How To Use Bullshit Detector??
June 02, 2021, by Psychosexology W/ Gayatri
I'm sure there might be times when you get the gut feeling that someone is cheating on you, or lying to you or manipulating you. But, as you are not sure, you just let it go and choose to go with the flow. But, when things go wrong, you be like, "i wish i could have some kind of detector to find out the bullshit". So, what if I tell you, that you already have a detector???? Yes, you heard me right. We humans have bullshit detector but, many of us don't really know how to use it. So, what exactly a bullshit and bullshit detector??
Bullshit 'BS' is usually defined as inventions made in ignorance of the facts, where the primary goal is to protect oneself. You can say someone is bullshitting you, when someone try to persuade you or make you admire them by saying things that are not true. The aim of BS isn’t to harm another person, although that often happens collaterally. But, you need to understand that there is often a clear psychological need motivating every lie. So, even if someone doesn't really wanna hurt you, they still can lie to get something from you and they are afraid that they won't get it if you get to know the truth. There are various reasons people can lie. Everyone has their weakness. When fear and greed take control of our brain, we tend to lie. But, then if you know how to use your inner bullshit detector, you can use it to save yourself from bullshit people throws at you. So, what is bullshit detector???
"Bullshit Detector" as the name suggests, it is an instrument which can help you to detect crap and shit people going to throw at you and thus you can save yourself. It's a hypothetical, mental device that represents a person's ability to detect deception, fraud, dishonesty, corruption, insincerity, hypocrisy and falsity in others. People with bullshit detector knows when someone is lying to them. And such people don't believe anyone blindly and without running background check or doing some analysis about something. Such people are highly intelligent and it's very difficult to trick or manipulate them and getting their agreement. But, disagreeing with someone or something doesn't mean you have a "bullshit detector". A lot of people think that they have bullshit detector and they are very good at finding out shit, only because they don't get agree easily, or dislike things or come up with opinions about everything. But, in reality, thses people are the ones who easily get tricked cause, they underestimate other's ability to cheat them and believe that they will never get tricked. But, these are the people who get bullshitted on and still don't accept the reality that someone bullshitted them as they think they are over smart and they have bullshit detector. Some people do have bullshit detector. Even you might have it. But, your detector goes of the radar when you talk with specific people. So, what to do then?? How to find out bullshit?? How you can develop bullshit detector??? To know the answers, you'll have to go back in time and need to understand the Skepticism.
"Certainty can cripple your wisdom; skepticism can help you find new answers."
Skepticism has derived from Greek word "skepsis" which means investigation. It's an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity either in general or toward a particular object. You will have to add doubt to everything you hear. Socrates, the father of western wisdom, based his philosophy around the recognition, and expectation, of ignorance. Be like Socrates: assume people are unaware of their own ignorance (including yourself) and politely, warmly, probe to sort out the difference. The opposite to the need for closure is skepticism. Rather than taking the first answer for real, you challenge the truth. You don’t let irrational fear dictate your answers. Trying to find an answer is not wrong, being blinded by the need for quick resolution is the problem. But, nowadays, everyone wants quick solutions and quick results. So, rather than analyzing things people just blindly turst what they see and hear rather than finding out what is actually hidden behind it. Thus, people get played. Unless and until you develop bullshit detector, you can't understand the actual game. Here is how you can develop detection tool.
Ask yourself,
How do you know, what you know??
Whenever someone comes to you with some idea or suggestion, take a pause, and try to know actual reasons and find out why you should say yes or no to it and ask the person how do they know what they know. When you ask “how do you know what you know?” often they can’t answer quickly. Use time and pressure as a tool. When people are under pressure and get challenged, they feel insecure and scared and may come up with some illogical answers. Which in turn can give you some hints about their actual intentions and why they were hiding what they were hiding. Whenever someone is bullshitting you, remember, they're jusy making things up thinking that they can cheat on you and manipulate you easily.
Counter argument
When you ask to explain things, and ask reasons and ask for counter argument, they will either back up from their position or will try to come up with some nonsense stuff or some another tricks, but if you know, how to use your detector very well, you can even predict their next steps and understand what they actully want to do.
Be patient and confident
You will have to develop critical thinking and that will only happen when you are ready to do some struggle and research. But, most of us, throw up our hands and say, "it's too much to think about". Using bullshit detector takes a lot of patience and confidence, the moment you loose both, you are on the way to get bullshitted on. The bet is that if you don’t understand what they’re talking about, you’ll feel stupid, or distracted, and give in to the appearance of their superior knowledge. To withstand BS you have to have an inner core of self-reliance, holding on to your doubts longer.
How strong is the evidence??
When someone come up with evidences, check out the reliability and validity of evidences and how strong those evidences are. What are the intentions behind it??? What is the source behind it??
Consider multiple perspectives
Too find out actual intentions and what someone is actually trying to hide, it's very important to be able to think from different persepctives. This is the only way you can predict different possibilites of what can happen.
Process of detecting your inner bullshit detector and developing it, can be frustrating, exhausting. But, once you get it, there is no way you can get played.
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