BS Detector Quiz: Can You Spot Faulty Arguments?

A BS detector is the habit of checking a claim's source, evidence, and incentives before accepting it, which is different from simply disbelieving everything. It means asking "what's the evidence?" and "who benefits if I believe this?" rather than reacting on gut feel alone.

A skeptic withholds judgment until they see evidence, then updates their view accordingly, so the claim stays open to being true. A cynic dismisses claims by default regardless of evidence, which is just as unreliable as blind trust because it rejects good information along with bad.

Large language models generate the statistically likely next word, not verified fact, which produces a failure mode known as hallucination. Confident phrasing and specific-sounding numbers are not evidence of accuracy, which is why cross-checking AI-generated claims against primary sources matters as much as checking a human source.

Start by naming the common ones: ad hominem (attacking the person, not the argument), strawmanning (misrepresenting a claim to make it easier to knock down), and appeal to authority ("studies show" with no study named). Once you can label a fallacy, it becomes much easier to notice it live in an argument instead of just feeling vaguely unconvinced.