Here are 83 books that Everything Is Bullshit fans have personally recommended if you like
Everything Is Bullshit.
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As an experimental social psychologist, who has conducted years of empirical research on bullshitting behavior and bullshit detection, I’ve found compelling evidence that the worst outcomes of bullshit communications are false beliefs and bad decisions. I’m convinced that all of our problems, whether they be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal are either directly or indirectly linked to mindless bullshit reasoning and communication. I’m just sick and tired of incompetent, bullshit artists who capitalize by repackaging and selling what I and other experimental psychologists do for free. It’s time the masses learn that some of us who actually do the research on the things we write about can actually do it better.
If there is one book I wish I’d written myself, it is How to Become a Really Good Pain in the Ass. One of the things I admired most about the people who shaped my education and career path most was their ability to listen carefully and ask critical questions that uncovered even more than what was first expressed. Christopher DiCarlo’s book is a manual to practicing these traits. The book provides all of the tools needed to question beliefs and assumptions held by those who claim to know what they’re talking about, while at the same time providing practical solutions for today’s world of misinformation. The book also convinced me that faulty reasoning can be spotted by asking the right sorts of questions—what better gift to give someone?
In this witty, incisive guide to critical thinking the author provides you with the tools to allow you to question beliefs and assumptions held by those who claim to know what they're talking about. These days there are many people whom we need to question: politicians, lawyers, doctors, teachers, clergy members, bankers, car salesmen, and your boss. This book will empower you with the ability to spot faulty reasoning and, by asking the right sorts of questions, hold people accountable not only for what they believe but how they behave.
By using this book you'll learn to analyze your own…
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
As an experimental social psychologist, who has conducted years of empirical research on bullshitting behavior and bullshit detection, I’ve found compelling evidence that the worst outcomes of bullshit communications are false beliefs and bad decisions. I’m convinced that all of our problems, whether they be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal are either directly or indirectly linked to mindless bullshit reasoning and communication. I’m just sick and tired of incompetent, bullshit artists who capitalize by repackaging and selling what I and other experimental psychologists do for free. It’s time the masses learn that some of us who actually do the research on the things we write about can actually do it better.
I found this book absolutely thrilling as a real-life story of one of the biggest bullshit busts in history. Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme ran for almost 18 years without much concern or investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But, Harry Markopolos, a little-known number cruncher from a Boston equity derivatives firm, was onto Madoff after looking at Madoff’s financial records, several years before the bust made headlines. Page by page, Markopolos details his pursuit of the greatest financial criminal in history, and reveals the massive fraud, governmental incompetence, and criminal collusion that has changed thousands of lives forever-as well as the world’s financial system. All the while, no one, including the SEC, would listen. As such, the book is the quintessential example of how spellbinding bullshit can be.
Harry Markopolos and his team of financial sleuths discuss first-hand how they cracked the Madoff Ponzi scheme No One Would Listen is the thrilling story of how the Harry Markopolos, a little-known number cruncher from a Boston equity derivatives firm, and his investigative team uncovered Bernie Madoff's scam years before it made headlines, and how they desperately tried to warn the government, the industry, and the financial press. Page by page, Markopolos details his pursuit of the greatest financial criminal in history, and reveals the massive fraud, governmental incompetence, and criminal collusion that has changed thousands of lives forever-as well…
As an experimental social psychologist, who has conducted years of empirical research on bullshitting behavior and bullshit detection, I’ve found compelling evidence that the worst outcomes of bullshit communications are false beliefs and bad decisions. I’m convinced that all of our problems, whether they be personal, interpersonal, professional, or societal are either directly or indirectly linked to mindless bullshit reasoning and communication. I’m just sick and tired of incompetent, bullshit artists who capitalize by repackaging and selling what I and other experimental psychologists do for free. It’s time the masses learn that some of us who actually do the research on the things we write about can actually do it better.
James Alcock is the only social psychologist I know who could write a clear, accessible, and comprehensive volume on the psychology of belief—particularly how our thoughts and feelings, actions and reactions, respond not to the world as it actually is but to the world as we believe it to be. No matter how much you think you know about beliefs, and no matter what you actually believe, any reader will find surprises in Alcock’s treatise, such as why so many people cling to beliefs that are foolish, self-destructive, and wrong, believing them to be wise, self-protective, and right. Belief convinced me that faulty beliefs, arising from misapprehension about the cause of a disease, misperceptions of an enemy’s actions, misreading a lover’s motive, misconceptions about which, if any, gods are real, can lead to irrational, maladaptive, and sometimes deadly actions.
An expert on the psychology of belief examines how our thoughts and feelings, actions and reactions, respond not to the world as it actually is but to the world as we believe it to be.
