Bullshit Compendium

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Association fallacy

I see this fallacy used all the time in arguments on the internet.

The association fallacy means this: "In your group, X person does/believes Y. Therefore, your group does/believes Y."

Example: "One person in the Republican party discriminates based on race. Therefore, all Republicans discriminate based on race." 

The fallacy seems obvious, but some people actually commit it. It actually happens quite frequently. I see the fallacy occur often in debates where the two sides begin to refer to the opposition as "they" or "the opposition." The other side of the debate seems to become this singular hivemind mass, rather than a collection of unique individuals with varying beliefs. 

So what happens in practice, when this fallacy occurs, is one supporter of one side in a debate says something. The other side of the debate jumps on this and says "hey, look, guys, now they think/do/believe X!" 

I see this happen over and over. 

I would say that, at best, being associated with someone or something makes it slightly more probable that you may also do/believe something, but that is far from saying that you positively do do/believe something. 

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You are what you eat

*Note: This isn't bullshit.

Suppose a boy is raised from birth to read only the works of Shakespeare. As an adult, he will behave like and speak like a Shakespeare character. He will have an odd vocabulary and an odd manner of speaking, relative to modern standards. Take this other scenario: suppose a girl from birth does nothing but read the works of Plato. Naturally, her behavior will reflect that those works. 

Its from these scenarios that I hypothesize that a person's output is the result of his or her inputs. What a person read, watches, hears, etc, has a direct effect on his or her thoughts, and therefore his or her actions.

I believe the world rewards unique minds and specialization. Therefore, if you want to achieve success, you should restrict your inputs to things that will benefit you and produce the kind of mind that you want.

For example, suppose you want to be smarter. Then only read the works of great minds. 

The more average or normal you are, the more likely it is that your result in life will be average or normal. 

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Math textbooks

A math, statistics, or physics book that provides a formula without explaining why that formula is the way it is or how it is derived... is bullshit. What I mean is when a textbook presents a particular problem, and instead of providing an intuitive explanation of how to solve that problem, all it does it provide a formula and say, "All you got to do is plug in the inputs to the formula and you got your answer!" I suppose, on the positive side, that it gives the over-achieving students an opportunity to puzzle over the formula and figure it out themselves, which is a very useful educational exercise for them. But the objective is to teach -- ideally, even the under-achievers. And for the average student, being given just a formula forces him or her to learn the formula by rote memory. He learns very little and he is very likely to forget the formula after the semester is over. 

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Stochastic

Using the word "stochastic" in a book directed towards the layman, and without any mathematical implications, is pretentious bullshit. The word "probabilistic" is better in most cases.