Another Year of Bullshit

Photo by Hans Eiskonen on Unsplash

Two years ago, I started Everything Is Bullshit. I’m glad I did. The blog has been a fun way for me to explore new ideas, especially when they’re too cynical or misanthropic to say out loud in polite company.

So far the response has been wonderful. People get a kick out of the no-bullshit character I play, but mostly what they enjoy is the insights they gain about our weird species. I like to think that’s my goal here: to give you insight into human nature.

Here’s what I called bullshit on this year:

• Advice

• Arguing

• Imagination

• Money

• Happiness (again)

• Effective Altruism (sort of)

• The AI apocalypse

• “Deep” ideas

• Vague ideas

• “Choosing” to believe

• The future of humanity

Also, if you want a bird’s eye view of my writing and thinking, here’s a good place to start:

30 Useful Concepts about Bullshit

Money is bullshit but give me some?

This blog is a passion project, and so far I haven’t been accepting money for it. But lately I've been feeling a bit demotivated. It's hard to justify spending time on this blog when I have more serious things I could be doing.

So now I’m giving you the option to pay me. I think if I start getting compensated for this, blogging will feel less like a guilty pleasure and more like a legitimate use of my time. Think of that button down there as a cattle prod—a way of jolting me into producing more content.

Comments on the comments

I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the quality of my readers. Who’d have thought the comment section of a blog called “Everything Is Bullshit” would be so thoughtful, nuanced, and charitable? Maybe I’m good at scaring away bullshitters by exposing what they’re up to, or maybe it’s just good luck.

Still, it’s hard to avoid crappy comments entirely. As my audience has grown, I’ve noticed a 10-20% increase in pseudoarguments. The clearest example of this was in the reaction to AI Doomerism Is Bullshit. Out of all my posts, that one provoked the most backlash and bad faith.

Which is really weird. I’ve written a lot of provocative stuff here, and the response has mostly been nods and shrugs. Most of what we find interesting is bullshit? “Duh.” Nobody actually cares about making the world a better place? “Yup.” Ideologies are tapestries of propaganda and ad hoc rationalizations? “Sounds about right.” The search for the meaning of life is an intellectual pissing contest? “Yea lol.” Morality is a tool for mob violence and social domination? “Yea makes sense.” Our most deeply held values are bullshit? “I buy it.” Robots aren’t going to kill us all? “WHAT?! WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! HOW DARE YOU SAY THAT WITHOUT READING ALL 12,372 POSTS ON THE AI ALIGNMENT FORUM?!”

Anyways, it’s an interesting fact about my readers. I don’t have a good explanation for it, aside from noting that we all have our thing, and everything is bullshit, except for our thing.

What should I write about next?

Last year, I let people vote on which of four unusual topics they wanted me to explore. AI doomerism got the most votes, which resulted in the aforementioned AI Doomerism Is Bullshit. I’d like to do another unusual post this year, so here we go:

The podcast

Another thing I had people vote on last year was whether I should start a podcast. Most people said “yes,” so I started Evolutionary Psychology (the podcast). My co-host Dave Pietraszewski and I have done a bunch of episodes so far, which you can find on any podcast app (check it out here). The next dozen episodes will mostly be interviews with researchers in the field (FYI: the vibe is nerdier and more academic than this blog). If you have any ideas for future episodes—or general feedback—let me know.

Thank you

I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t you, the person taking time out of their busy day to read my bullshit. It means a lot that you’re paying attention to this when the siren song of the internet is calling you toward a million other things. So thank you for your curiosity. Thank you for your comments when they’re in good faith. I’ll continue doing my best to reward your attention with insights into the human animal—and hopefully, a bit of fun too.

Here’s to another year of bullshit!