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Hey folks, Dr. Rahul here for the med/acc education segment. Today we have a different kind of blog. It's in the critical thinking skills category of blogs that I've been making on this website. How to Detect bullshit Claims or How to Detect BS. So why are we talking about this and what's my angle here? Because there's lots of amazing content on YouTube about how to detect BS, but I take a little bit of a different angle. Here's what it is: claims abound all over the internet, real life, everything. Tons of people making claims.
You got marketers, you got podcasters, you got Huberman saying sh*t, you got Dr. Rahul saying sh*t. Who the hell knows what that guy's up to? No good, I'll tell you. And it's very possible that what you're hearing is amazing information and is super true and it's going to help you. It's also possible that what you're hearing is BS, and somewhere in between is also a possibility. But if it's BS and you invest into it in any regard, that investment can fail to pay off and that can cost you wasted hope for effect.
Because like if some quack doctor says buy this pill, it'll make your headaches go away, you get excited going on Amazon to buy the damn thing and it's getting here tomorrow at 3 pm and you're like, "Oh my God, fricking finally stupid headaches will go away," and then they don't. And that hope for effect, it's tragic, it sucks, it makes you pissed. Of course, various claims can cost you time. You know, if Huberman says that—not picking on Huberman specifically—but if he says, you know, "Take a 10-minute walk after every meal," and you realize that there's no grandiose benefits that you can even detect after doing that for months, goddammit, there's a lot of [ __ ] time I could have been, you know, sexting on the toilet or whatever other things you can do with 10 minutes of your time. And of course, money. I mean, if you put your own hard-earned money into some [ __ ], you expect it to work and if it doesn't work, you think back to yourself, "Why the hell did I order this?" and you think back a little bit more, you go, "That [ __ ] on YouTube told me to buy this [ __ ], he said it was going to be great."
So, this is bad news. Bad news: BS claims all over the place. You got to be able to try to pick them out, and the easiest way—quote unquote easiest—wrong turn of uh, wrong word choice, the most straightforward way to minimize your probability of getting bamboozled, maximize your BS-detecting abilities, is to "just learn the science" about whatever field that you're talking about. So if people are making nutritional claims, just learn nutritional science. You'll be able to parse the claims. Unfortunately, that can be incredibly hard and nearly impossible to pull off. In fact, you can get an undergraduate level education on the subject and still be duped. One of the things that I've done for a long time for work is teach undergraduates , and I can confidently assure you that if I was interested in making a supplement or making a mode of training or something I could charge people for that was not science-backed, it was intentionally [ __ ], I could [ __ ] do it and I could make a lot of money and fool a lot of people with exercise science degrees.
So even getting an undergraduate degree in a subject—let's say you're trying to buy a heater for your home and you're not really sure if the guy selling the heater is full of sh*t or not. It's a new design for a heater, no one's ever seen it before. A physics undergraduate at Caltech may not prepare you to analyze the problem enough to get directly onto the thing of "is this cap or not?" That's how big the problem is. Unless you're a deeply invested expert in that very subfield of that subfield, unless you're an unreal amazing critical thinker in the field in which you are kind of a dominant force, it might be unrealistic to vet claims directly by parsing their empirical or logical validity.
People say, "Well, this works," and you go, "Okay, well, how do I know it works?" They go, "Here are the studies." You get 20 studies—yeah, sh*t you ain't gonna read 20 studies, you frigging kidding me? You don't know what half the words mean. My dad , Grandpa and elder cousin are mathematicians . Some of them got like handful of international publications. I remember when I was young, he gave me one of them for sh*ts and giggles, and I tried to read it. It was all in crude mathematical English terms by the way. Bro, two sentences in the abstract, I was like, "Okay, I know a few words here, I know 'and,' I know 'or,' I know 'because,' and I know 'but.' That's all the words I understood. I don't know anything about this."
Even if you're an undergraduate in math, someone with a PhD in math is trying to mess with you, you can get a lot in and still be BSed. This is a big deal. Wouldn't it be good to have a method of BS detection that is not specific to the topic at hand and does not require you to be an expert? Because if it requires you to know about the topic a lot and be an expert, I'm not—how the hell am I supposed to give you advice on general BS then? Then general BS detection is not possible. But if these things work for basically every subject, every topic, these BS detection tips, and you don't have to be an expert to figure out how to use them and use them well, that's a big deal. Is that possible? I think the answer is yes, and that gives us BS detection at a really low cost. I have it here for you in this very blog.
