Bullshitization and Common Indifference Problems

Joshua C. Wakeham's 2017 paper "Bullshit as a Problem of Social Epistemology" is discussed here as a survey of bullshit studies that builds toward a social epistemological model, and the author uses it to propose "Common Indifference" as a framework. The author argues that bullshit is an adaptive social process for building shared Common Indifference maps of reality, one that is accumulating negative externalities at an accelerating rate because of the internet and AI. The author calls this process "bullshitization," comparing it to financialization and enshittification, and says the core difficulty is telling sincere uncertainty from bullshit, a problem that is most pressing when someone has a real stake in the truth.