Spencer and David Bloomberg expose "hijacking Occam’s razor," where grifters like anti-vaccine advocates or creationists flood debates with unfalsifiable claims—e.g., Daniel Loxton’s vaccine-Toyota analogy—to overwhelm experts, then insert oversimplified narratives. They highlight Steve Kirsch’s debunked vaccine-autism theories and Jordan Peterson’s "word salad" rhetoric, which masks gaps in evidence by rapid-fire jargon. RFK Jr.’s legal background failed against environmental grifts, while Joe Rogan’s unstructured debates amplify misinformation. The solution? Written rebuttals or disengagement ("Miyagi defense") to dismantle tactics systematically. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
I'm Spencer, your host, and back again with David Bloomberg.
How are you doing, David?
Good, good.
How are you?
Oh, good.
Gonna move right into it today.
We got a topic today where we're talking about grift tactics in online discourse, which is one that I particularly like.
We're not going to hit every single one categorically.
We're not trying to create an all-encompassing thing, but I do think you need to clarify when you say you particularly like it.
Well, what I should be doing if I were is grifting people into paying me money for this podcast.
What I should be doing.
Yeah.
I should, yeah.
But I don't, and I'm not interested in that.
But I do like to pick out when these things are occurring and point them out to people.
Maybe it's annoying to some people.
I don't know.
But I do like to, I've worked on the ability to point out when these things are happening and I like to point them out.
It's just kind of a thing that I do.
So grift tactics.
There's this particular thing.
This is kind of the first one that I've named myself.
And so I like it best because I've named it.
And there was the real reason why we're here is to talk about this one.
But I thought that maybe it wasn't going to be enough to talk about just this one.
So I added a couple of the other more common ones in here just so they all fit in together.
But this first one is one that we mentioned briefly in a previous podcast about belief.
I believe we were talking about belief.
And I've since developed this into a little more of a firm definition of how it works and what to call it, because at the time I didn't really have its own catchy little name for it.
But now I call it hijacking Occam's razor is the name of the grift tactic.
And this is how it works.
When you're in conversation with someone that is intending to engage in disinformation, they are usually these people are actively trying to grift people into believing the thing they believe.
They sometimes they have an act of grift and that they're making money on it.
And sometimes they're just trying to push an idea because their famous favorite grifter is pushing that idea.
And most of these I've noticed with that it only really works with very complicated topics.
So it works pretty good.
And I descriptives for these things are always odd because I don't like that people do them, but they're like a machine that works well.
Right.
So it does work well for these situations.
I don't like the outcome that comes from it.
But you need to have a situation that's very complex, like vaccines and genetics and biology.
So these grift tactics work really well in those situations.
And so this is where you should watch out for this.
And the way that it works is that the grifter will start asking questions.
It sort of starts out as a just asking question situation.
And they'll start asking questions about how this thing really works.
How do these vaccines really work?
How does this go on?
And to make it clear, they're not just asking questions.
Yeah, of course not.
Just so people, yeah.
In that respect, they are sometimes mistaken for a person who is genuinely curious.
But you find out right away that they're not genuinely curious.
They will keep asking questions about different aspects of it to try to get to increase the complexity, to exhaust the person answering the questions of details, get to the bottom level of the last thing that they possibly know in the minutest detail about a thing.
And at that point, then they say, Oh, well, it looks like you don't know everything about it.
And then they insert at that point their own explanation.
And their explanation is always simpler.
And that's the key to this particular grift tactic: to make is to not only make the other side extremely complicated and unknowable to the audience, but also, preferably, reach the end of the knowledge of the person.
And there is always some end somewhere.
Even when I go to one of the only people that I've seen have this tried and has been able to escape it is, I have mentioned this on the podcast before: a man by the name of Dr. Coleman, who has a PhD in genetics and he knows a great deal about genetics, doesn't usually try to answer questions about other things.