Specifically, it is 11 tips—11 signs that if they're present, and to the degree they're present, your probability of getting BSed, getting lied to, getting bamboozled, getting scammed, goes up. Eleven, because I just thought of 11. I made this list a while ago, pruned it a little bit—11. I wish it was 10; it would be a cool thumbnail, but I had to make thumbnails, I can do line drawing and midjourney prompts, that's about my artistic abilities.
This method is not perfect. The method I will describe to you, if you use all 11 tests, it's not perfect—you could still be fooled. However, big deal: you're less likely to be fooled applying these heuristics than not applying them. And the more red Xs you get through these, the more a claim fails to checkbox these things—in other words, the more it says, "Hey look, you are getting fooled on this and you're getting fooled on this"—the more of those that are Xed, the higher the probability is you're being BSed.
So if you parse one claim and it checks on eight of the claims—it's like, "Hey, pretty good, seems like there's no problem here"—on three of the little tests, little heuristics, it's like, "Yeah, this could be someone lying to you." Okay, versus another claim that's eight of these heuristics—it's like, "Dude, this person's lying to you," and three of them it's like, "Yeah, maybe not." If something scores eight out of 11, the probability that it's full of sh*t there is much, much, much higher than if you just score three—meaningfully higher—so that you can be more or less enthused based on how much the score turns out to be to risk your trust, your time, and your money.
Sounds good? Let's get to the 11 signs—this heuristic checklist, this BS detection checklist. Number one: if the claim—whether it's a claim to how something works or a product that has been proposed or is being sold, any kind of claim—if it violates the underpinning fundamentals of a given field of science, the probability that it is true as it is is substantially lower.
If a chemistry claim violates physics, if a sociology claim violates biology—remember, sociology is just an offshoot of biology, and chemistry is just a consequence of physics. Nothing in chemistry can violate the laws of physics. Nothing in sociology can violate the laws of biology, and if it does, you've got a problem.
Here are some examples: nutrition people that tell you calorie balance is a myth—"calories in, calories out, it doesn't matter for weight loss"—violates thermodynamic principles of physics and cannot, is dead on arrival. Either they're poorly communicating something useful, like "if you eat healthy foods, you don't have to count your calories anymore because they're all low calorie anyway and they fill you up a lot"—great—but it's not the same thing as saying calorie balance is a myth. It's a very poor way of saying it at the very least, so at least the BS detector picked that up.
Another one: claims for a perpetual motion machine. A perpetual motion machine means that it continues to somehow generate motion without consuming energy. This violates every understanding we have of physics in the universe and is probably not true. Now again, these are all probabilities—can someone maybe hack the universe in a way that actually, I don't know, harnesses quantum zero-point energy to generate a perpetual motion machine? Sure, Hell if I know, but that probability is real low—real low. So if someone says, "I have a perpetual motion machine," you've got to be like, "Really? You, of all people? Interesting."
Another one is a claim like, "We have an educational program here that students take for three years when they're little kids, and it eliminates all IQ differences in students—just makes up the ground and everyone's the same IQ after." Man, you know, the whole field of psychometrics exists, and no matter what they do, how they treat the data, or how they interfere in education, they can't get rid of IQ differences—they never could. You got something that eliminates all the differences? Seems to violate some of the kind of rules of psychometrics on which it's based, and you got a big problem.
So number one: violates underpinning fundamentals—bad news. If it's red-checked or red-Xed, it's like, "Yep, this thing's doing that." The probability that that thing is not BS is much lower. Still could be legit, though, but you'll need to think about it and examine it a little bit more than just being like, "That's on Amazon, I'm going to click buy."
