thousands of pounds if I had not been on top of it.
My ability to predict that his claim of being ‘the brains’ were bullshit come from a careful reading of language, it did not come from intuition. In fact I found him quite personable, the kind of person I would be happy to have as a casual acquaintance.
My reading of language is based upon foundational principles which I have developed from reading and observation over time. I also find these principles useful for spotting bullshit.
Principle #1 language is purposeful
This seems obvious right? People generally don’t say things for no reason, we say things on purpose, usually because we want something to happen.
Speech Act Theory developed by JL Austin and his student John Searle created a philosophical framework around this principle. Their big idea was that,
Words not only described things, they could also do things. Just by saying them, you could change the social reality of the person you are talking to.
For instance when the vicar declares, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” the intention is to change not only the nature of the relationship between two people, but also their relationship to other people and society in general.
“With me you get the brains” is something Austin would call perlocutionary, which is a fancy way of saying that the phrase achieves its effects indirectly. My surveyor is trying to persuade me of his superior intellect through the use of a joke.
Principle #2 the speaker is also the listener
It’s sort of obvious if you are speaking then you can also hear yourself, but this principle goes a bit beyond this to propose that you are in fact often also addressing yourself, even when you are talking to another person.
This kind of understanding becomes apparent in the therapy room, when people reflect on the impact of hearing themselves talk. Listening to yourself is at least as important as your therapist listening to you.
This principle is closely related to Linguistic Relativity, or the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is the idea that your thinking is influenced by the structure of language. It is a principle employed in the therapy room, where your therapist might reframe language, for example can’t might be re-worded to won’t to alter the emphasis.
In my example, is it me that’s being reassured? Or is my surveyor in fact reassuring himself? This is especially pertinent, because the ‘joke’ was volunteered. I wasn’t asking about his competence – I had assumed he was competent, I was asking about how his company was organised.
This principle also explains the common observation that bullshitters can end up believing their own bullshit.
Principle #3 communication implies uncertainty
People generally do not feel the need to communicate something which they regard as obvious. In fact ‘pointing out the obvious’ will often invoke a negative response and may even acquire it’s own language, such as ‘mansplaining’. Neurodivergent people can also experience stigma when they ask about social situations which neurotypical people regard as obvious, getting responses such as “you can just tell,” or “you should know.”
So it follows that communication is generally used when there is doubt or uncertainty. For example, I am telling you about bullshit because I think you don’t already know the thing I am telling you, and…
I am also telling myself, because writing helps me assemble my thinking, and this is at least as important to me, as writing something useful for other people, and...
All the while I am writing this, I am wondering if my ideas are correct, is there an error in my thinking somewhere?
So putting the first 3 principles together my surveyor says he is ‘the brains’ to persuade not only me, but also himself, and he does so because he has doubts about his competence – typically this kind of self-doubt is out of the person’s awareness; instead it reveals itself in how the person uses language. Bullshit not only hides doubt from others it also masks it from the self.
Principle #4 idealised statements are the norm
For instance if you ask me if I am a kind person, I would have to say no, not because I can not show kindness, but because I am not always kind. I can also be pretty selfish, and I have examples where my actions have been distinctly unkind. So how can I be a kind person if I can do unkind things?
This type of insight is very typical for many neurodivergent people, and is an example of bottom-up processing. However neurotypical people will often say they are kind, caring or a good person. The reason is primarily social, because these qualities are socially desirable, so possessing them means you are more likely to be accepted by others. A commonly used phrase is, “I want to be seen to be a good person,” which begs the question, “What kind of person are you when no one is looking?”
Another highly prized social attribute is intelligence, hence my surveyor’s ‘joke’ about being ‘the brains’.
A key feature of an idealised statement is that they are one-dimensional – they do not come with caveats or qualifying elements. For instance “I am a kind person” is quite a different statement from “I try to be a kind person.” The second statement explicitly acknowledges principle #3 communication implies uncertainty.
A ‘good rule of thumb’ is to assume that the more emphasis a person puts into an idealised statement, the more likely it is to be bullshit. Generally speaking I assume idealised statements are bullshit until proven otherwise. If someone announces they are honest person, I am on the look out for them to be deceitful, an idea which comes from principles #1 and #3 language is purposeful and communication implies uncertainty.
Principle #5 detail defeats bullshit
Bullshit is often used to disguise an inability to deal with detail – summed up in the idiom, “You might be able to talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” Consequently, bullshit falls apart when you focus in on detail; usually you get more bullshit. Frequent use of superlatives, slogans, and circular reasoning are some key features.
I will enquire about detail when I need to appraise how much I can trust someone, especially where I am reliant on what they are offering, like my surveyor. In this case my enquiry about the office my surveyor worked in elicited the bullshit – he is answering a question I haven’t asked, as well as delivering a put down of his colleagues.