But I've seen him sometimes struggle with things in physics where he has to answer a question about, say, Vander Waals, the Van der Waals effect, where things get temporarily or in very close range attracted to another.
And he has to explain this to talk about how globules of spit grossly in the air around us will get caught in a mask.
And that's the real reason why the mask will protect you is because of the Van der Waals forces.
I have heard him try to explain this, and it's obvious as soon as you hear it that he's not as well versed in physics and chemistry as he is in genetics.
But he does tend to avoid reaching the end of his knowledge in genetics in this way because normally the people asking him the questions don't get exhausted in what they could ask and what they should ask.
They do get exhausted.
Yes.
Right, right.
So they have to know enough when you're when a person is trying to do this group, they have to know enough to ask the right questions to reach the end of that knowledge.
Right, right.
And yeah, I do want to circle back to something you said.
They ask until, and then they provide a simpler explanation.
Yes.
I want to clarify: it's an explanation that appears simpler, because sometimes their explanation could be a massive conspiracy.
And that obviously includes not simpler.
That just, oh, well, that answers everything.
So it appears simpler.
Another answer is God did it.
And you see this a lot in creationist arguments, which they search for the God of the gaps and they will keep asking questions until they find the one that whoever they're talking to can't answer.
And that is where they insert God in that gap.
And so they can ask a biologist, well, okay, where did this, how did evolution work?
Where did it come from?
And it could take them all the way back to biogenesis, the initial creation of life.
And the fact is, we don't know.
We have some ideas about the initial creation of life, how it happened, but that's not what evolution is.
Evolution is what happened after the first life appeared.
Yeah.
But they will just ask questions until they get to that and they'll say, aha, God did it.
Yeah.
Aha.
It's obvious you don't know everything.
The answer really is: it was God that did it.
Right.
If you can't answer, and so over the years, of course, these gaps have been shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.
Yeah.
So the gaps that they can put it into are smaller and smaller, but they still keep trying.
And this will, you know, it's used especially, like I said, you know, that term literally comes from creationist arguing.
But they will also do things.
And I believe I've mentioned this on earlier podcasts where you were talking about the professor of genetics trying to explain physics.
Well, they will debate a biologist and bring up physics, knowing full well that the biologist doesn't know about physics.
Or they will debate an astrophysicist who planned to come talk about the birth of the universe and they'll bring up biological evolution.
Yeah.
And so that way they can always find these gaps.
And these are these sorts of tactics that, you know, in online or in-person debate that they will try to use to score points.
And in fact, I know that one of the terms you were going to bring up is the Gish Gallup.
Eventually, yeah.
And wraps right into this.
Absolutely.
Right.
And that is because the Gish Gallup is named after a prominent creationist.
The term was actually coined by Dr. Eugenie Scott, who was then the executive director of the National Center for Science Education.
She is still, she is retired from that position, but she's still active in the community.
And it was, of course, named after creationist Dwayne Gish.
And there was a recent article on the Intelligencer website where they interviewed a guy that I've known for a long time.
He used to be an editor of Junior Skeptic Magazine, also involved in the Skeptic Society and other things, Daniel Loxton.
And he explained, you know, that, you know, in talking about the Gish Gallup, he said, I can get on stage and say all these different things.
And it's basically, I'm actually getting into the specifics before we've defined the general.
Let me let me go back because I know you were planning to do that, but it's someone who makes a large number of claims in a very short time because they know it can't be debunked that quickly.
And the example that Daniel Loxton used was: okay, I get on stage and I say the Darwinist agenda for vaccines are turning children into Toyotas.
And, you know, so for the debate opponent to start unpacking that, obviously it's going to take a lot longer than the one sentence that someone could spend just spewing that.
Yeah, you're exactly right.
And you can't, this is the, this is one of the big reasons why a debate on this is not useful, because in order for a debate to work, what you really need is both sides to be honest about their commitment to reality.
Right.
And you can't, when one side is willing to forego reality, they get a decided advantage in a debate format.
