2:00

where Trump and his people were all

2:03

denying the obvious reality

2:05

of what we were looking at, like

2:07

literally denying what was in front of all of our

2:09

faces. And that's where

2:12

I think this analysis becomes useful

2:14

because lying doesn't seem

2:16

like a sufficient description of what that

2:18

is. I associate

2:21

lying with an intent to

2:23

deceive the other person but

2:25

I don't think that Trump was

2:27

trying to deceive anyone. So I do

2:30

think that it's safe to say that stuff like that was

2:33

something other than mere

2:35

deception,

2:36

right? And I think that that's where

2:39

Frankfurt's theory of bullshit helps

2:41

sort of like articulate that intuition we

2:43

all have. Yeah, I always think of contrasting

2:46

the way that Trump lies with the way that George

2:48

W. Bush would lie. One of his

2:50

canonical lies

2:52

with that he said that the tax cuts

2:54

that he passed, like 75% of the

2:56

benefit went to small business owners.

2:59

And so it sounds like, oh, small business owners.

3:01

But the way that they're defining small

3:03

business owners is anyone who owns any

3:05

stake in a small business, which is basically if you own

3:08

stocks, you probably have some small businesses in there.

3:10

So it's basically just like a way of saying like most

3:12

of it went to rich people. Oftentimes

3:15

with Trump, you'd hear people say like, oh, politicians have

3:17

always lied. But I do think, yes, there's a

3:19

huge difference between the

3:22

way that Trump lies and the way that previous generations

3:24

of politicians have lied. I don't even know people who

3:27

lie the way that Trump does. Like

3:29

it's like, oh, sorry, you missed the concert last night. No, I was

3:31

there. You'd be like, what? One of the funny

3:34

sort of Trump dynamics, Trump isms

3:36

that I stumbled across when I was just like, what

3:39

were Trump's most bullshitty moments

3:42

was that people realized that he, when

3:44

asked about

3:45

his plans regarding a certain policy

3:48

item that he had no plans for, would

3:50

always say, in the next couple of weeks, you're gonna

3:52

see our plan for this. It's

3:54

a lot. But

3:56

I think what's interesting about

3:59

what Trump, Trump is doing, and I think this highlights

4:02

both a problem with Frankfurt's thesis and

4:05

a utility that it has. The

4:08

problem is that I don't think I have

4:10

identified a lot of real world bullshit

4:13

that is distinctly not a lie.

4:16

Trump's a good example because he's

4:17

bullshitting and lying

4:20

at the same time, I think. But

4:23

I do think that what's happening with

4:26

Trump, for example, is

4:28

that

4:28

his goal is not to

4:31

obfuscate the truth per se. His

4:34

goal is to advance

4:36

a narrative about himself. To

4:39

him, there's no material distinction between

4:41

what is true and what makes him feel

4:44

good. And so, yes,

4:46

he is lying at these various

4:49

points, but he is also

4:51

bullshitting. He is lying almost

4:53

by coincidence. Yeah, because you could say that when

4:55

Trump says, like, we fast-tracked production

4:58

of the COVID vaccine,

4:58

right, or like, minority

5:01

employment rates are higher than they've ever been.

5:03

Those are true statements, but they're kind of doing

5:06

the same thing as when he's

5:08

lying. No matter what he's saying, he is

5:11

always saying Donald Trump rules.

5:13

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So

5:15

the one that I kept thinking of actually was, remember in Nudge

5:18

part two, we talked about their medical malpractice

5:20

thing we're going to solve, medical malpractice. Yeah, yeah.

5:23

In that section, we read like a brief little excerpt

5:25

of this, but

5:26

I just want to read this again. So

5:28

they're talking about how medical malpractice lawsuits

5:31

contribute to healthcare costs. And they

5:33

say, consider this fact. Both

5:35

healthcare customers and taxpayers are now forced

5:38

to pay for the 85,000 medical malpractice lawsuits

5:41

that are filed each year. These lawsuits

5:43

cost a lot of money. Estimates range from $11

5:45

billion to $29 billion per year. Failure

5:48

to medical malpractice liability has been estimated

5:51

to account for 5 to 9% of

5:53

hospital expenditures. And if this is the

5:55

bullshit part, of course, these particular

5:57

figures are controversial and may be exaggerated.

6:00

But no one doubts that many billions

6:02

of dollars must be paid each year to

6:04

buy insurance and fend off liability This

6:07

is obviously very different than the Trump example But

6:10

I think this is like an unbelievably

6:12

corrosive form of bullshit that is fucking

6:14

everywhere Where you're basically

6:16

trying to illustrate a problem, right? The the central

6:19

thesis of this chapter of their book is

6:21

that malpractice lawsuits contribute to health

6:23

care costs

6:24

and they give you some numbers Right. It's a lot of billion. It's 29

6:26

billion. It's 5 to 9 percent and they immediately

6:28

just copy on it Yep to the point where it's meaningless.

