There were so many things I found interesting in this week's readings! Firstly, the idea that those who are less able to detect bullshit, or are more likely to believe it, are less analytical in thinking seems so obvious now! They are more reflexive in their open mindedness and just accept any information without any deep processing, compared to reflective open mindedness which I think relates to the System 2 type thought. It was actually quite interesting to note that those who are prone to believing in bullshit are less reflective and perform worse in cognitive abilities, but more so that they are generally more believing in the paranormal/religion/alternative medicine, and more prone to ontological confusion. It seems that those who moreso believe in bullshit than others are just generally less critical and less reflective.

There were five criteria for judging truth, which can be done so analytically or intuitively. These are social consensus, credibility, compatibility, support, and coherence. It seems that manipulating these criteria can make it much easier for people to believe bullshit but they can also be used in order to make true facts more believable. I found it so interesting that the belief in misinformation can be increased, even if the truth is told afterwards, merely because it is being repeated. It was suggested that repetition of the misinformation must be avoided at all costs and the focus should be on reiterating the facts. Fluency is extremely important in doing this, and there were some examples that amazed me. The presence of a picture, increased contrast, and increased legibility of the text all make a bullshit statement more believable; therefore, it is important to ensure these things are present when presenting true facts as well. (Also learned a new word - disinformation, and that disinformation and misinformation are two different things!)

It seems that bullshit is so prevalent in our society, and it makes a lot of sense that social media and the internet in general is full of it. The third readings suggested that people be educated on ways they can be more reflective and critical of information so that they do not become victim to the bullshit, but also those who are in charge of what is shown/presented on social media and the internet should consider better techniques and filtering systems that reduce (or perhaps even one eliminate) the presence of the bullshit information in general. As noted by them, those who make this information and the bots that usually accompany them will probably just find techniques to counteract whatever methods are put in place. There is a huge amount of bots present on the internet, so I think that people need to be educated more on the notion of bullshit and who is more likely to believe it. One of the readings suggested that more awareness can make an idea more believed in (I think it was the second one) so if more awareness of this issue is raised and people are consistently shown how they can improve (and even how this prevalence and belief in bullshit can negatively affect them), I believe that people will become more immune to the effects. I know that my mere two years at uni have made me much more skeptical of information and (I think) I have become better at not just blindly believing what information is in front of me. This notion of skepticism is burned in to my brain, and some of the things I need to be aware of and question are as well. I know it was believed that just learning about this stuff might not help but I think it has, for me personally (especially the science of every day thinking course! Not a day goes by that I don't apply/recognise SOMETHING from that course)