https://blog.patchaure.com/categories/bullshit-and-verisimilitude/ Recent content in Bullshit and Verisimilitude on Patch Aure's Blog https://blog.patchaure.com/images/og-default.png https://blog.patchaure.com/images/og-default.png Hugo -- 0.163.3 en Sat, 04 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/which-stage-were-you-standing-on/ Sat, 04 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/which-stage-were-you-standing-on/ A speaker invents his origin story, gets caught, and claims a storyteller's license after years received as a mentor. The field you are received in sets your truth-bar. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-hearing-is-the-argument/ Fri, 03 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-hearing-is-the-argument/ A barangay captain says every fair, multi-causal thing and the hearing still performs one accusation, because the form points a finger no careful words can pull back. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/everyone-in-the-room-cared/ Thu, 02 Jul 2026 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/everyone-in-the-room-cared/ A company's statement after a workplace death is true in every line and still works like bullshit, because the structure that wrote it puts liability above the truth. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/bullshit-and-verisimilitude/ Tue, 30 Jun 2026 08:10:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/bullshit-and-verisimilitude/ Bullshit and verisimilitude, the whole map. Honesty moves from the surface of a sentence to the engine that made it, and the model is the purest truth-agnostic case. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-soft-spot-in-my-own-framework/ Sun, 15 Mar 2026 09:25:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-soft-spot-in-my-own-framework/ My test for telling bullshit from verisimilitude rests on watching who revises over time. A patient bullshitter can fake the whole track. Still unresolved. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-contradiction-i-have-not-resolved/ Sun, 01 Feb 2026 08:10:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-contradiction-i-have-not-resolved/ I hold two claims that collide: AI text at scale degrades discernment, yet good actors should flood with verisimilitude. Source-anchoring may not save it. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/three-questions-not-one/ Sun, 09 Nov 2025 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/three-questions-not-one/ One axis cannot sort an honest message from bullshit. You need three: does it care about truth, will it correct itself, and does it stay open to reply. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/ask-who-answers-for-it/ Sat, 08 Nov 2025 07:40:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/ask-who-answers-for-it/ A model cannot be accountable. So the real question about AI is never whether the machine is correct, but who answers for what the human system puts out. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/not-lying-not-bullshitting/ Fri, 07 Nov 2025 08:20:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/not-lying-not-bullshitting/ A language model is not lying and not bullshitting either. It has no stance toward truth at all. That third position needs its own name: truth-agnostic. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/why-i-gave-up-on-good-bullshit/ Thu, 06 Nov 2025 09:30:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/why-i-gave-up-on-good-bullshit/ I once praised a series of hero films as 'good bullshit.' That label collapses on its own terms. Fabrication with accountability is not bullshit at all. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/one-true-fact-twenty-true-stories/ Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/one-true-fact-twenty-true-stories/ From one verified fact, a city that saved 150 million pesos by opening its bidding, you can write twenty honest posts. Here is the rule that keeps them honest. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/truth-is-generatively-rich/ Mon, 13 Oct 2025 09:15:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/truth-is-generatively-rich/ One verified fact can be told a thousand honest ways, each one true. Honesty was never thin. The limit on good actors was imagination, not the truth itself. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/you-cannot-out-post-the-trolls/ Sun, 12 Oct 2025 08:40:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/you-cannot-out-post-the-trolls/ Good actors lose to troll networks if they try to match the volume. The way out: make governance the content and let reality generate the honest artifacts. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/information-is-like-food/ Wed, 02 Jul 2025 07:55:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/information-is-like-food/ Information is receiver-dependent the way food is, yet not subjective. It is objective and relational at once, which is what lets anyone be held to account. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/a-myth-you-are-allowed-to-question/ Tue, 01 Jul 2025 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/a-myth-you-are-allowed-to-question/ Societies run on stories, not just facts. A healthy national myth passes one test: it can be questioned without the questioner being called a traitor. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/neither-tool-nor-companion/ Fri, 27 Jun 2025 08:05:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/neither-tool-nor-companion/ A hammer is kasangkapan, a friend is kapwa, and a large language model is neither one. I want a third word for what we actually do with it: kasangkapwa. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/authenticity-is-yours/ Thu, 26 Jun 2025 09:10:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/authenticity-is-yours/ Authenticity is a disposition of the person; verisimilitude is a property of the output. A machine can lift the work toward truth without ever being authentic. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/when-only-the-true-counts-as-information/ Mon, 23 Jun 2025 08:50:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/when-only-the-true-counts-as-information/ If only true statements count as information, you lose room for honest approximation, and you hand a status to lucky bullshit that it never actually earned. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/what-a-single-fact-check-cannot-catch/ Sun, 22 Jun 2025 07:45:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/what-a-single-fact-check-cannot-catch/ A true-or-false verdict on one claim tells you almost nothing about bullshit. The real tell is whether the speaker revises over time or moves the goalposts. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-same-words-a-different-engine/ Sat, 21 Jun 2025 09:20:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-same-words-a-different-engine/ A careful sentence and a bullshit one can read word-for-word identically. The difference is not on the surface; it lives in the mechanism that produced them. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-word-i-was-missing/ Thu, 19 Jun 2025 08:15:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-word-i-was-missing/ Verisimilitude means truth-likeness. A claim can be wrong and still honest, because honesty lives in how it holds itself: hedged, open, ready to be corrected. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-vast-middle-between-true-and-false/ Wed, 18 Jun 2025 09:00:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-vast-middle-between-true-and-false/ Most honest speech is neither literally true nor false but a simplification under uncertainty, and the bullshit-versus-truth binary has no place to file it. https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-liar-still-respects-the-truth/ Tue, 17 Jun 2025 08:30:00 +0800 https://blog.patchaure.com/posts/the-liar-still-respects-the-truth/ A liar tracks the truth in order to negate it. A bullshitter does not care either way, and that indifference corrodes far more than any single lie can.