Yeah.
And because you can't debate unreality fast enough.
You can't.
Right.
And, you know, this takes us back to the, you know, I've brought this up before at least once also.
It might have been in our discussion, you know, of free speech and debates and the like.
Was Brandolini's law, otherwise known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, which states that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
So, that ridiculous thing that I quoted from Daniel Loxton about turning kids into Toyotas, you know, that's just one of them.
But as another more frequent example, an anti-vaxxer can quickly claim that vaccines cause autism, but it takes a scientist a lot more actual work and explanation to show that, in fact, that is clearly not true.
But then the anti-vaxxer goes to a new audience and says it again.
And by then, they've also said that alien overlords that can transmogrify into lizards are slowly replacing all of our leaders.
And yeah.
Yeah.
You know, so the best way to fight these sorts of tactics is, you know, not to get into debates with them because they can use them.
And so this leads to something that we recently discussed on another podcast: the whole situation of Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. and others, you know, attacking Dr. Hotez and saying, oh, he should debate and other people attacking them too.
And the scientists countering by saying, no, if you want to discuss this, if you want the information, send me your thoughts in writing and I will respond to them.
Or, you know, Dr. Hotez even said, I will go on with you, Joe.
I will talk about the facts with you.
You have my phone number.
You have my email address.
I will do that.
I will not debate RFK Jr. because, you know, that's not going to explain anything.
But the thing is, these people want the spectacle.
They want to use these dishonest debating tricks.
They don't want to have their claims actually challenged and shot down with evidence.
Right.
Also true is that Peter Hotez is not a dancing bear.
So, yeah, you don't get to just haul him out of his house and bring him on the air to perform for you whenever you like.
It's not his work.
His work is working in vaccines and going all over the world to different conferences to talk about.
Right.
I mean, but it's not even just him.
So there was an article on science, on the science-based medicine website on June 24th.
And it was written by Dr. Jonathan Howard.
And it's called Steve Kirsch and Brandolini's Law.
So timely.
And so Dr. Howard is a neurologist and psychologist, sorry, psychiatrist.
And he recently wrote the book, We Want Them Infected: How the Failed Quest for Herd Immunity Led Doctors to Embrace the Anti-Vaccine Movement and Blinded Americans to the Threat of COVID.
And this is, of course, about the number of doctors who, you know, basically gave up science and medicine and America's frontline doctors types.
Yeah.
Now, Steve Kirsch, on the other hand, was previously accurately described by Dr. David Gorski, who you have mentioned on previous podcasts and also writes for science-based medicine, might be an editor there.
I can't remember for sure.
He described him as a tech bro turned COVID-19 misinformation super spreader and anti-vaxxer who has now fully embraced old school vaccine autism conspiracy theories.
And Kirsch's name briefly came up on a recent previous podcast.
And he's just out there doing all sorts of crazy stunts.
Like he has money to burn.
And so for a while, he was posting photos, which really looked like creepy old man photos of him sitting next to some woman on a plane who had a mask on and him claiming, I offered her $5,000 to take her mask off and she wouldn't do it and things like that.
It's like, can't you just leave people alone?
And, you know, not to mention, like, if someone did that to me, I'd be like, well, show me the $5,000.
And, you know, I'm sure he doesn't carry $5,000 in cash on him at any given time.
I wouldn't trust him.
But anyway, to circle back to this, Dr. Howard had invited Kirsch to rebut any of his previous articles.
And Kirsch responded with a basically a written gas gallop.
But it won't work in writing because you do have the time to pick it apart.
You're not limited to a debate.
And so in writing, Dr. Howard was able to go through and dismantle these false claims.
Though even in a multi-page article, he only had room to address the very first of Kirsch's nine different BS claims.
And again, that's how quickly, you know, he could say one thing in one sentence, and Dr. Howard had to spend pages and pages and pages to rebut it.
