 During the schism of 1378, there were three men who claimed total control over the Catholic Church? Sounds like a lot of papal bull. Everybody makes mistakes. For getting appointments, burning dinner, losing paperwork, these are the little annoyances of which life is made. But recently I've been fascinated by big, unforced errors. Catastrophes that any five-year-old could predict, but required some intelligent person or people very deliberately choosing every wrong turn necessary to arrive at the worst possible outcome. Here, let's watch a couple. I wanted to show you guys a quick cool feature on this lens. It's got this lock mode that if you just... Right inside of your cake mix. This is sugar-free cherry coke. It would be easy to lump these in with the forehead slapping mistakes we usually make, but I feel like there's something special about how hard you'd have to work to not see disaster coming. This is not a face of discovery. It's a face of sober acceptance, as though some shiny facade has been ripped away, leaving chocolate cake batter everywhere. If you ask philosopher Leslie Howe, that's more or less what's happening here. What sets these sorts of errors apart from the normal run-of-the-mill kind? They aren't simple miscalculations or bad reasoning from false premises or lapses in memory. They're errors of self-bullshit. We've talked a little about the Harry Frankfurt definition of bullshit, a kind of speech that isn't really true, but it isn't really lying either. It's some weird third thing that's wholly unconcerned with the actual truth or falsehood of what's being stated. Bullshit has received a fair amount of attention in the philosophical literature since Frankfurt's first treatise on the subject, and Howe's exceptional paper asks an insightful question. What does it mean for someone to buy their own bullshit? Frankfurt suggested that the defining feature of bullshit is how the intent of a bullshit or speech isn't aligned with or against the truth, which is a decent observation, but Howe focuses more on the role bullshit plays in conversation, what it does. When people bullshit, they might say true or false things, but if their audience takes those statements as literally true or false, the bullshitter has sort of failed. That's because the point of bullshit isn't to communicate information. It's a gambit to shift the conversation's standards to a state where truth and falsehood are irrelevant. Like, say someone asks if I know where Bolivia is, and I say something like, man, that's a pretty map, isn't it? Have you ever just sat back and stared at it and thought about all of the places you haven't gone? I've been meaning to visit Japan for ages, but you know, with COVID and everything. This is bullshit as evasion. It's pretty clear that I'm stalling or trying to redirect the conversation away from the question that might reveal how little geography I know. On the other hand, I might say something like, ah, yes, you will find Bolivia at the nexus of the geopolitical struggle between economic forces that may dictate our future. Okay, that might be true, or not. Where is that exactly? This is bullshit in the form of obfuscation, blurring the lines between what counts as a satisfactory answer to the question and the facts that actually pertain to that answer. In both cases, I'm trying to save face, to get the question asked her to cut me some slack for not knowing where Bolivia is, to reevaluate the ultimate importance of the facts in light of my sheer charisma. But bullshitters don't just try to convince other people that they're smarter, wiser, more virtuous, or more rational than the facts might warrant. They may also try to convince themselves, and bullshit can be just as effective when directed inward. Say that I have good reasons to believe that I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to geography, but I want to believe that I'm a smart and well-informed guy. So long as I never have to stare directly at the evidence held right up next to my belief, I can acknowledge one at a time whenever the situation calls for it, and whenever I might be put in the awkward position of reconciling them, bullshit can be a useful tool for maintaining my delusion by minimizing the importance of the evidence. Oh, whatever, that's just rote memorization. Anyone can do that. I probably pointed at Africa because I was thinking of Botswana or something. Anyways, the important part isn't the where, it's the why. Facts about the world can get caught up in that process, too. If the way I want to think about myself would be challenged by history, science, or simple observation, I might just bullshit myself about that, too. The goal is more or less the same as the goal of bullshitting others, to dismantle and replace the goalposts of evidence and consistency with a more forgiving standard of assent. Nothing has to follow from the facts. Nothing has to fit with all the other beliefs. So long as everyone concedes to play along, I don't have to reconcile any conflict, internal or external. Replacing the normal commitments of rational discourse with a standard of mere assent means a lot of stuff that doesn't really pertain to the quality of claims suddenly becomes the fulcrum on which their evaluation turns, which can get dicey. Calling bullshit on someone can be socially risky, in ways that vary significantly with things like power and prestige. A big shot can say just about any nonsense with impunity, confident that anyone with less clout, who might not buy their bullshit, would have to put a lot on the line to hold them accountable to the facts for even a brief moment. With enough power, dictating what people should believe about the world becomes as simple as keeping up a steady stream of bullshit. Howe cites an argument by Jonathan Lear that this dynamic can make the act of bullshitting a sort of flex, a brazen display of the power of the speaker. I can say the wildest stuff you've ever heard in your life, and you're not going to say a damn thing about it, are you? If powerful people direct their bullshit inward, there's almost no check that can be exercised on their delusions. Almost. This is where we get back to our hilarious unforced errors. As I am all too aware, making a video like this for the internet is stepping into the role of an expert, playing a part where I'm confidently communicating my hard-won knowledge to others, and playing that role, I run the risk of buying my own bullshit, or convincing others to. The person who was holding the camera for the cake batter disaster must have had some misgivings about how Marie Knight was going about her demonstration, but they played along. Marie slipped into the role of someone who's had a brilliant idea about how to bake a cake without a mixing bowl. All the warning signs she might have received, that using power tools can be risky, that she hadn't really tried it out before, that little bit of force she had to use to get the mixer into the box, they all conflict with that narrative. But the show must go on, and when you're playing the part of a viral baking star, there's no space in the bullshit for second-guessing. As powerful as belief can be, we are still material beings living in a world governed by physical rules. We have bodies made of meat. At the end of the day, we can all assent to someone's bullshit, and reality will still come crashing in like the world's most unwelcome Kool-Aid man. If you remember our discussion in episode 220, there are echoes of Purse's pragmaticism here. There are numerous ways to escape the uncomfortable and paralyzing state of doubt and uncertainty, but most of them are unstable, prone to returning us to that state when they lead us to a less than satisfactory outcome. Tenaciously asserting that something is the case, waving away any questions of evidence or consistency, and just waiting for a grudging nod, can grant a temporary respite. But although bullshit can delay that confrontation with the material world, it can't hold it off forever, and we're left washing cake batter out of our hair afterward. Do you think Howe's account of self-bullshit helps to explain how otherwise savvy people can do painfully dumb things? How much bullshit do you think I'm on right now? Please, leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to subscribe while I share, and don't stop thunkin'.