One of the places you will frequently encounter bullshit is in accessing institutions, such as schools and colleges where you can encounter language like this, “Our mission is to create inspiring futures, exceptional character, and academic excellence.” Note how it illustrates principle #4 idealised language is the norm, with its lack of qualifying elements, and emphasis on superlatives, such as ‘exceptional’ and ‘excellence’ – you can be pretty confident that this statement is bullshit. The ‘on the ground’ reality of this educational setting is likely to be quite different from the seemingly ‘rosie’ description
If you ask what ‘academic excellence’ means, you may well hear things like: “We offer our students a unique and exceptional education;” “Staff are passionate about developing students academic progress;” “Committed to careful monitoring;” “We are ambitious about our pupil’s learning.”
Without additional detail, these phrases are essentially meaningless. What for instance, is a ‘unique education’; don’t schools have to follow a curriculum? What about ‘careful monitoring’, what is that exactly? The phrases drift into hyperbole and read more like slogans than a description of a school. There is also circular reasoning – for example ‘being ambitious about learning’ is a reformulation of ‘our mission is to create academic excellence’; it’s not saying anything new.
As a question, I personally like, “Can you tell me some more about that?” Another is “Can you tell me what that looks like?” Both these questions are asking for more detail, and are typically less challenging than more direct questions. They are likely to lead to more dialogue, because of the open ended nature of the question. In the response, I am looking for statements which fill in the what, how, who and where. If I get hyperbole, slogans, and circular thinking, then I know from principle #4 idealisation is the norm, the actual situation is extremely unlikely to match the ‘glowing’ descriptions.
The fisherman’s tale
A common bullshit strategy is the ‘fisherman’s tale’; a metaphor for an unbelievable story. People commonly relay personal experiences in the form of illustrative stories, which they typically exaggerate in some way. These stories are also used to make points or to persuade, principle #1 language is purposeful. For instance, my surveyor launches into a story about how he managed to circumvent building control. His story contains cleverness and conveys the impression that he is someone with inside knowledge. In the story, he and the building inspector are aware that he has sidestepped the rules but he is let off because of his insider status. My surveyor tells this story around 5 minutes after I tell him I want ‘everything done by the book’.
These kinds of stories are common in many professions. They are usually apocryphal, having a limited factual basis. They are best thought of as a morality story, which illustrates valued attributes or qualities. For example, ‘the resilient therapist who sits with the silent client’, is a very common story of this type in my profession. Trainers will also typically make frequent use of them. While they are usually based on truth, they become distorted and often personalised over time, with the person telling it making themselves the ‘hero’ of the story.
What’s interesting about them from the perspective of spotting bullshit, is how they are inserted into the conversation. To my bottom-up processing mind, they seem out of place. So for instance I have come to buy a car, and instead of telling me about the car, they have decided to open the conversation with how they are an ex-police officer. My surveyor does something similar with his story, instead of reassuring me, he goes on to tell me an ‘insider story’. The experience of it being out of place is useful – it flags it for later analysis and understanding.
The other importance of these stories, is that without meaning to, the person will often reveal themself. In my surveyor’s case he has told me that he values not following rules and taking shortcuts, which is pretty much what happened. In the salesman’s case, I wondered why he wasn’t still a ‘detective inspector’, because becoming a car salesman seemed like something of a come down.
Out in the real world
What I have described is not used in real time, it’s used to analyse conversations at a later stage. Instead, I am tracking pieces of conversation which seemed to stand out, be unusual, or unexpected in some way. The “with me you get the brains” comment stood out because it’s not something people who have expertise typically say. Their expertise is normally assumed, so there is no need to mention it, which is principle #3 communication implies uncertainty.
Other things which stand out, are overuse of superlatives, using absolute quantifiers such as always and never, slogans, reasoning which doesn’t make sense, offering information which wasn’t asked for or seems unnecessary. Things like these will flag for later analysis. One strategy I employ, is no immediate decisions. I have a rule to say, “I need to think about it.” This gives me time to carefully think through things which have flagged up, before I decide.
A strategy which can be useful is ‘sound-boarding’ – bouncing your thoughts off another person by talking through your experience with them. This can help order your thinking, and solidify your thoughts about the encounter, as well as get additional input.
As a final note, I grew up amongst a family who were prize bullshitters, nothing was straightforward, or as it seems, almost everything was a game. I would spend many hours sitting with my mother, who was probably autistic, and ‘people whisper’ – analyse in detail people’s motives and behaviour. So I have been thinking this way for a long time, it’s not just something I have learned from being a therapist.
The reality is that it’s really easy to get taken in by bullshit, and so what I am really trying to say, is if you have been taken in, be kind to yourself, you won’t be alone. Have I been taken in by bullshit? Yes I have, but my main problem is realising something was off, but still going along with it. Often we do know something is not right, but instead explain it away, or don’t trust ourselves, and I would argue listening to that ‘gut feeling’ which you can’t quite explain yet, is the real take away from this article.
photo by David Underland on Unsplash