they're just crogen the probability that they're telling you lies increases pretty drastically if they're not addressing very reasonable concerns that doesn't mean like answering trolls in the comments real concerns especially bad if they use logical fallacies in their argument back and for example someone's like you're like hey like um can you explain to me how this new lifting machine from my hamstrings works and they go you just have to try it that's all you got you can't offer me any kind of reasoning as why it works I
mean you're the guy saying it works there's no there's no reason for it to work nothing you've discovered you just have to try it it's a mystery another one is you know people be like hey um I bought your bench press program but I notice you have sets of fives here on Wednesday but then next Wednesday you have sets of four like can you is that like know is that can you explain that and they're like dude you're not even jacked don't question me you're not jacked enough to question this program but I thought there's at least three
logical fallacies in that one huh why couldn't they just have answered me two two reasons one they're mean maybe they just didn't have the time and they're still right sh*t still works or two they're not interested in answering any questions because the thing's screwed to begin with and the people who don't ask they get the thing people who ask they're just like uh go screw yourself get out of here like I don't want you in my marketing funnel if you're an Asking sh*t and I'm selling sh*t. I
want only dreamy eye dup idiots people who fall for Cults no offense people who fall for Cults . Number three Bs detection tip the claim or the clamant is layered
heavily with emotion or moralistic taboo this does not mean the sh*t is false it just means the person saying it probably isn't thinking super clearly about it so the due diligence of figuring out does this really work or am I just lying to myself the probability they did it for you is low you're going to have to do the due diligence yourself if the adherence of the claim really really really want to believe the claim and if they think that not believing the claim makes you categorically evil we have a
problem potentially for example if you look through the psychological literature on the causes and effects and consequences of bullying middle school bullying of children don't do this in your spare time it's not fun to read or do you nerds that follow this website who the hell knows what you do for fun like me just read articles and stuff so go ahead and read it it's a very complex literature it's a very multifaceted depending on who's being bullied and who's doing the bullying and
how that interaction goes depending on how many times that interaction goes you get different effects it is not true to say that bullying is bad for all children it is not true to say that bullying hardens you up and is good for you some children get bullied and it makes them hard as nails and they're just better at everything . bullying so God damn traumatic there's other people that are bullied with the intention of hardening them up and they crack and
they're just never the same again and it haunts them the rest of their life real talk bro because people are different and the bullying is different but when you say bullying must be bad for all children or just say bullying is bad for all kids and that's your article that you're writing in you know some psychological Journal where you avoid the difficult empirical questions of what about actually testing it does it work no guess not it's easy it feels so good to stand up against bullying cuz like look like real talk
bullying is lame as hell bro if I if I ever or one of my fantasies that only full immersion virtual reality may give me someday is I have all of my physical abilities and my Martial Arts knowledge but I'm like nine years old and somebody in the third grade tries to bully me I mean highlight real sh*t would love it bullying is terrible but there are also terrible things that are sometimes good for you and in some cases maybe you need some of them to progress ahead is not nice to say and in most
cases bullying is bad but not all cases but if you have to believe that bullying has to be bad in all cases your you're into moralistic taboo territory you cannot admit the counter example and then you're not really logical about it then I can't really trust you that this article is like really vetted and fully legit another one uh the claim that women and men must be equal in all emotional and mental capacities some people who say well women tend to think about this differently they're like that's
no they don't men and women think about things the same way like I feel like you want to believe that more than just from empirical literature you've discovered that was true because again if you look into empirical literature men and women are predictably different on average in hundreds of different ways from each other hundreds of those are cognitive ways and behavioral ways and preference ways and a lot of them don't have anything to do with sociology they're just purely genetic and ological tons of
them have to do with sociology as well but when you say like you cannot find differences between men and women because that's bad then you know I'm inclined to believe that you're probably not going to be the person that does the most logical vetting and lastly of course huge example of this is you know the idea that all ethnic groups must be identical in all capabilities and capacities except for environmental effects so the only reason this ethnic group is not as good as other ethic group at something is because of
