THINK IN ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE Think back to philosopher Harry Frankfurt’s distinction between bullshit and lies. Lies are designed to lead away from the truth; bullshit is produced with a gross indifference to the truth. This definition gives us a considerable advantage when trying to spot bullshit. Well-crafted lies will be plausible, whereas a lot of bullshit will be ridiculous even on the surface. When people use bullshit numbers to support their arguments, they are often so far off that we can spot the bullshit by intuition and refute it without much research.
