Top 20 BS Issues
The Irrational World Blog

From commercialism to hippy BS there is so much falseness..
Bollocks, bull, BS

I like many things music, books etc, others are not to my taste , but the vast majority of stuff is bullshit
- I like many things with imagination, but I don't like things which aren't reality being made out to be real like many mens accounts of their sex life.
- grey data i.e. material sourced from newspaper reports and activists is allowed to be included in the official IPCC reports
- I'm a bloody good liar, but actually I almost never lie I tell the truth all the time, but I think I must be a rarity.

Top 20 BS Issues
1a. The Need To Believe a - The human habit of refusing to accept uncertainty "I don't know" See about the The Need To Believe
1b. 2+2=6 joining the dots even when there is nothing there eg seeing the face of Jesus in the wallpaper, trying to fill in the gaps with religion, psychic world
2. Hoax world created by FAKE VALUES in society : building up false expectations that every person will have a nuclear family, there are no gay people, that everyone is fertile, that more education makes you more money and that brings more happiness, that sex with a virgin is good ... religion, paranormal etc. are all part of theis hoax world
3. Hoax world created by continual distortion in the media ..from love is so easy in movies , to capital city media celebrity stuff in newspapers MMR ..building false perspective from the way that media ignores some stories but bangs on about others, leading to , stranger danger
Thinking error ... not accepting you can't prove a negative e.g. you can't prove Santa Claus of God doesn't exist
Gamblers fallacy if a fair coin is tossed repeatedly and tails comes up a larger number of times than is expected, a gambler may incorrectly believe that this means that heads is more likely in future tosses
large number confusion 1500 deaths in 50m people over 50 years as against a risk of 1 in 100 people dying per year, or that in really large sets of data bizarre coincidences happen.
rushing to assume cause & effect versus unrelated coincidence or B causes A not A causes B.. related to 1. the brains habit of joining the dots to assume correlation means causation

From commercialism to hippy BS there is so much falseness..
Black and White Thinking failure to accept complexity that we live in a full colour world..simplistic statements like "it's all about oil, now give me another beer"
nationalism and that some countries are better that others , when in reality it's the rich people oppressing the poor
"The Americans".. even if we accept they meant "US government" what about "The Russian", "The Chinese" governments ?
(there are no "the Americans, just 300 million individuals)
large number confusion ..e.g MMR, nuclear, bird flu
climate panic ..when the science is not clear
windmills ..the maths doesn't work
following the crowd, mob or herd mentality
confirmation bias
Bubble World There is only one reality, but there are many bubble worlds, people live in a bubble world with no true perspective on the real world
Modern tricks.. like Cameron's talk of cuts which don't happen for 3 years, Ryanair stuff, reality TV, airbrushing, following the crowd, mob or herd mentality
sport winner illusion ..your team will not win the cup ..why cos there are 30 teams so 29 will lose
some irrational things & politics are like one Russian doll inside another, just when U think U understand a new backstory emerges
Immediacy is the enemy of Truth These days press reports have to be written in 30 minutes, by the time people have thought it over & enlightenments evolved..the press has moved on
Easier to be an ANTI than a constructor - Newspapers by nature are negative, protestors are anti everything - constructive positive solutions are more difficult

2 big words

- context - is the use right in this circumstance ?
- perspective - is it a big thing or a small thing ?

- The BS in society is closely linked to Common errors in reasoning : see my page about reasoning

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