Erstellt am: 16. 1. 2017 - 12:22 Uhr
Today's Webtip: Bullshit!
Nerdcore dug up a wonderful and incredibly important course being offered at the University of Washington. A course that may offer one of the most important skill sets people seem to need these days. But I will let them describe it:
The world is awash in bullshit. Politicians are unconstrained by facts. Science is conducted by press release. So-called higher education often rewards bullshit over analytic thought. Startup culture has elevated bullshit to high art. Advertisers wink conspiratorially and invite us to join them in seeing through all the bullshit, then take advantage of our lowered guard to bombard us with second-order bullshit. The majority of administrative activity, whether in private business or the public sphere, often seems to be little more than a sophisticated exercise in the combinatorial reassembly of bullshit.
We're sick of it. It's time to do something, and as educators, one constructive thing we know how to do is to teach people. So, the aim of this course is to help students navigate the bullshit-rich modern environment by identifying bullshit, seeing through it, and combatting it with effective analysis and argument.
There is a website for the course that includes the syllabus as well as links to the readings for the course, tools, and case studies. So it isn't really a full online course but it is a darn good starting point.
But it is also worth taking a look at the Nerdcore article, because they link some of their own bullshit science posts at the beginning of the syllabus.