Sociology or culture or some [ __ ] like that uh you have to believe it because if you admit that some ethnic groups are some were different than others based on genetics an internal culture that's difficult to change from outside forces I didn't hear I didn't see that that's real tough it opens up the view of the real world and the the real world is beautiful and gorgeous and dark and screwd up all at the same time a lot of people don't have any bandwidth for that dark sh*t up so they can be like this
is how it is and I don't want to hear anything more about it if they're espousing that heavily layered with emotion and moralistic taboo kind of thing like the super crazy sjw with the Beret and the Socialist haircut on campus giving you leaflets that's probably not the person to be logically addressing the claims of leaflets and I'll put it to you that way maybe you learn a lot but you know maybe not your best bet and again people can be completely correct with a huge taboo if you say dude I [ __ ] hate Nazis they're
terrible you're right they're terrible but uh if it's not Nazis if it's something else and I don't really know about that something else I don't know like let's see charter school policy if you're just really vitriolic about it and one thing has to be right another has to be wrong I'm not going to listen to you a ton about charter school policy I want someone more even killed number four in order to believe your claim I have to make a complex web of assumptions that lead into your claim all of which are just but by no means
clear like I have to hallucinate some kind of schematic diagram that after I really think through it sort of it's like oh yeah okay this has to be the case let's get to a few claims like this uh real quick before we get to them these things border on conspiracy at some point and conspiracies are not always wrong they're just almost always wrong if you bet on conspiracies often you're going to lose often for example people will say seed oils are bad for you you Google the direct scientific literature it says seed oils are good so
you got to like go through the studies and look at funding sources but some kinds of seed oils and not others and what I meant by bad for is this and that you end up getting this like again that you know that meme from that uh the movie with the big monsters where the guy like the scientist has all these connecting on the wall and he's pointing to it he looks crazy like beautiful same that had kaijus in it right uh that you start to be like that and someone's like okay you're telling me Seed Oils
are bad for me but the direct scientific literature says they're not and most nutritionists say they're just fine so you tell me a story and at some point you're talking to this person you're like dude is Monsanto controlling everything like I have to assume crazy for like all of all the doctors are bought all the scientists are bought Monsanto rules the world they own Joe Biden they own Trump they own everyone like really bro all right another one is this was fun during COVID the claim that
the the COVID vaccine of which there's many different kinds but whatever nuance um sterilizes you lots of people said this and you know what's funny they don't talk about it anymore do you know why because they're categorically wrong because it was a hallucination people just went nuts just the same way that when COVID hit extreme social justice warriors lost their minds and they're like that's it I'm sleeping with a mask I'm going to have a mask surgically implanted around my face I'm never seeing the sun I'm never
shaking hands with anyone it's over COVID W you had the other side of the aisle psychotic right-wingers that were like Bill Gates is using 4G somehow 5G . Was it 5G ....it was 5G . it was new 5G to sterilize us with vaccines you're like okay where is the evidence that sterility is something that happens here this again the web begins like well you see if these companies and these effects and in some cases and big cats in 1989 in this preserve their vaccine caused sterility you're like uhhuh COVID causes
sterility all right I can't do this I can't do this is there a probability that they're correct yes absolutely but the more you have to start assuming and explaining and the more the web reaches out further and further to the edges of the paper the more it's kind of like is this just you just secreting a hallucination here or is this really legit here's uh another one um people will give you supplements to take and they're like it works do this and they'll even give you a mechanism but the mechanism is intracellular like this
is what happens when the supplement enters the nucleus and does this like oh dope dope and you ask them a few questions they usually can't answer like does the supplement survive breakdown in the stomach the stomach is insanely acidic it breaks down almost everything but your supplement unfazed yes they're like uh sure kid it's absorbed in the GI tract it doesn't just get pooped out tons of stuff gets pooped out yours makes it through they're like yeah of course why wouldn't it it enters the target cells
through the blood so you have experiments where they just inject the supplement into the cells but if you inject it right outside the cells does the supplement actually get through the cells are not completely permeable some [ __ ] just doesn't get through or nearly in the concentration that you need it to get through in order for it to work they're like yeah yeah target cells we got all that all that covered and it actually affects the target cell in significant ways you can show that one pathway does this this that and then at
