He’s phony, she’s fake
That’s the type of people I hate
— Swizz Beatz
In one of the episodes of Avatar: The Legend of Aang, the Avatar and Prince Zuko embark on a journey to rediscover the origins of firebending, that supernatural quality of summoning fire from oneself into one’s external reality.
Prince Zuko could do it, but after losing the drive to continue chasing the Avatar, he lost it. He defied his father’s orders and plans and decided to make amends with his former nemesis. He needed a new source for his bending.
Aang, on the other hand, feared using fire as an element because it hurt the one person he cared for. He didn’t want to do it again.
Both of them needed to master firebending before Sozen’s comet, which would be used by the Fire Lord Ozai to completely take over the world. The best place to start, they thought, was to visit the original fire benders, the Sun Warriors.
Legend goes that the sun was the original source of fire, so the community believed. Firebending was part of their practice and was used in their rituals. But this was hardly the most riveting of customs from this old civilization, because the land where these people walked housed dragons. Dragons, not humans, were the teachers to anyone who wanted to learn firebending.
Before facing these teachers, the tribal elder gave a warning. If one does not open up and show their true selves with honest intentions, then the dragons would see through it and completely burn them. With this high-stakes requirement, Avatar Aang and Prince Zuko proceeded to face the masters.
Each of them had to take with them a piece of fire from the original flame, a flame the community had preserved from its very beginning. Up the staircase, Aang freaks out and forgets he is carrying a piece of the flame. He turns to Zuko and asks him to split some of his. The fighting further extinguishes Zuko’s fire. Now they were all laid bare, without tongues of flame, past the point of no return, when the two dragon masters emerged.
Dragons were symbolic
If you real and you know it clap your hands
— Swizz Beatz
The dragons in this scene were symbolic. Their colours reminded me of the Bunsen burner. With a little adjustment, you could get a luminous flame. Adjust it some more, and then you would have the non-luminous one. Each had its unique features. Both were dangerous if mishandled. In part, I believe the dragon represented these two types of flame.
They also represented a teacher you could never bullshit. They would see straight through your bluff and fake confidence. Any lies were completely extinguished. Death through incineration.
The dragons’ eyes had a penetrating gaze that would arrest and paralyze. Once you survived the gaze, the teachers would then introduce the student to the harmony present in fire. Fire, as Aang would soon find out, was not always a weapon of destruction, but an element of nature that can renew, light up paths, and create a chance for rebirth. The two candidates walked away with a renewed mission, but first, their bullshit had to be called out.
Another series where dragons could scare the life out of anyone was in George R. R. Martin’s Game of Thrones. Their gaze put the fear of nature into any man with a weak spine. Given a chance, I doubt many today could stand before these mythical creatures.
We don’t have dragons. But we have a lot of fake people. Question is, how do you detect them?
This is not an article that gives a breakdown on how to identify the fake. It is a call to all of us to individually update our bullshit radar and identify the fake from the original.
A fake individual is someone who has no genuine intention. They will lick boots and kiss ass to get wherever they wish. Unprincipled. They yield to a game whose rules others have abided by, without sticking to their guns.
Who are the real? They are the kind that yield not to pressure, but only to principle. Feeble as many may be, they try to stick by their word. In the words of Harry Hart, the Kingsman, manners maketh man.
One place to identify fakery is in the CV. LinkedIn will flood your timeline with flowery praises of one’s achievements and a bio to match. Maybe I don’t like to parade my accomplishments, but from evolution, these behaviours always have intentions. Signaling can teach us something about the fake from the real.
Nassim Taleb gives a good example of a physician. Given the choice between the one with the perfect smile, minty-fresh white coat with a clean stethoscope, and the raggedy one with unkempt hair and an old but still clean lab coat, Nassim would choose the latter. The “dirty” one got to the position despite his presentation; the “clean” one likely got there partly because of it.
Professions such as those in medicine hitchhike the appearances bus. Patients would prefer a well-dressed doctor over one who is shabby. Ironically, at the same time, they would rather have an experienced one who may not always look neat. From Nassim’s example, one signals competence despite what one sees, while the other appeals to the eye first before showing competence, if they have it at all. Light, indeed, travels faster than sound.
In my practice, I have seen these two examples. True to Taleb’s case, the most confident ones don’t have to show it. They don’t market themselves. They don’t performatively signal. The fake ones need to use props.
And yet, when you survey a CV or resume, you can hardly tell who is competent and who isn’t. In the age of AI, one can embellish their documents to appear pristine, but the actual person does not match the praises they accord themselves. A professor who frequents our facility witnessed this recently after he interviewed individuals for a graduate position. The people were not nearly as superb as their papers highlighted. He then began to wonder if the paper-reliant vetting process had eliminated those who could have fit the bill. We don’t have dragons in the real world.
I am particularly wary of individuals who like to say that they are good people. Goodness is not seen in the words. It’s shown in acts. Anyone who prefers to advertise their persona upfront should be taken with a pinch of salt. Worse, some document it through videos to share it on their socials. Thus, the parading of one’s abilities on platforms such as LinkedIn is low-tier evidence in my book.