This book explores the psychology of belief - how beliefs are formed, how they are influenced both by internal factors, such as perception, memory, reason, emotion, and prior beliefs, as well as external factors, such as experience, identification with a group, social pressure, and manipulation. It also reveals how vulnerable beliefs are to error, and how they can be held with great confidence even when…
The Guardian of the Palace is the first novel in a modern fantasy series set in a New York City where magic is real—but hidden, suppressed, and dangerous when exposed.
When an ancient magic begins to leak into the world, a small group of unlikely allies is forced to act…
As a licensed mental health professional, I once had a client claiming to be demonically possessed, and requested that I get an exorcist to drive the evil spirits out of her body. Instead, I utilized a therapeutic approach to challenge “irrational” beliefs. The problem was gone. I realized that people were prone to strange beliefs and started to read and listen to “experts” who were skeptical in nature. To my surprise, I saw Carl Sagan distinguishing astrology (pseudoscience) from astronomy (science). His talk was clear, convincing, and logical. I was hooked.
Michael Shermer systematically addresses why humans believe weird and extraordinary things. He even makes a case that we are hard-wired for it. Further—and this should make most of us feel better about our strange thinking—he shows how even highly intelligent people sometimes believe in pseudoscience and other extraordinary claims.
This work presents a down-to-earth and sometimes funny survey of a range of contemporary irrationalisms, and explains their empirical and logical flaws. It tackles a variety of topics including creationism, Holocaust denial, race and IQ, cults and alien abductions, and the author looks at the research behind the claims and discredits the pseudoscience involved.
I have been fortunate to have spent the last 40 years of my professional life dealing with new networks and new technology. From the early days of cable television and mobile communications to the development of digital video and the transmission of data over cable lines and satellite. It was a career topped off with the privilege of being the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with regulatory responsibly for approximately 1/6th of the American economy (on which the other 5/6s depended).
At a time when new technology has delivered us to a world of misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, we have lost our shared understanding of just what facts and truth are.
Jonathan Rauch helps us recall the importance of facts and truth to the liberal democratic process. He challenges us to reinstate knowledge and truth.
Arming Americans to defend the truth from today's war on facts.
Disinformation. Trolling. Conspiracies. Social media pile-ons. Campus intolerance. On the surface, these recent additions to our daily vocabulary appear to have little in common. But together, they are driving an epistemic crisis: a multi-front challenge to America's ability to distinguish fact from fiction and elevate truth above falsehood.
In 2016 Russian trolls and bots nearly drowned the truth in a flood of fake news and conspiracy theories, and Donald Trump and his troll armies continued to do the same. Social media companies struggled to keep up with a flood…
Years ago, when I went to Montreal to get my Master's degree in Philosophy, I decided to become a stand-up comic at the same time. I soon realized that I had a lot more fun coming up with the funny bits than I did being ignored or heckled while on stage delivering them. So I became a sit-down comic. (Well, a sprawled-on-the-couch comic.) I've since written and published several novels, which contain a lot of funny bits, but I decided, in addition, to publish the leftover or funny-on-their-own bits in a separate book. Hence, Too Stupid to Visit.
I discovered The Onionlate in life as well, and also through their website. Which, yes, I have bookmarked as well—I love most just their headlines. And discovered, again, they'd actually published a book of headlines! 'Nuff said.
From The Birth Of A Nation To The Death Of Journalism
Since its founding by a bloodthirsty tyrant in 1756, The Onion has not merely changed the way we think about the news -- it has changed whether we think about the news at all. As the first decade of this new millennium draws to a close, Our Front Pages shows us the first thing that presidents, kings, prime ministers, and popes saw when they opened their eyes each morning for the last 21 years. Now you, the common reader and citizen, can see what they saw and be as…
Aury and Scott travel to the Finger Lakes in New York’s wine country to get to the bottom of the mysterious happenings at the Songscape Winery. Disturbed furniture and curious noises are one thing, but when a customer winds up dead, it’s time to dig into the details and see…
My interest in ignorance and uncertainty was sparked when I was an undergraduate mathematics student. I was taking my first courses in probability and then reading about Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, realizing that even mathematics contains untamed unknowns. Later, as a PhD student in sociology I read theories about how knowledge is socially constructed, the foundation of the “sociology of knowledge”. I wondered why there wasn’t also a “sociology of ignorance”. That ignited my interest, and the social construction of ignorance became my life-long research topic. I have since seen it grow from my solo efforts in the 1980s to a flourishing multidisciplinary topic of research and public debate.
Don’t be misled by the title: this book will not reassure you that other people resist what you and I know are obvious facts because they’re stupid or irrational.