the end of it it's like so what does that do for my muscles like uh could grow them a little bit maybe but it's not even a rate limiting step so nothing that's a big [ __ ] problem so the other question is does it affect the target cells in significant ways that lead to actual results all we got in that first thing was a candidate mechanism based on one examination of this molecule when presented into this part of the cell does something that is so goddamn far away from it actually having the effect
that you want and all of those assumptions break down survival GI tract absorption Target cell entry Target cell effect in significant ways do you just have to hallucinate them yourself out of thin air because no one's helping you with and you think well did the supplement company assume all those things to be true maybe maybe maybe not never can tell hey spend your money anyway seems like a kind of a wild chase number five the claim or or claimant claims a revolutionary discovery invention or conclusion without explicit due
diligence in explaining how this is supposed to work the thing is when something's revolutionary we need multiple independent labs confirming it and replicating various versions of it a little while ago there was that room temperature semiconductor thing and some lab out of China was like hey we got it working a lot of people like oh my God this is it unbelievable which would have been sweet and it's probably coming anyway in a few years but that wasn't it because other labs tried to replicate it
and they're like doesn't work we used exactly your methods it doesn't work and by the way they're not just like conflicting interest like some of these labs are like sponsored by Nvidia and as soon as it worked Nvidia would be making this [ __ ] making people trillionaires nope just doesn't do anything so when you claim a revolutionary thing there's got to be some more behind it because most things are not revolutionary and then it's okay to buy them because whatever not claiming to save the [ __ ] world but
revolutionary claims require revolutionary evidence another example is you know someone can say like hey man this pill that I got the supplement is 35 bucks per month and it's gonna do what that $900 pharmaceutical drug you get through your insurance does every month same you're like okay really wow that's incredible that's like an order of magnitude less money that's crazy they're like I know you want to buy it you're like do you have like a scientific paper on this and they're like well not yet but you get
it early before all the scientists get on it and the price goes up would the price go down in any case if you're claiming some crazy [ __ ] we have to do some crazy [ __ ] we need some real hard evidence for something just totally revolutionary so if your revolutionary discovery is something you hear about on like Dr. Gundry or Dr. Oz's YouTube channel [ __ ] infomercial he probably hasn't gone through the vetting process and it's probably [ __ ] now of course some avant-garde person could just make a
new thing and just do it themselves I mean [ __ ] man that Satoshi whatever the [ __ ] his name was who invented Bitcoin maybe it was one person that did it let's say it was it's one dude invented a new type of currency that's categorically superior to all others so if you talk to him like 2006 or whatever the [ __ ] he made it you're like yeah I got this thing it's [ __ ] it's the [ __ ] and you're like yeah okay psycho but uh he really did do it so again it's possible but we deal in likelihoods in real world very
unlikely number six the claim or claimant seems to evade regular testing of its claims or if the claims are tested and the tests don't support the claims they claim the testing is biased classic one real big example here which unfortunately is not a thing anymore but it used to be in the '90s and early 2000s and it was it was an amazing time I'll tell you why James Randi RIP started out as a magician professionally trained magician the amazing Randi he was great but magicians are interestingly
united most of them in one understanding it's that the human brain can be fooled quite easily magicians tell you this is magic and you're like okay so it's real like no it's a trick I don't have supernatural powers but I'm going to make it seem like I can just get a card out of thin air and it used to be in your pocket so magicians know how to fool people really [ __ ] well that's their job but they also know they're fooling people and they're telling people they're fooling people so James Randi was a magician that's also very
scientifically literate very interested and he looked at all the scammers and stuff that were lying to people and he's like this is just [ __ ] magic I could do this better and these people are [ __ ] lying and they were like well put your money where your mouth is so he did so he started the James Randi Educational Foundation JREF for short and they had for decades a long-standing accessible to anyone who wanted to try it paranormal abilities test it started out as the James Randi million-dollar
challenge you would win a million dollars paid on the spot if you could convincingly in an initial test and then a secondary confirmational test demonstrate that you have superpowers folks pause. who's your favorite character from The Boys or from Compound V did you say Starlight you're goddamn have you on this [ __ ] channel anymore the [ __ ] were her powers anyway all right they're being cute Jesus Christ Starlight was swell let's say I'm really Starlight like I legitimately have supernatural powers what was her
[ __ ] like electricity or some [ __ ] her eyes got lit up honestly I watched the whole show don't care don't know she never really showed off her [ __ ] anyway let's say Starlight like can zap you with electricity right if she's really actually capable of doing it she would show up to the James Randi Educational Foundation sign the [ __ ] waiver zap somebody in the lab with electricity they'd be like holy [ __ ] [ __ ] they look at her hands make sure she wasn't wearing anything get her into clothes
