This week I’ve had the opportunity to wander the UC Berkeley campus and neighborhood. Strolling down streets such as Euclid, Oxford, and Hawthorne on such a beautiful campus had me in a philosophical mood when up popped episode 90 of the Data Skeptic podcast with a topic that made my evening. In this episode, Kyle interviews Gordon Pennycock on his recent paper “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit”. Gordon leads off with a reference to a favorite short essay of my by Harry Frankfurt’s, “On Bullshit” which addresses the nature and role of bullshit from a philosophical and ethical standpoint. The combination of statistics, cognitive psychology, and philosophical topics in this episode, coupled with the Berkeley setting, really made the moment for me and brought me back to the philosophers I’ve enjoyed so much in the past such as Kant, Rawls, and Korsgaard. The application of rational thinking to improve the world both materially and ethically is my personal ideal and is a theme which I strive to have present in all the work that I do.