And so he went through, he listed all the different, the misleading statements Kirsch put forth, including the many pieces of important information he didn't share with his readers because he didn't support Kirsch's position.
And, you know, after all that, Dr. Howard closed by saying, I could and might go through the rest of Mr. Kirsch's article, exposing its fake statistics, specious comparisons, and strategic omissions.
However, my rebuttal here would not have been possible during a live debate, which explains why it's a mistake to let performative anti-vaxxers turn children's health into a disinformation display to satisfy their own need to be heterodox.
That's a lot of big words.
But basically, you know, it's like, you know, it goes back to this, you know, all these tricks that they will use, these dishonest tricks, rather than just sticking with the science.
Yeah, that's true.
And Gish Gallup is known by another name.
I think when I was, this is when I was first interacting with you on Twitter, you mentioned this, the fire hose effect or fire hose facts.
Yeah, I wouldn't use the word facts because they're usually fire hose effect, right?
Yeah.
And this, the idea being that you're just spewing things out so quickly that you it's it's coming at you like a fire hose.
And I will point out that the most effective counter to this is what I call the Miyagi defense.
Don't let it happen at all.
And the words, the sage, wise words of Miyagi-san, best defense not be there, which is what you do when you avoid the debate with these people is you don't let it happen in the first place.
They'll still spew this out, but it will get less credibility in the minds of the people who watch.
Right.
Because you, you know, like I said, you know that the reason that Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. wanted, you know, to go back to this again, Dr. Hotez on the Joe Rogan podcast is every person when talking will slip up a little bit or will say, well, I'm not sure about that.
Or on a podcast, that can be clipped out and used against him over and over and over again.
And they will find ways to try to do that and use these Dasonic tat this.
See, there we go.
Like I said, you can slip up when talking.
I'm going to cut that out of context, David, and use it against you.
Yeah, and say David can't talk.
Clearly.
This proves it.
And so they just wanted the spectacle.
And so for them to promote this, instead of simply saying, let's look at the actual scientific information.
Let's look at the peer-reviewed papers.
Oh, wait, that's because there are none supporting their side.
You know, and so again, it's all performative.
It's all dishonest.
Yeah.
So I just want to wrap up what I have here on hijacking Occam's razor, which is that, I mean, we mentioned that the discussion of hijacking Occam's successfully as a demonstration of the tactic.
Yes.
I gish galloped you.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's no way I can possibly refute any of those things because actually they're true.
It's amazing.
But in hijacking Occam's razor, as we mentioned, the way that the trick works is that you find the limit of their knowledge on the topic.
And then at that limit, you insert your narrative, which is always more simple.
Always more simple.
That's the key because it's not only about the person that you're talking to in that moment.
It's about everyone else who's potentially listening.
Oh, right.
And all those people, especially in a lot of cases, they have less knowledge about biology and genetics and vaccines and immunology and virology all the way down the line.
And so they're just trying to figure it out.
And so once you say, oh, well, you must not know everything and you insert your simpler explanation, it might appear to the people who are already well lost that that's a view that sort of makes some kind of sense to them.
And that's the, that's the way that the magic happens, the magician's sleight of hand, as you as we might put it.
And there's a reason why it's wrong.
It's not wrong.
Like Occam's Razor says that if you have if you have a situation that is explained completely by two things and one of those things is simpler, then that's much more likely to be the correct explanation.
Right.
But there's a little word I threw in there that you might not have noticed right away, which is I said completely.
It has to completely explain everything about it, where the simpler explanation that's being inserted when you're hijacking Occam's razor isn't even coming close to explaining all the details.
Well, God did it.
Well, oddly, in the situation where God did it, that is sort of a blanket explanation there.
It's just not scientific because you can't test it.
Well, and there's also the fact that, and this goes back to what I was saying earlier, it sounds simple to just say God did it or the conspiracy did it, but then you have to start asking the questions like, well, where did God come from?
It's not simple to just say an all-knowing, all-powerful being has always existed.
