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Brand New Thoughts/Logic & Language
Right Idea, Wrong Words: The Case for Unshittification
Sometimes an argument fails because the intuition is wrong. Sometimes the intuition is useful and the language is too sloppy to carry it.
By ElleJanelle|July 31, 2026|3 min read
Some Bad Arguments Are Carrying Good Ideas
There are two easy ways to respond to a badly stated claim.
You can accept it because you agree with the speaker's general point.
Or you can destroy it because the language is technically indefensible.
Sophisticated Unshitification introduced a third option.
Fix it.
ElleJanelle started using the word unshittification for the process of taking an argument that contains a potentially useful observation and removing the parts that make it sloppy, overbroad or impossible to defend.
Unshittification is what happens when the idea might be right but the sentence is doing a terrible job carrying it.
Brand New Thoughts
Precision Can Change the Claim
Consider this sentence:
War is caused by capitalism.
There may be an important intuition inside it about markets, resources, accumulation or economic competition.
But the sentence collapses too many mechanisms.
Which war?
Which capitalist institutions?
What role did nationalism play?
What role did imperial expansion play?
Was the state seeking territory, resources, labor, markets, security or prestige?
Once those questions appear, the original claim may become:
Capitalist pressures can interact with imperial strategy by creating incentives around markets, resources and accumulation, but they do not explain every cause of war by themselves.
That sentence is less satisfying as a slogan.
It is much harder to knock down.
The Goal Is Not to Make Weak Ideas Sound Smarter
Unshittification is not euphemism.
It is not adding academic vocabulary to rescue an argument that has no evidence.
Sometimes the strongest version of a claim is still false.
The process should be allowed to kill the idea.
A useful sequence is:
- Identify the intuition. What is the speaker actually noticing?
- Define the nouns. What do capitalism, exploitation, power, bias or value mean here?
- Name the mechanism. How does A supposedly produce B?
- Add scope. Always? Usually? Under particular conditions?
- Search for counterexamples. What would make the claim fail?
- Find evidence. What could distinguish the stronger version from a good story?
Definitions are arguments in miniature
Many online fights are actually definition fights disguised as factual fights.
Take the word power.
One person means wealth.
Another means ownership.
Another means political influence.
Another means the ability to make somebody else comply.
If those people argue about whether a celebrity "has power" without defining the term, they can disagree for hours while all describing different variables.
The same problem happens with:
- capitalism;
- imperialism;
- exploitation;
- censorship;
- propaganda;
- violence;
- platforming;
- value;
- bias.
Definitions do not guarantee agreement.
They make disagreement locatable.
Strong Arguments Need Fewer Escape Hatches
Badly stated claims often survive by shape-shifting.
Someone says all X is Y.
A counterexample appears.
Now they mean most X.
Another counterexample appears.
Now they mean X has a tendency toward Y.
Those may be reasonable revisions.
But if the revision only happens after the original version fails, the argument has been moving without admitting it moved.
Unshittification makes the qualifiers visible up front.
That is intellectually cleaner.
How this differs from steelmanning
The closest familiar concept is steelmanning: trying to engage with the strongest reasonable version of an opponent's argument rather than the weakest.
Unshittification can do that.
But it can also be applied to your own argument.
That is the more interesting use.
Before posting the take, ask:
What part of this sentence am I least able to defend?
What am I treating as obvious that actually needs evidence?
What word is carrying three meanings at once?
What would somebody smarter than me attack first?
Then fix that part before they arrive.
Precision Is a Form of Respect
There is a cultural temptation to treat careful language as weakness.
Qualifiers sound less confident.
"It depends" sounds evasive.
"Under these conditions" does not fit neatly on a thumbnail.
But precision respects both the subject and the audience.
It says the goal is not simply to win the sentence.
The goal is to describe reality correctly enough that the argument can be useful after the moment passes.
That is what unshittification is for.
Watch the episode
What argument needs unshittification?
Add to the DiscussionName a popular claim that you think contains a real insight but is usually stated too broadly to defend.