Penn & Teller: BS!

Cafe Society
21

Sam Stone,
I don’t recall the wording on the label but I certainly had they impression that they filtered the municipal water before bottling it. Otherwise why mention it on the label?

If a bottle says something like “filtered municipal water” wouldn’t most people assume that they meant that they took municipal water from the mains and filtered it? (Are any of these episodes available on line - legally at someplace like HULU? If so I might try to find that one to see what exactly it said.)

Then again, knowing how marketing works, you may be correct. The water may have come straight out of the tap but been labeled “filtered” (which would have been technically true, but misleading) in order to give the misimpression that it wasn’t something straight out of the tap. If so, then it actually bolsters their point that it’s a ripoff.

Maybe that’s not the best example, but it’s the one that stuck in my mind for some reason. However, I definitely recall seeing things that I thought were misleading and I even recall talking with others about it. Of course, that statement is worth the ink it’s printed with (0) without some concrete examples.

Hotflungwok did give an example, concerning colleges. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. They’re selective in their examples, then use those examples to backup a conclusion. That conclusion may or may not be correct, but they haven’t proven it.

In reference to your other point about information versus entertainment, P&T like to portray themselves as being paragons of skepticism, objectivity and logic but they’re also entertainers, so you may have a point. Except that the two things aren’t necessarily like oil and water. You can give factual and complete information and be entertaining at the same time.

I am perfectly capable of separating entertainment from real information. My problem is when there is little or no real information. To use Hotflungwok’s example, where is the real information when they selectively show a few rabidly politically correct liberal college students and then act as if they’ve proven that colleges are liberal brainwashing camps. Anyone who’s been to college knew students like that as well as students who were just the opposite and many (most) who were somewhere in between.

The show is called “Bullshit!”. The premise is that they are uncovering various practices and beliefs that are bullshit. They portray themselves as skeptics. They claim that they are exposing bullshit. When the methods the use to do those exposes are themselves bullshit - well - need I say more?

22

The lie detector one last night was great.I’m watching this poor couple get torn apart by the bullshit that is the lie detector, and I’m thinking, damn, they have to show the woman this footage. But they didn’t; they let the couple split up without interfering. Then Penn makes the excellent point that though the guy thinks he got robbed of his chance at paradise, they probably saved him from a life of hell. Imagine marrying a woman who has so little faith in you that she needs you to take a lie detector test. Oofa. (I’m so trying the sphincter clench if I ever face one of those things.)As for the bottled water episode, I didn’t think that was dishonest in any way regardless of whether or not the municipal water was filtered. Their point was that people see bottled water and naturally assume it’s water from some sparkling spring somewhere in untouched nature.

I also rather liked the point that the EPA regulation of municipal water is stronger than FDA regulation of natural spring water.

23

After a quick google to make sure I didn’t mix up which is regulated by the EPA and which the FDA, I ran across this from earlier this month: (bolding mine)

If the bottle they showed did indeed get further filtered, I doubt the marketing department would voluntarily list their source as the municipal water supply when they didn’t have to.

This part strikes me as frightening if true:

24

As I said, I think bottled water is a ripoff. I agreed with their conclusion.

I just think that there’s a major difference between water that’s straight from the tap and water that’s been filtered (depending on how well it’s been filtered). If that water was indeed filtered by the company, then it was a misleading example.

25

Well, IIRC the point they were making in the segment was that it says “mountain spring” on the label and has a picture of a forest on the bottle, but the actual source of the water was some run down building in El Paso. A valid point, even if the water is filtered. I can’t remember how they presented it - whether they said “The image is of majestic mountains, but the source is actually here” or “what they put in the bottle is just tap water”.

26

Sure the show is biased (it’s not a debate show, nor should it when many of the sides have no leg to stand on in the first place) and you may not always agree with their viewpoint, but they don’t edit interviews out of context. They don’t lie to the people and tell them they’re doing anything other than the show on Showtime called Bullshit (like Borat/Bruno does to get people to sign the releases). They provide people they interview DVDs of the show so they know exactly what they’re going to be up against.

I think one problem is, they have really strong episodes (many from the first season, actually) where they are for sure right and have strong arguments, such as being against creationism and proving psychics are frauds. Then you have weaker episodes, where their point of view seems a little less supported and you’re not entirely sure why they did the episode (perhaps they’re running low on ideas). I’d put episodes like the college one in this category.

They’ve also repeatedly say whenever the show is ending its run, they’ll do a “Bullshit of Bullshit” episode where they point out all the things they got wrong, like secondhand smoke. At least they acknowledge they’re not infallible and do make mistakes (such as by using outdated research on the secondhand smoke episode).

27

I remember the secondhand smoke episode. So they’ve actually admitted they got that one wrong? I have to give them some credit for that.

I think their Libertarianism blinded them on that issue. Political true believers, of all stripes, can sometimes be selective with their facts.

28

Maybe the bottled water thing is a bad example. It’s just the one that stuck in my mind for whatever reason.

29

I do have to say that the orgasm show was a little disappointing in that it was a total retread of their first season show on sex and like all visual media, was severely lacking in gratuitous nudity.

30

The orgasm one was pretty directionless. I don’t know what it is was that they were declaring bullshit exactly.