You know, that's not a simpler explanation.
That raises a lot more questions.
Same with the conspiracy.
Well, okay, who's involved in the conspiracy?
How does the conspiracy exist?
How has it stayed secret?
You know, all same, same sort of situation.
It sounds simpler.
Yes.
But it is much, much, much more complicated.
Yeah.
And often still doesn't explain everything.
Right.
And that's one of the real problems with most of these conspiracy beliefs is that once you drill down on them, they start not making sense.
Well, they do make sense.
Probably because there's a hidden complexity underneath the iceberg effect, right?
You're only sort of looking at the top 10%.
And then once you kind of look at it, you realize there's a whole extra monster underneath that vastly increases the complexity, as you say.
But also, they don't explain everything even as they are.
Once you look at and you see more of the details, most of this is presented as, as you pointed out, as a series of disconnected facts with the context carved away such that you think you're only looking at one thing.
But once you add the context in for that, it makes a different sort of sense.
And the simple explanation is not explaining all the context around it.
And then you get these things that don't match.
Whereas science is often also explaining the context and matching perfectly with it.
And this is why going against science is so difficult for all the people who try to do it.
It's because you have to not know anything about science and the context of all the observations in order for it to make any sense.
And that's not happening.
And yeah, with the conspiracy belief, you know, a good conspiracy belief can ignore any question because it always has an answer.
There's always an answer.
Why is there no evidence about, well, because the conspiracy is hiding it.
Yeah.
That can always be the answer.
It's the catch-all explanation.
Yeah.
Right.
And it's the same thing with, you know, it's the old story about, you know, well, okay, the earth is flat.
Well, what's the flat earth standing on?
Well, it's on, it's on four elephants that are walking around.
Well, what are the elephants on?
Well, it's on a turtle.
What's below the turtle?
It's turtles all the way down.
All the way down.
Yeah.
You know, and so, you know, there's, there's always an answer.
Yeah.
And maybe it sounds simple.
It just doesn't necessarily make any sense whatsoever.
And doesn't match with reality.
Right.
So I have one last one, and I don't think it should take too long for this.
So we'll just add it in now at this point.
There's one more thing that happens.
Not many people do this one because it's actually difficult to do, actually.
People who are good at this deserve credit for how good they are at this, but don't deserve credit for the things they're trying to say, usually.
And the thing I'm referring to now is word salad.
So word salad is a collection of large, unwieldy words that are usually spoken in a smooth stream very quickly, and it just becomes completely inaccessible to anyone listening to it.
And you can't mention this without mentioning the supreme undisputed champion of word salad in our world right now, who is none other than Jordan Peterson.
Really, I don't, if anyone thinks anyone is better at word salad than Jordan Peterson, by all means, send me the link.
I would love to see it because this guy is the third degree black belt in this.
It's whenever you listen to him, whenever I listen to him, it's hypnotizing how good he is at this.
And it is a big part of why he has got the level of reverence that he has among his fans.
He is very smart and he's obviously very smart.
And no one could ever take that away from him.
I don't know anyone who even pretends like he's not smart, even his opponents.
And I consider myself an opponent of what he has to say, but no one can say he's dumb, not by any stretch.
Yeah.
I mean, I know people who were fans of his and spoke out and were like, oh, yeah, you know, he said great things about this, this, and this.
And then other people pulled them aside and was like, yeah, you need to look deeper into what he's actually saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, and then they realized it was like, ooh.
Yeah.
I don't know what to do about Jordan Peterson at this point, other than to point out that it's not usually what you think it is.
It's a lot of smoke.
It's a lot of smoke.
And everyone says there must be fire there, but that's a flawed metaphor.
Oh, yeah.
It's absolutely a flawed method.
Smoke machines also make smoke and there's no fire there.
Yes.
And they make the smoke on purpose to, you know, make it look cool or to hide other things.
And that's exactly what he is.