she and bring in with her scan her for electronics equipment take her to an off-site location and she's like okay you guys want to see it again they're like yep hit those 10 targets with bolts she goes boom boom boom boom boom and they all blow up they're like okay here's the [ __ ] million dollars it's that simple guess how many times now sorry real quick during this time psychics were a big deal Sylvia Browne folks like her that were charging $900 an hour for private psychic readings over the phone over
the phone I'm in the wrong job and what they were doing is claiming that they had supernatural connection to the ethereal world and could predict events people who do like grounding [ __ ] were like uh dowsing rods where they would like find treasure with these two [ __ ] sticks which by the way is total [ __ ] surprise that was like the golden age of that [ __ ] and so James Randi was straight up like yo if you want a shot at the title we have the money what two responses did you get out of that people would say yeah I don't
want to be tested I'm comfortable in my own abilities or I think James Randi's an [ __ ] I'm not going to go over there and a few people actually did go over there and get in the initial test I don't think anyone got into the secondary test and the tests didn't go well for them because they couldn't actually like see what was behind the [ __ ] cardboard box when they were supposed to be guessing and doing remote viewing so they would just say [ __ ] like you know my karmic energy and the spirit [ __ ] was off that day so I didn't
perform but I really can do stuff if that kind of evasion of being tested still explaining away the tests as not being pertinent isn't a good example then it's a really great example when literally a million dollars it eventually got to be way more because it was a fund that would just like multiply in value eventually was like a million and a half dollars that you could just [ __ ] win if you just showed us you had any any supernatural abilities guess how many times someone actually won the JREF
challenge or it was even embroiled in controversy where they almost won but not quite zero zero it never happened so like to me sounds like psychics are all [ __ ] liars or delusional and that makes sense so anytime you're like someone's like hey like I heard you like can tell people's fortunes and they're like yep you're like right you want to do mine they're like well like energy's kind of off you're like all dope two middle fingers you're a [ __ ] liar and maybe the energy was kind of off just
like you asked them in the middle of the street for no reason there's all probabilities here sometimes tests are biased sometimes it's not good conditions sometimes you don't want to be tested by someone who's a [ __ ] so or [ __ ] but if you evade testing enough and you excuse away your bad tests enough it starts to seem like you're up to no good number seven the claim or claimant fails to define terms clearly equivocates on definitions which means they slide to one definition or the other depending on
what's convenient even though they're using the same term every time or is just generally unclear in its language even when that language or concept isn't overly technical for example this product works I love it when it says that on a [ __ ] label or a commercial you guys lawyers are real good at their jobs and this product works is one of those clauses where like works doesn't actually have to mean anything what the [ __ ] does works mean like it produces physical work it treats what you wanted
to treat what does that mean this product works is neither legally enforceable in most cases nor is it logically cogent another one when people claim our supplement builds lean muscle what other kind of muscle is there are you guys out of your [ __ ] minds it's muscle or it's not muscle is there fatty muscle is there muscle made of carbs what the [ __ ] is going on lean muscle is nonsense and if you hear someone say builds lean muscle doesn't mean their whole [ __ ] is [ __ ] that doesn't mean
they sprinkled at least a little [ __ ] rhetoric into that another one is improves your performance as a supplement performance performance at what can I expect to get faster will my endurance improve am I going to get stronger will I get more jacked that's not performance uh is my dick going to be harder for longer something's got to give but general claims like that which equivocate like performance could mean a lot of different things and if you fail on one of them you're like no no no we meant this other thing it's bad news you
want specific claims of specific effects on specific systems of specific time courses and outcomes that's real good but if the explanation for the thing and how it works is really meh and it's just like buy it it's great you're like that really I wouldn't bet on that number eight big one the claim the claimant in this case the person making the claim claims that nearly or all other experts in that space are wrong and by a wide margin they're the only person that knows the truth this can
occur avant-garde is a real thing some people come in they have wacky take turns out their take was true but remember it's all probabilities so probability that that's the case I was going to do a zero it's not zero it's very low an example here is the classic yeah it's a depression cure that doctors don't want you to know about okay so all doctors are wrong even their super [ __ ] smart ones at Johns Hopkins that dedicate their whole lives to research they're wrong but you midnight oil YouTube hole
