They're Feeding Me Bullshite Again
bullshit
bullshit and yet more bullshit: let's get rid of it...
Bullshit Eliminator for Telephone
Bullshit reaching up to your ears yet, or is it the bullshite? Are you almost submerged by wave upon wave of it coming at you from the TV, out of the newspapers, from advertisements and from the mouths of people around you? Here's a way to challenge a particular form of the manifestation - telephone bullshit. The telephone has been one of the bullshitter's favourite tools ever since Bell invented it: it's convenient, can be anonymous in that you don't know where the caller is speaking from & sometimes you don't even know who they are, it's cheap, has a vast reach and, most important of all, the caller can't be seen. The latter fact is used to the anti-bullshitter's advantage in the technique that follows... YOU sit there unseen with a very powerful agenda...
So, when you are on the telephone, do you sometimes sense that something isn't quite right, that you're getting the run-around? Are people being intentionally vague and obscure with you about something? Can you detect a faint but unmistakable smell, a distinctive odour? If this is the case, chances are the person speaking to you is being evasive, trying to hide the truth of the matter under discussion beneath layers of material known scientifically by the name of bullshit. Below is a list of questions, pointed questions purpose designed to reveal, penetrate and sweep away the bullshit and permit access to the underlying facts. This is not a game. Bullshit is deliberately created to mislead, and word forms of this kind - designed to reveal fact, specification and evidence - are the bullshitter's worst nightmare and are likely to make them squirm. Once you've got them squirming, don't stop, keep right on asking until you get satisfaction: you didn't try to mislead, they did.
Pin this list by your telephone in the office/workplace/home and use it ruthlessly whenever you catch a whiff of bullshit. Pick random questions/statements off the list, adapt them to suit your situation and fire away. Don't worry if you make the bullshitters feel uncomfortable - remember they tried to bullshit you first and they deserve no less. If you just get more bullshit in response to your questions/statements, then demand clarification before you move on.
Note that some of the 'questions' below can, by means of subtle analogue marking (shifting the tone of the voice slightly, emphasising words, speaking more deliberately, gently tapping your desk in time with the words, slightly turning the head, etc.) be delivered as embedded commands in the form of conversational postulates.
For example: 'Can you show me some hard data on this' if marked on the last seven words thus: 'Can you show me some hard data on this.' is an embedded command of 'show me some hard data on this.'
The Telephone Bullshit Eliminator
- What specific avenues of approach are you using?
- Can you put that into numbers for me?
- What haven't you told me about X?
- Who else is aware of this?
- What would happen if..?
- How does it come about that..?
- Exactly what part do you play in all this?
- Why do you use the terms 'I' and 'we' interchangeably: tell me who you mean by we?
- What do you do whilst all this is going on?
- What do you personally stand to gain by this?
- Which other people evaluate things this way?
- Can you show me some hard data on this.
- When you say (generality), you can't be sure of that: what precisely do you mean?
- This doesn't mean much to me: how does it relate to..?
- How can you prove X?
- Where exactly does/did all this happen?
- What do you mean by..?
- How many would you give it on a scale of 0-10? Why?
- How exactly do you measure this?
- When you use the word 'Z', what exactly were you trying to say?
- How does this compare with..?
- Has this been scientifically validated? Where are the results?
- What evidence can you provide for and against your claims?
- When you say 'Y', to whom do you refer?
- How do you influence this process you've described?
- How do you get that?
- Who precisely is involved?
- Tell me how you propose to measure that?
- What specific evidence do you have to support this?
- What is currently available?
- Can you tell me more about..?
- I don't understand: you'll have to give me a lot more specific information.
- Give me some hard facts about...
- Can you tell me what exactly you mean by..?
- Just explain again how, in your opinion, X causes Y.
- Can you prove that? What evidence can you provide?
- When exactly will it be ready?
- Can anyone else back up what you are saying?
- Could you give me an outline of the assumptions you have made?
- Indicate the basis of your assumptions.
- What stage are you at right now?
- How can you be sure of that?
- Give me the name of three independent people who will support your assertions?
- Exactly what time was this?
- What would happen if..?
- How would you rate it, and on what scale of measure?
- Give me details of the work/investigations carried out to date.
- What exactly do you mean by X?
- When will you be putting all this in writing?
- Have you left anyone/anything out?
- Let's suppose the converse is true: what happens then?
- Who says it's either this or that? Why?
- What were you doing while all this was going on?
- Last chance: are you sure you haven't left anything out?
- When can I expect an answer on this?
- When will your findings be available to me?
- What is your definition of X?
- Can you explain that more fully?
Can you to put that in writing.
(Song Chorus - Slow C&W 3/4 time)
They're Feeding Me Bullshite Again
They're Feeding Me Bullshite Again
I told 'em I'd had enough last time
but...
They're Feeding Me Bullshite Again
Some Associated Pages
Language Abuse
Dan Scorpio Home
Presupposition
Overcoming Habitual/Conditioned Behaviours