He's a smoke machine.
Yeah.
You know, and there are others too, not to take away from this, but another, I, I, when, when you mentioned we were going to be talking about word salad, it, it struck me, it's, you know, another term that I've seen used.
It sounds sciencey.
Yeah.
And like you just throw words together that sound like science, so they make people think they are.
Yeah.
And Sharon Hill, who I've known for a number of years, met her once at a conference.
You know, she's written, had blogs.
She's on Mastodon now.
And she had a column by this name in Skeptical Inquirer for a little while.
And I think a perfect example was one in which she discussed the so-called ghost hunters, who they, you know, they use equipments like EMF meters and digital recorders and thermal imaging cameras.
And they use terminology like EVP, which is electronic voice phenomena.
And, you know, this all sounds very scientific.
Yeah.
And of course, you know, you know, we're talking about ghost hunting, which is in some ways just silly.
But it's, you know, much worse in a medical debate if someone throws around terminology that sounds like science, but convinces someone to, you know, do something different.
Like, hey, can I sell you a detoxifying alkaline liquid to help balance the pH of your bodily systems?
What did I just say?
I have no idea, but it sounded good.
And I could probably make a few bucks online by selling you very expensive water and saying this.
Yeah.
And some people do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I see it in the store.
I saw, you know, all the, you know, all the time I look at this and I'm like, this is water.
And, you know, this is ridiculously expensive water that they've attached labels to.
And it's, you know, ghost hunters, as silly as it is.
There have been a lot of ghost hunting TV shows and there are a lot of people who believe this nonsense.
And yeah, they go around and things spike on their meters and, oh, that must mean something.
And until you actually test it, like her column, Sharon's column that I happened to look at when I was doing this was about a couple of ghost hunters who actually realized, hey, what happens if we use these meters in a place that's not supposed to be haunted?
And they found the same things.
Yeah.
And that's when they realized, like, oh, wait a minute here.
But of course, if you're making a ghost hunting TV show or you're taking people on ghost tours or some other way, you know, grifting off of this, you know, that's not something you want to do.
Just like you don't want to look too carefully into the claims of detoxifying alkaline liquid to help balance the pH of your bodily systems.
Maybe, you know, maybe I should trademark that now.
No grifting on this podcast, David.
New rule.
I just made that up, but it's you know, I could have grifted so much if only I didn't have this thing called a conscience.
Yeah, you want to sleep at night?
Yeah, yeah.
Use those piles of cash for a pillow.
Yeah, they're just not comfortable enough to make it worthwhile.
Right.
Okay.
Well, I think we're going to probably wrap this up here.
It seems like everything's more or less talked out.
Yeah.
So grifts are bad.
Don't do them.
Occam's razor is useful, but you have to be careful with it.
It's needs to be used in proper situations.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it'll, it is a razor for a reason.
It's double-edged.
Yes.
Yes.
And Gish Gallup is a real thing, and it's also bad.
Be careful.
And don't listen to Jordan Peterson.
Just don't do it.
He's not really saying anything real.
Yeah.
Or Joe Rogan, for that matter.
Unless Jordan Peterson's talking about clinical psychology, because he's probably, he's legitimately good at that.
But everything else.
I don't know.
At this point, I wouldn't listen to him about that either.
Well, I think he's what, you know, you know, kind of like, you know, I wouldn't listen to, you know, RFK Jr. about environmental matters, even though he used to be a well-known environmental lawyer.
He just, he's lost all credibility.
So you're probably right.
But how can people reach you if they want to argue with you?
Well, I argue mostly on Twitter, but I will argue on email if need be.
So send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
Or you can find me on Twitter.
I'm Spencer G. Watson on Twitter, and I go there pretty much every day.
Yep.
And I'm at David Bloomberg on Twitter, on Blue Sky, on Post, on Mastodon.
You know, you can find me just about anywhere.
And you'll find me arguing with these people spreading misinformation and disinformation.