ad guy you're telling me you found the [ __ ] cure to depression uh-huh but everyone else is dumb as [ __ ] and just totally wrong like yep I'm the only one that knows [ __ ] possible sure likely I don't have to tell you that's unlikely unless you're a child or something number nine this is a nuanced one so it's kind of like um if you know it it's it adds an interesting flavor to the discussion of this is BS or not the claimant claims a perfect or nearly ideal solution to a problem that you have for which they gladly take your
money and offer you the solution but they do this without acknowledging costs complexities or trade-offs for example there are various pills on the market that you can buy herbal supplements that say boost your testosterone by 2x 5x 10x I've seen that [ __ ] for real boost test by XYZ people look at that and they want more testosterone so go oh my God that's a great thing I'm going to buy it hold on honestly if it really boosts your testosterone by 10 times wouldn't it do all the other things that excessive
testosterone does like shrink your nuts give you baldness make you pissed and anxious that's what steroids do like right very now as I'm delivering this video to you I'm on roughly 10 times the normal amount of testosterone analog that a human should be because I'm preparing for a bodybuilding show suffice it to say the [ __ ] is not sold over the counter and if it was it wouldn't just be like just does this thing and don't worry about anything else it comes with you guys ever get a prescription drug from a doctor and the
list of like counter indications and all this stuff is like longer than the [ __ ] list of how the drug works holy [ __ ] that's because real drugs have real effects and sometimes the effects are great which is why you take the drug but they got all kinds of other [ __ ] that comes with it right so if you're getting 10 times the testosterone where are all the negative side effects uh if you get 10 times the testosterone instantly in your body than you're used to uh there are going to be huge side
effects short of just your you your best life is now yours to live finally with 10x multiplier testosterone nonsense so anytime someone's solving a problem for you and it seems that that solution is just just just perfect here here's one right the recent development in um anti-obesity drugs the GLP-1 agonists uh Ozempic, Wegovy, etc. are nothing short of a scientific miracle and those drugs and their descendants over the next several years are going to cut an enormous chunk out of global obesity something nothing
could do before but as amazing as those drugs are there's nobody joking to you about they don't come with side effects they give you heartburn they give you weird stomach [ __ ] they make you nauseous and more likely to throw up they make people feel fatigued and dizzy all this is totally fine and can be managed with proper diet and training and integration of the drugs but it's not simply like here here's this pill you're like what do I need to know about it nothing it just works see you get some [ __ ] like
that it's perfect the perfect solution to your XYZ problem it might be [ __ ] maybe not but it might be [ __ ] number 10 having a high degree as the claimant a financial self-interest political self-interest and much more important in exposing most ideological or logical fallacies I got ahead of myself ideological self-interest if these things are present can that person be correct you bet and a lot of times they are but if that stuff is present you at least as a skeptic have to take all once over another take a little different
perspective so for example at my real job back at Doctor with lifestyle disease specialty you know we have a diet coach app and a gym training program apps that we hawk as much as we can to everyone you don't need the program just sign up now it'll be great I'm kidding we have apps if I tell you as the creator of the hypertrophy app that it is unbelievably awesome the best app for you could you believe me yeah I guess should you believe me no hell no I'm just selling that gets me
money . I could be I could be a total sociopath just be lying straight through my teeth the app barely does a thing I didn't even use it I didn't test it but it gets me paid baby so if I tell you as the financial huge I have a huge financial self-interest in the app if I tell you it works great at the very least you should be like can I talk to some other users yeah you bet we got hundreds of thousands enjoy and most of them are like it's sweet you should try it okay great so we're not
lying but just taking my word for it seems strange let's do a couple more examples someone running for the DA office says marijuana is destroying our communities well hold on like you're like the law and order guy right anti-drug guy like yeah there's no political self-interest for you to talk down on marijuana scare up the suburban housewives to get elected is there well no that's crazy also why do you talk like a 50s guy what do you mean see also that's 20s is that 20s or 50s and I pre-1950s
I watched uh a YouTube video yesterday where it was like a field army field manual or Marines field manual of how to like kill somebody with a club or knife and the entire video was unbelievable the narration was just like the guy used tons of puns he's like nah that'll show the enemy what for and you're like whoa they really talk like that you're talking about killing another person they're just totally comedic about it it was amazing in any case you if the DA that's running on a anti-drug
