Frankfurt argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the bullshitter’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that the truth matters. Because of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Silver’s claims that the 2024 election outcome is essentially a coin-flip. While this may be accurate—although 67/33 is pushing it—Coplan’s response partially serves to deflect future backlash about the accuracy of the prediction, to remind people that if something has, for example, 33 percent odds of happening, that means it still happens 33 percent of the time. But it also obscures the fact that the odds themselves and their attached returns, not just the events being predicted, are what reel people in.