111–120 of 298 posts
I am considering a Feynman detector for bullshit (as defined in the article): See if you can come up with a specific example that the sentence describes. If you can a point to a specific example which works, the sentence is not bullshit. Feynman famously used this technique to understand and quickly find flaws in complex mathematical theories - he followed a specific example along. Anyway, back to the article; I am n…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes you can. In fact, considering happiness is a feeling, it’s a reasonable question whether there is even a difference between feeling happy and “being” happy.
Ok -- we must have such different internal lives that I'm willing to believe that your imagined pains actually hurt you. Responding to your edit: >whether there is even a difference between feeling happy and “being” happy. That's not the question. The question is whether there's a difference between feeling happy and imagining yourself feeling happy.
If you answer, well laughter is physical while pain is mental, then I will ask you how that is a genuine dichotomy. The mental representation of unexperienced pain is also, in truth, a physical phenomenon since the mind is a physical experience, but the mental representation of pain is not the same as experienced pain.
But pain or pleasure, sadness or happiness from some imagined event, yes, that's real and it's what the original sentence intended to say, I believe.
Edit: This was meant as a reply to addicted rather than foldr...
Scientists! I offer my services as an author of better bullshit than you can create by feeding a parody generator with marketing materials. Observe! - The unknown flees from the implausible. - Unheard elephants are never green. - Although many people seek apples, few seek the road. - Judgement is like chewing on expensive rubber. - A circle is a square with intention.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who picked out the "two categories" of statements with 100% accuracy before looking at the answers... I think he has a point. Creativity could be proposed to be conditional on maintaining personal well-being (health) while undergoing exposure to many new experiences (tolerance). Losing your health during exposure to new things makes you reactionary and conservative and want to cling to set ideas. Have no t…
Conterargument is that unhappy creative people exist and are not rare. So does bigoted closed minded creative people. Unhealthy people can also be both creative and non-creative, both cling to one set of ideas or change their minds constantly. Pain makes you more nervous, frustrated, snappy etc, but you can still be creative. Conversely, you can be tolerant and healthy, but still completely non-creative, whether it m…
Why is the second sentence "profound"? If I were to say it sounds like bullshit to me (it actually kind of does?) what would be the counter-argument, other than "we asked X people and the majority felt it was a profound statement" (equally, a bullshit statement)?
I reckon there is no concrete way to formalise the meaning of "bullshit" and "profundity". One person's bullshit statement can easily bee another's profound wisdom ("turn the other cheek" - bullshit, or profound? "Live and let live" - bullshit, or profound? etc).
So what exactly is the point of trying to predict behaviour from observations about subjective quantities? What exactly is being claimed here? That if I have a strong view about what is bullshit and what is not, I can predict how people will behave?
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But a pragmatist in many people would say: “why then that person does not take any antidepressants/codeine?”, if that pain is so painful? So it may be quite a bullshit statement, depending on how you take it.
We're just talking about cases where people suffer pain because of false beliefs, which can easily happen to people who have no mental health issues. If you heard that a loved one died, you'd be in a lot of pain, regardless of whether or not that report was true (so long as you believed it).
A simple self-experiment if you haven't read the paper, find which of these sentences are bullshit. Answer in order without reading further ahead, and don't go back to change your answers (as to replicate experimental conditions). * 1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence. 2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty. 3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seek…
The only sentence that confused me is this one: > 3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person. I'm not a native English speaker, so I might be wrong, but I'm reading this as "the future will more likely reveal the truth to those who are open-minded" which seems to be too profound to be bullshit. Of course, "irrational fact" is an awkward way to refer to false beliefs, but awkwardness≠bullshit.
The one that tripped me up was “imagined pain hurts not less because its imagined” Is that saying people who suffer psychologically actually suffer? Or should i take it at face bullshit value?
A simple self-experiment if you haven't read the paper, find which of these sentences are bullshit. Answer in order without reading further ahead, and don't go back to change your answers (as to replicate experimental conditions). * 1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence. 2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty. 3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seek…
The only sentence that confused me is this one: > 3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person. I'm not a native English speaker, so I might be wrong, but I'm reading this as "the future will more likely reveal the truth to those who are open-minded" which seems to be too profound to be bullshit. Of course, "irrational fact" is an awkward way to refer to false beliefs, but awkwardness≠bullshit.
>> Bullshit-sensitivity is the ability to distinguish pseudo-profound bullshit sentences (e.g. “Your movement transforms universal observations”) from genuinely profound sentences (e.g. “The person who never made a mistake never tried something new”). Why is the second sentence "profound"? If I were to say it sounds like bullshit to me (it actually kind of does?) what would be the counter-argument, other than "we ask…
I cannot give you example for the first sentence (because it is bullshit), but for the second sentence, I can imagine a person who tries a lot of new things and makes a lot of mistakes, presumably because they do not know how to do it. The way the sentence is phrased is just a reversed implication of that.
Note that the "profound" sentence can still be wrong or false or even unfalsifiable statement. The point is that you can assign meaning to it, build a mental model around it.