scare the the the white women in the schools platform tells you some sh*t about marijuana as an empirical claim of how bad it is or some um you know maybe go to other people again if you go to the guy who runs the pot store who looks like Bob Marley and dresses in the Bob Marley catalog he might also not be the greatest person to tell you about an objective take on marijuana maybe you can listen to them both maybe you can Google some websites and and find out some things for yourself that maybe aren't in just
obviously coming from an insanely potentially biased source um you know last one last example is you know a lot of people say like the universal basic income works it's amazing we have to institute it now and and and they're like a card carrying insane leftist that just finally wants something to take care of all the [ __ ] poor people and homeless people which is super laudable but when you're that hard left and ideologically you have to believe that the UBI is going to work when you're presented with data
that like UBI is like an order of magnitude too expensive to employ currently with our with our with the United States trillion dollar budget still 10x more expensive than is reasonable you know like you may have a rational response to that or you may not and you likely won't if you're really ideologically must have the UBI and lastly point number 11 is when the proponent of the claim has a low source diversity for that claim where they're getting their information from to support their claim is just really tiny
speck of the universe and they've just ignored most of it for example depending on which way your parents lean politically I might get the pronunciation wrong on this but there's a there's a leftist rag called the Jacobin the Jacobin I don't know how to say it it was just like it's got like it's red outline it's the Communist Party [ __ ] backed newspaper basically it's as far left as it gets maybe not as far left really far left if your parents are talking to you about politics and they're claiming to have holistic
understanding of you know the war on Ukraine or you know the issue with China and civil rights or anything but like they just read the the the Jacobin and that's all they read but they just like I wouldn't trust them it's perspective they have but it's not the whole perspective it's not likely to be and on the other side you know if you have parents that just exclusively watch Newsmax or some like very conservative news source and they claim to be like really up like oh trans issues I know all about those do you really how much
do you know about trans issues like I watch Newsmax like okay so you got just essentially somewhere between reasonable anti-trans takes and total anti-trans psychotic propaganda have you ever gone the other side of like pro-trans arguments or trans people too and they're okay too like well well yeah but that's not how it works you're like how do you know that you don't read anything from any other sources you just have your one little [ __ ] speck that you look into and then apparently you know it all so when someone has a very low
diversity of sources coming in to inform their opinion and you have to trust their opinion maybe they're all right on some of the takes that Newsmax has are [ __ ] dope some of the takes that Jacobin has are [ __ ] dope but as a general rule if someone just doesn't have their sources from a lot of different places believing them um maybe not so wise right what are the implications here just a few first I want to know what you guys think of other detectors give me some tips in the comments tell me what I miss do I
you don't have to say number 12 13 14 you can if you like maybe just one two three four five give me a couple ones that weren't on this list and you think look if you ask these questions think about it this way you're going to be much more skeptical in the best way possible I'd love to know because this is not an inclusive list another thing big reminder you can't be sure 100% if a claim is right or wrong in most cases 100% is for God it's not for us mortal people and nothing in the world can beat direct
multi-confirmed short and long-term empirical evidence of unequivocal magnitude hard [ __ ] science is undefeated but when someone at the 7-Eleven tells you you should buy the supplement you don't just instantiate an exercise science laboratory in the back of your head run all the trials get back to them it'd be dope if AI got advanced enough to simulate all that and in two seconds you're like nope your supplement failed clinical trials that's not an option so you have to go and use some stuff that isn't quite as
convincing and that's what these BS tips are they're not convincing like direct empirical awesome evidence but they can definitely help you be less swayed and save you some time and money if there's a decent probability that you're being [ __ ] with and again some people are true believers they're selling you some [ __ ] that doesn't work they even think it works but it turns out it just uh doesn't um just doesn't do what uh they think it did and you know this is especially true when your parents your
boomer parents get to watch you some quack doctor on YouTube and then he's selling them sh*t all the time . Except not me . I'm not that kind of quack doctor uh that kind of doctor. Anyway that was fun guys .Talk to you next time for more Dr.Rahul talks about random sh*t and nobody cares
QUICK SUMMARY
Passionate about the convergence of medicine and leadership, Dr.Rahul specializes in guiding medical professionals through career transitions into executive roles within the biotech and biomedical industries. With a background in MBBS from CMC Vellore and Graduation in Lifestyle Medicine, AI-ML-Datascience and Philosophy , Dr.Rahul provides insights and strategies to empower healthcare experts to embrace leadership and drive medical innovation.
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