We all resist and reject knowledge of various kinds, and this book is a thoughtful investigation into the sociocultural, political, psychological, and biological influences behind that. Klintman’s multi-disciplinary inclusiveness is a refreshing antidote to conventional single-discipline writing on this topic.
Another aspect of this book dear to my heart is his willingness to examine evidence pointing to the benefits as well as the drawbacks of knowledge resistance, including writings on “rational ignorance”. That said, he also squarely addresses the question of what to do when knowledge resistance causes harm, and why the answer is not simply “more education”.
Why do people and groups ignore, deny and resist knowledge about society's many problems? In a world of 'alternative facts', 'fake news' that some believe could be remedied by 'factfulness', the question has never been more pressing. After years of ideologically polarised debates on the topic, this book seeks to further advance our understanding of the phenomenon of knowledge resistance by integrating insights from the social, economic and evolutionary sciences. It identifies simplistic views in public and scholarly debates about what facts, knowledge and human motivations are and what 'rational' use of information actually means. The examples used include controversies…
I started worrying about populism in 2008, when vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin chastised the elitists, whom she defined as “people who think they’re better than anyone else.” Meanwhile, she thought she was so much better than anyone else that she could serve as backup leader of the world despite the fact that she believed that the political leader of the United Kingdom is the queen. After she lost she vowed, “I’m never going to pretend like I know more than the next person. I’m not going to pretend to be an elitist. In fact, I’m going to fight the elitist.” She was unaware that there is a third option: to study so that you know more than the next person.
The co-creator of SPY magazine, Kurt Andersen was my hero in high school. He’s been an NPR radio host, a novelist, a magazine editor, and a co-author with Alec Baldwin on their Trump book. But this book feels like all the thinking he’s done in those places put in one place. It’s a textbook of American history from the Puritans until today, through the lens of our special predilection for conspiracy, con artists, and fabulists, both on the left and the right, and how it all culminates in the 1960s. So smart, so funny, so jealous.
You're entitled to your own opinion but not your own facts
Fantasy is the USA's primary product. From the Pilgrim Fathers onward America has been a place where renegades and freaks came in search of freedom to create their own realities with little objectively regulated truth standing in their way. The freedom to invent and believe whatever the hell you like is, in some ways, an unwritten constitutional right. But, this do-your-own-thing freedom also is the driving credo of America's current transformation where the difference between opinion and fact is rapidly crumbling.
Based on events that have happened over the past decade, I am deeply concerned about large swaths of people in society being strongly influenced by cults and/or disinformation. They can ruin lives, destroy relationships, and even destabilize entire societies. This inspired me to look for and discover the five books on this list, which also shaped the writing of my medical thriller centering on a fictional cult spreading medical disinformation.
This may be a book about disinformation that is kind of academic, but it has a personal touch. The author combines an intellectual presentation with personal stories about encountering people falling for misinformation and disinformation. Plus, as the title suggests, there’s also an exploration into the psychological aspects of the topic.
'Thoughtful, moving and well-written' - Yuval Noah Harari
'An urgent examination of the human attraction to misinformation' - Daniel H. Pink
Misinformation affects us daily, from social media to politics and even personal relationships. Policing social media alone cannot solve the complex problem shaped by partisan politics and subjective interpretations of truth.
In Misbelief social scientist Dan Ariely explores the behaviour of 'misbelief' that leads people to distrust accepted truths and embrace conspiracy theories. Misinformation taps into something innate in all of us, regardless of political affiliation. By understanding this psychology, we can mitigate its effects. Grounded in research and…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
Based on events that have happened over the past decade, I am deeply concerned about large swaths of people in society being strongly influenced by cults and/or disinformation. They can ruin lives, destroy relationships, and even destabilize entire societies. This inspired me to look for and discover the five books on this list, which also shaped the writing of my medical thriller centering on a fictional cult spreading medical disinformation.
I liked how this book is a collection of essays from different authors, all pertaining to disinformation as it occurs on a global scale. It’s essentially an academic study into the issue, one that is definitely of interest to anyone concerned about disinformation, especially if it has major impacts in the political arenas of specific countries.
Discover a comprehensive exploration of the underlying theories of disinformation, and their impact, from leading voices in the field
Politics of Disinformation delivers a thorough discussion of the overwhelming problem of modern fake news in the political arena. The book reviews fundamental theoretical concepts of disinformation and analyzes the impact of new techniques of misinformation and the dissemination of false information in the public space. A group of distinguished authors provide case studies throughout the text to illustrate the effect of disinformation all around the world; including, but not limited to Europe, the Middle East, and South…