6:31

They're like, well these numbers might not be true But

6:33

everybody knows that malpractice lawsuits

6:36

are a huge problem. Right? The focus is the narrative,

6:38

right? I think this is the phenomenon that I was pointing

6:40

out earlier and I think this is

6:43

the one circumstance

6:45

where Frankfurt's formulation is like spot-on

6:47

the making an argument in

6:50

this sort of like Roundabout way

6:52

where like you drop in a fact. Yeah, you

6:55

maybe do a little comparison You give

6:57

a caveat you shrug away

7:00

Anything that might

7:02

prove you wrong Yeah And you have

7:04

not like produced a logical thread

7:06

that can lead you to the conclusion that you're claiming

7:09

and yet you claim it You write a whole chapter

7:11

of your book about how malpractice lawsuits

7:13

are a major driver

7:14

of health care costs The

7:17

one place in the entire chapter you actually

7:19

try to support that you're like, hey these

7:21

numbers are probably exaggerated It's

7:23

a couple billion

7:24

out of a four trillion dollars of health care spending

7:26

economy Then

7:28

why the fuck did you write a chapter about this you can't at

7:31

the most basic level Right say that this should

7:33

be a priority There are other issues that

7:35

are more expensive than this where we do have evidence

7:37

that they are problems

7:39

It essentially invalidates the entire

7:41

fucking chapter. Why is this in your book? But

7:44

then they just like move on They're like, well anyway medical

7:46

malpractice dut-dut-dut. This is how we could do it But

7:48

like we see this all the time in

7:51

these articles and these

7:52

books We're just like anyway, nobody can

7:54

really say if this is a problem, but right?

7:56

It's a problem, right? Yeah,

7:58

that's a very common

7:59

form of bullshit.

8:03

And also aligns with my colloquial

8:06

understanding of what bullshit is, right? Like

8:09

when I read a Friedman op-ed or

8:11

whatever, my brain is just screaming

8:13

at me like, this is fucking bullshit. So

8:16

it's nice to have like a definition

8:19

that like provides a lens through which

8:21

you can look at these and be like, yes, I think

8:23

that this is actually technically bullshit.

8:25

What are your examples? You said you read some Maureen Dowd.

8:28

We'll get to the Dowd in a second. I have

8:29

one primary example here. And

8:33

this is a recent David Brooks column. As

8:36

soon as we were talking about bullshit, I was like, I

8:38

bet Brooks is where

8:40

this begins and ends for me. You opened

8:42

a new tab. You're like, Brooks, give it

8:44

to me, man. I tell you that I just like clicked on his name

8:46

on the New York Times website and just

8:48

like chose one of the first of the three

8:51

columns I saw. I

8:54

was gonna do that with Pamela Paul, but I was like, it's too

8:56

easy. It's too much

8:59

of a dunk fest if

8:59

I go back to that fucking well.

9:02

I do feel like it's mean how quickly

9:04

I went to the Brooks page and

9:07

how quickly I decided on

9:09

a piece. I was like, this works.

9:11

Like the first one I clicked on, I was like, damn,

9:13

that title looks like bullshit. Clicked

9:16

on it. I was like, oh yeah, here, this is it.

9:18

It's always a little dismaying when you have a negative

9:21

expectation about somebody and you're like, oh, I

9:23

shouldn't like assume the worst. And then it's just immediately

9:25

confirmed. You're like, no, my

9:28

cynicism was absolutely justified.

9:29

So this column by David

9:32

Brooks is called the power of American

9:34

capitalism. And I think

9:36

that

9:37

as we've sort of touched on, this style

9:39

of op-ed is quintessential bullshit

9:42

in my colloquial understanding

9:45

of the term. And also I think

9:48

in Frankfurt's formulation. So

9:50

I'm gonna send you the opening paragraph.

9:53

He says, the mighty Mississippi

9:56

rolls on. It's hard to say within Bizeline.

9:58

If you don't live near it. you might never think

10:01

of that wide powerful river. You

10:03

may associate it with old Mark Twain stories.

10:06

But

10:06

every day, 24-7, it rolls on.

10:09

American capitalism is kind of like that. You

10:12

can invent fables about how America

10:14

is in economic

10:15

decline. You can rail against neoliberalism.

10:19

But the American economy doesn't care. It

10:21

just keeps rolling on. How

10:24

did you find such a perfect example so

10:26

fucking quickly? I'm telling you, it was

10:28

the first thing I clicked.

10:30

What is he even fucking

10:32

doing here? It sounds like the Friedman

10:34

stuff. It just spin in your wheels. You

10:37

got to get a paragraph out of it. The

10:39

premise of this is that I think that's

10:41

supposed to be that the reader

10:43

forgot about the Mississippi River.

10:45

Yeah, we can all forget about the Mississippi

10:47

the same way we can all forget about capitalism, I

10:49

guess. So the premise of the piece is

10:52

that despite the haters and naysayers,

10:55

American capitalism

10:56

has continued to be a resounding success.

11:00

The primary data point here is that America's

11:02

GDP has continued to increase,

11:04

which is of course true. He points

11:07

out a handful of other facts.

11:09

He cites that recent Atlantic

11:11

piece by Jean

11:13

Twenge. I guess is how you pronounce

11:16

it. Oh my God, she's my example. Oh

11:18

shit. You're going to love it, Peter. I won't

11:20

dive in, but she says, of course, that households

11:22

headed by millennials are making more

11:25

money than previous generations did.