The rest of the season seems to be going well though. So far they’ve gone back to what they do best - bashing unambiguous bullshit like astrology and 2012ers.

31

I just got around to watching the Lie Detector (most recent) episode and it was excellent. This is an issue where there’s no clear cut political stance on as to whether or not it works, so I don’t see them having biases going into it. But in their research, they figured out it was bullshit, and then made one of their most tightly plotted, convincing episodes.

Plus I learned a new trick for my anus.

32

That’s a really unfair assessment of that episode, and it’s not what they concluded at all.

Their conclusion was that the idea that everybody requires a college education to have any hope of making anything other than minimum wage is bullshit. And that the student loan industry is full of bullshit. And they also threw in some justified mocking of wacky liberal-arts types.

They rightly point out that, obviously, college is necessary and useful for people who need it for the job they want to do. And they never criticized anyone who just wants to go and learn stuff.

One of their interview subjects was a freshman woman who didn’t have any idea what she wanted to do with her life, but at the end of the episode said she’s going to college for the opportunity to meet people and learn interesting things. This comment garnered respect and admiration from the hosts.

33

I think the 2012 is a great example of the spin. Of all the 2012 believers, they got the wackiest ones out there. WTF were those 2 yahoos climbing the temples? Were they scholars at all? Of course if you pick the worst the other side has to offer, the “correct” side seems obvious.

34

Are there any 2012 apocalypse people who aren’t yahoos?

35

How dare they exclude all those reasonable people who, upon examination of the objective evidence, have determined how and why the world will be destroyed in 2012. Why they obviously should’ve gone to… uh… help me out here - where do you find those reasonable people they excluded?

The couple that went to Mexico was an attempt, I think, to show how people look for and find something mysterious if that’s their goal - I suspect the trip didn’t go as well for them because the couple was boring, but hey, they’d already paid for it so they’ll air it.

They had a scholar - there was a professor of Latin American studies who explained that the Mayans themselves didn’t hold the belief that the world would end then - their calendar would “flip over” and start anew at that date… they just had a ridiculously long iteration time on their time cycles.

There’s this idea in our society that we need to establish a false balance - to give either side of a debate equal time and respect as if they were equally worthy. So when the news does stories like “Do ghosts exist?” they give equal credulity to the “yes” and “no” position because they seem to think that to be fair they have to treat both positions as equally valid. Even on non-paranormal matters they do this - for example when they do a story on why the dinosaurs died out, about 98%+ of reputable scientists who study the field agree it was a meteor. But a small subset of scientists think it was a giant volcano or series of volcanos. The scientific consensus is strong, but media stories feel as though they need to present balance, so they give the meteor and volcanco hypotheses equal weight.

36

It’s often worse than this. They treat any woo with total credulity and only give a bit of token skepticism.

37

I watched their episode on electric cars about halfway through before turning it off. They got some schmuck who runs an electric-car-appreciation club to come on, and then made fun of him because he wasn’t familiar with the mechanics of the cars. Then they got a lesbian couple to drive the car, and made fun of it because it didn’t accelerate as quickly as a sports car. Did they ever get around to making a legitimate point? I found it very irritating, and that, coupled with a few other episodes I’ve seen, made me think that they don’t always go out looking for the strongest defender of an opposition viewpoint, but will often find some poor dumb slob to pick on as a symbol of the viewpoint they disagree with.

38

Their point on the electric cars was that they’re underpowered, take a long time to refuel, and a full tank won’t get you very far. Plus batteries are expensive, don’t last more than a few years, and pose an environmental hazard when spent.

I believe they also touched on Hybrids, though I’m not positive on that. (Aren’t much more gas-efficient than a good modern car built for fuel efficiency, and are much heavier than pure ICE making them less energy-efficient.)

39

Yep. One reason I do like Penn and Teller is because, I can’t remember where I read it, but Penn said (and he may have been quoting someone else) an intellectual is someone who is willing to completely change their mind given facts or logic leading to the contrary. Which of course, is what they did regarding their SS episode.

40

It seems to me that there were a couple of seasons in the middle of the run that weren’t very good. The Electric Car one was in that period.

The one that they did that really creeped me out though, was one (I don’t remember the specific title) of images of Jesus in tortillas and such.

An issue we can all agree is bullshit, right? I found myself rooting for the pro-Jesus-burrito guys. If someone’s taking money or promising that their tortilla-Jesus can heal you, fine-you’re doing harm.

But they spent a third of their show going after a little old lady who had an image of Jesus that got projected on her basement door for a couple of hours each day (flaw in the window glass). The problem was
A) She did NOT charge anyone for viewing it. As a matter of fact, she served cookies to people who stopped in to visit.
B) She didn’t make any claims other than “Wow! Isn’t it a miracle that Jesus put his image on my door!” She certainly didn’t make magic healing claims or anything.

It was fucking creepy to see the way they went after her. Wanna go after people charging $2000 for healing Jesus-Burgers? Be my guest and I’ll applaud. Go after people who let guests touch their Jesus-Fridge with the assurance that they can throw away their cancer meds? I’ll cheer.

Go after a lonely little old lady who isn’t taking money and isn’t promising anything? Not so much.