#980 - David Pinsof - This is Your Brain on Bullsh*t

2025-08-14

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David Pinsof is a research scientist at UCLA, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, and an author. Everything is bullshit. Your opinions, your arguments, even your thoughts. Most of it’s manufactured, borrowed, or absorbed without question. So if all that’s fake, what’s real? And if we can’t trust our own minds, or anyone else’s, what can we trust? Expect to learn how we can use incentives more efficiently and how to look at incentives more accurately, if other-thinking and worrying is complete bullshit, why we have opinions,...

David Pinsof is a research scientist at UCLA, co-creator of Cards Against Humanity, and an author.

Everything is bullshit. Your opinions, your arguments, even your thoughts. Most of it’s manufactured, borrowed, or absorbed without question. So if all that’s fake, what’s real? And if we can’t trust our own minds, or anyone else’s, what can we trust?

Expect to learn how we can use incentives more efficiently and how to look at incentives more accurately, if other-thinking and worrying is complete bullshit, why we have opinions, and if our preferences are just even more bullshit, why arguing is bullshit, why most arguments are actually pseudo arguments, why so much advice mostly bullshit and why we take it and why we give it, and much more…

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Timestamps:

(0:00) Is Happiness Bulls**t?

(7:48) Incentives are Key to Human Behaviour

(12:33) Why Do We Have Opinions?

(19:36) Exposing the Status Game

(35:08) Are Opinions a Way to Test Loyalty?

(40:50) How Does Arguing Relate to Opinions?