11:27

I love that we're fucking both finding exactly

11:29

the same bullshit. Millennials are fine. What's

11:31

everybody complaining about? Brooks says,

11:34

quote, I was especially struck by

11:36

how much America invests in its

11:38

own people. America spends roughly 37

11:41

percent more per student on

11:44

schooling than the average for

11:46

the Organization for Economic

11:48

Cooperation and Development, OECD,

11:51

a collection of mostly rich

11:53

peer nations. So, okay, so

11:55

he's sort of sprinkled some facts

11:57

or fact adjacent things into

11:59

the

11:59

Yeah, fact-ish.

12:00

And what they all have in common is that they

12:02

are like relatively disconnected

12:05

data points, lacking any context,

12:08

right? Like investing 37%

12:11

more in education than peer nations

12:13

might be a good thing, or it might be

12:15

a bad thing if it's not effective.

12:18

And by the way, there's reason to believe it's not effective.

12:20

Like our education results are pretty

12:22

middling.

12:22

We also spend way more on healthcare than other

12:25

countries, most of which does not actually produce

12:27

any fucking benefit. And all of these data points

12:29

are very disconnected from the actual critiques

12:32

of American capitalism that Brooks is implicitly

12:35

addressing, right? Which he never

12:37

tackles directly. He never says, this

12:39

writer makes this critique, and

12:42

here's why I think that's incorrect, right? He's

12:44

just sort of gesturing at a

12:47

left critique that you know is out there somewhere,

12:49

and then being like, but GDP

12:51

is high. But critics of

12:54

the neoliberal order are not saying that GDP

12:56

is declining. They're talking about social

12:58

mobility and inequality and economic

13:01

dislocation. And Brooks is

13:03

like implicitly addressing these broad

13:05

and nuanced critiques, but by

13:07

throwing like a small handful

13:10

of questionably relevant data points

13:13

out there as if they were sufficient to debunk

13:15

those critiques, and then declaring

13:18

victory.

13:18

No one wants us to just

13:20

spend more on education with

13:23

no regard to how we spend it. I've

13:25

been shoveling 45% more

13:28

money into the furnace than every other

13:30

nation. This is where I think that

13:32

like Frankfurt really is

13:34

able to articulate something

13:37

that I wouldn't have quite put

13:39

that way without him. He's

13:41

not quite lying, but his

13:43

focus is not meaningfully on

13:45

the truth. I also think it's worth pointing

13:47

out because I think a lot of people enter into

13:50

the project of like

13:51

writing a piece or making a podcast

13:53

with like, I'm going to defend my point of view.

13:56

There are people who do that and then engage

13:59

with the other people.

13:59

other critiques in

14:02

good faith, they tackle the harder

14:04

parts of those critiques, right? And

14:07

really try to make the case.

14:09

And I think that's distinct from bullshit

14:12

too.

14:12

I mean, not to get meta, but I think that's

14:14

kind of what we're trying to do on this show.

14:17

I think we were pretty fair to David Brooks in

14:19

our David Brooks episode. I was as nice as I

14:21

could be. Yeah, we only made one research assistant

14:24

joke. That's right. I feel like that's

14:26

generous. It was subtle that people tried

14:28

to tell us about the research assistant's

14:30

story. Did you know? I know.

14:33

When people were like, did you know? We're like, guys. That's

14:35

why I made an extremely weird out of context

14:38

reference to a research assistant, guys. We

14:40

know. It was just a coincidence

14:43

that you happened to mention

14:44

that. I have a Maureen

14:47

Dowd example. She's like, man,

14:49

in the same way, you know, there's

14:51

that like lie tracker of Trump's

14:53

and it's up to like 1200 lies or something.

14:55

Like at this point, it would be easier to just count the fucking

14:57

things he says that are true. Like that would

15:00

be a more efficient process with Maureen Dowd.

15:02

It's like, what isn't bullshit? Right. Like

15:05

I try to get through her columns to like make fun of them

15:07

on Twitter and like I can't even fucking do it. I'm

15:09

like,

15:09

there's nothing here. Like I can't I

15:12

can't say anything about this because it's just fucking

15:14

vapor. No, she is an

15:16

enormous victory for

15:19

the feminists. Speaking

15:22

of problematic comparisons. No, no,

15:25

no. No, no. Just listen. You're

15:27

going to get there. Take take

15:30

me there, Peter. Everyone always says when

15:32

we get a really incompetent

15:35

woman in these positions,

15:37

that will be a victory for feminism.

15:39

Right. Like it's not just that you need

15:41

to have successful female politicians.

15:44

It's like they should be bumbling

15:46

fools like the guys are. And that

15:48

will be a sign of

15:49

progress. In journalism,

15:51

we are to some degree there or at least

15:53

Maureen Dowd has a foothold. Yeah. There's

15:56

this piece from January titled

15:58

Nancy Pelosi. liberated

16:00

and loving it. Oh my God. And

16:03

it's about Nancy

16:06

Pelosi's transition from being

16:09

the speaker of the house to being a regular

16:12

house member in the minority. Okay.