Many obs/gyne consultants cannot perform half of the procedures seasoned birth assistants do. The latter did not get their certification from ISO-certified institutions. Life served as the dragon. With time, all bullshit is exhumed. If a paper is all it takes to brand oneself an expert, then the process can be gamed. Who doesn’t know of anyone who has bought their way into getting a qualification document?
Institutions are no different. One can claim they went to a top-tier university, but that is no different from the white-coat doctor’s props. In a famously circulated interview, Barack Obama gives it to us straight — there are a bunch of foolish people in Harvard. The school speaks for the individual, but few incidents show that they are riding the wave of the school’s reputation while naked, with nothing to show for themselves.
Great authors have gone to the grave without the world knowing about them. I am presently reading a book by Joseph Fishkin called Bottlenecks. I doubt I would have found it on the bestseller’s list. This is a book I would recommend to anyone interested in affirmative action, equality, and equity. In the book, he argues about process efficiency, but with the sad result of outcome inequality. Basically, how our world has been shaped. Fishkin suggests an alternative solution, opportunity pluralism rather than equal opportunity. You won’t find his book on the bestseller list.
Why?
The bestseller is not necessarily the best author.
The best doesn’t surface. You have to sell it. J.K. Rowling may not be known today if Harry Potter had not been sold into a global franchise. Does that make her the best author? As big a fan as I am of her work, I will not fall into the trap of answering that question.
What’s worse is that history is usually written not just by the victors, but by those who choose to write or have something written about them. Writing is a fantastic way to market your skills. Victors have a slower decay rate than losers, while in essence, we learn more from losing than winning. With stories and narration as our best means of passing down traditions, winners will craft stories they believe led to their success. These stories will sell as blueprints, but even if strictly followed, they will not lead to outcomes as successful as their leading proponents.
The online world worsens our already bad state. A young adult looking for love will readily latch onto a profile one made of themselves on Tinder. A couple of words on display, and someone believes that they have found their perfect match. Still, the platform makes a killing from this naivety.
When someone posts a video or photo, the number of likes does not mean everyone liked it. How do you tell a real like from a fake one?
Now we have bots. Anyone who has access to a social media platform has already interacted with a chatbot. These bots are optimized for reasons best used to serve their owners. Genuine interaction will continue to fade.
Now we have deepfakes. Apps can substitute a real image with a fake one, and our slowly evolving organs will hardly know the difference. What then? Our bullshit detectors don’t get that much funding. While we continue to praise the steps made in AI, we continue to become victims of manipulation.
There are genuine builders. They will make a product or introduce a service to solve problems. A scientist interested in the GPS may not need to swindle you out of your money, because the service helps with navigation. However, someone who claims that all your problems will be solved by sending $9.99 and enrolling in a certain spirituality programme is selling snake oil. All your problems? Really? Anyone who tries to bypass your bullshit detector is someone who has goals of using you.
Faking has existed for eons. Evolutionarily, it means it can easily bypass many bullshit detectors. We therefore need to continue updating our servers and radars.
The Müller-Lyer illusion is a popular example of how easy it is to convince us of a difference that doesn’t exist. These two horizontal lines are the same length. We can easily be bullshitted. So we have to constantly update our bullshit filters.
Garrett Hardin wrote a book to guide against falling victim. As powerful as the filters he suggested can be, they cannot be the only ones we can use. We can always update them and improve our toolkit.
The subtitle of this piece underlies the purging of the fake, the bullshit, as the dragons did to Aang and Prince Zuko. We therefore have to call it when we see it. Verbally, and directly, or by tagging those you identified flaunting these traits. Choosing how best to interact with them in the next encounter will catch them off guard and make them realign their priorities. These are the small ways I can think of to purge the fake.
Among Kenyans, we have a relatable behaviour. Someone claims that they are in a fix and wants your assistance. They then make the mistake of saying that they will return the amount you lent them. Worse still, they give themselves a timeline. They could do either of these two options. They either fail to honour their word. These can be easily tagged. Or, they could keep their promise to a T, but usually with the intention of borrowing more. The ability to refund money that is regularly borrowed implies an ability to manage funds. However, the regularity is low-key, using someone as a backup for not getting one’s finances in order. The level of grace you will lend this individual is up to you. As always, you have to keep our bullshit radar constantly updated.
Communication is also one way to identify the real from the fake. Real ones communicate. We know life can have you in a fix sometimes. Fake ones ignore any attempt at conversation. As Swizz Beatz laments, “That’s the type of people I hate.”
What I’m trying to say is…
In a famous story about Max Planck and his driver, we are told that the driver has taken the Nobel Laureate to many conferences, where Planck talks about the same thing. One time, the chauffeur insisted that he give the talk. “Why not?” Planck thought. That day, Planck was the driver.
The conference wasn’t about maternity, but the driver delivered.
At the end of the talk, someone from the audience asked a question. It was technical. But the guy was smart. He responded:
That question is so simple that I would rather not answer it myself. I would let my driver do it.
You see that question? That’s how you call bullshit.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube