Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

journals.plos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 298 posts

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#151

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

kurthr wrote: post #138
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #116

>> 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…

Bullshit isn't EVEN wrong... its meaningless quackery that uses words people who don't understand find important (intelligence signalling). Profundity is in the eye of the beholder, and I may sometimes argue about specifics, but like stereotypes it has some value even in refutation or outside of its field...F=ma!

There are certainly statements that are easy to identify as bullshit or not; the problem is what happens with the probably much larger set that's somewhere in the middle.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#152

Post by kjeetgill »

pixl97 wrote: post #131
duopixel wrote: post #19

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…

>1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence. This one annoys me, because of it's ether/or proposition when it is more of a and/or function. Yes, water including rivers cuts through rocks in more than one way. For example, Ph differences in the water can cause chemical weathering of the rock. In general these effects happen slowly and need to be persistent for any measurable effect.…

You're right of course but you get what they _mean_ right?

Persistence can be key to accomplishing something significant you don't feel capable of.

Or am I being too charitable?

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#153

Post by TheCoelacanth »

waterhouse wrote: post #54
duopixel wrote: post #19

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…

Expert steelmanner here. This is fun. 1. The river cuts through a rock because its power is above some threshold where it causes more than zero damage, and the damage multiplied by the persistence (time spent) is what it does to the rock. (Compare the photoelectric effect; if the photons are too weak, they don't do anything no matter how many you have.) Of course, a scientist probably wouldn't use that language. 2. A…

> The whole silence infinite phenomena

That works as a sentence even without the change. "The whole " can be parsed as "People who are whole".

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#154

Post by kjeetgill »

rezeroed wrote: post #140
duopixel wrote: post #19

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…

"Genuinely profound"? I'd call them cheesy.

Yea, I read "Genuinely profound" and flinched a but too. I read it here to mean even basically coherent ideas. Compared to the "bullshit" ones I think they still stood out though.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#155

Post by wavefunction »

kjeetgill wrote: post #152
pixl97 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence. This one annoys me, because of it's ether/or proposition when it is more of a and/or function. Yes, water including rivers cuts through rocks in more than one way. For example, Ph differences in the water can cause chemical weathering of the rock. In general these effects happen slowly and need to be persistent for any measurable effect.…

You're right of course but you get what they _mean_ right? Persistence can be key to accomplishing something significant you don't feel capable of. Or am I being too charitable?

That specific example seems more like some combination of persistence and power is required: great power suddenly and temporarily expressed could cut through stone while a weak power expressed over a long-enough time frame would have the same effect. On it's face it's only a partially true statement and thus is effectively 'BS' when presented as an aphorism.

As well, it anthropormorphizes the effect of gravity on water as 'persistence.' It might serve as a fine metaphor for human persistence but that's all.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#156

Post by js8 »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #149
js8 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How it works for me: Try to find a more concrete example of the sentence. If you can't, then it's (likely) bullshit. 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 t…

>> How it works for me: Try to find a more concrete example of the sentence. If you can't, then it's (likely) bullshit. I think this is a bit like Kolmogorov complexity - just because you can't find a concrete example of a statement, doesn't mean that there isn't one, only that there isn't one that you know of. It's also very hard to tell whether something is a concrete example of a natural language statement, especi…

If there isn't a concrete example of the statement that you can discover, then it's up to the person who uttered the phrase to give you one. If they can't do that, they are likely bullshitting.

For example, I can say "All holomorphic functions are analytic", and the fact that you cannot come up with a concrete example, or even that you don't understand the meaning of the sentence (if you don't know anything about complex analysis) still doesn't mean that it is bullshit.

Metaphors are not a problem; you can also explain them in the above sense.

> "Careful study leads one to hidden knowledge"

Different people might interpret "hidden knowledge" differently, that's true. But then I would say that whether or not the statement is objectively bullshit or profound depends on the interpretation of whoever uttered the phrase was using.

So if it was uttered by Deepak Chopra, it is probably bullshit. If it was uttered by Carl Sagan, it is probably profound.

I mean, this problem is not specific to bullshit/profound statements, but to language in general. For example, common objection to evolution is "evolution is just a theory". Here, the word "theory" can take on two different meanings, and the truthfulness of the sentence depends on the meaning that is assigned to the word "theory".

This only poses potential problem for the study, where the statements should be selected so that the confusion due to usual (assumed) meaning of words is minimized.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#157

Post by kjeetgill »

wavefunction wrote: post #155
kjeetgill wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right of course but you get what they _mean_ right? Persistence can be key to accomplishing something significant you don't feel capable of. Or am I being too charitable?

That specific example seems more like some combination of persistence and power is required: great power suddenly and temporarily expressed could cut through stone while a weak power expressed over a long-enough time frame would have the same effect. On it's face it's only a partially true statement and thus is effectively 'BS' when presented as an aphorism. As well, it anthropormorphizes the effect of gravity on wat…

Possibly Controversial:

I think it's key to read it a specific (overly charitable?) light.

You kind of have to take for granted that it's good advice in context. Someone is feeling discouraged and incapable facing come significant task and the best advice is to not be distracted by the feelings of incapability but rather persevere.

If you're reading it as statement on the relationship between power and persistence .. um .. you're missing it's point. Whether you agree or think it isn't well communicated is besides the point a little bit.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#158

Post by justwalt »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #25

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.

If you swapped ‘road’ for ‘seeds’ in the one about apples, it becomes not bullshit.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#159

Post by pure-awesome »

I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone here both of the replication crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis and of hindsight bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias

I see quite a few comments of people looking at the result and trying to come up with explanations for why it might hold. Heck, there even seems to be some confusion with the term "bullshit-receptivity" (and "bullshit-sensitivity"), which means that, even if the paper is valid, you might be drawing the opposite conclusion.

I'd like you to imagine, without going back to check right now, that you are wrong about the result. That they've found the opposite correlation to the one you thought holds. Can you find a reason why it would? Does it seem justifiable, explainable? As much so as your original belief? That should be a warning sign that your explanation might be a bit pre-emptive.

I am glad for the commenters saying they found the result "counter-intuitive". Noticing your confusion in this way is a good skill to learn, especially in this day and age. That nagging feeling in the back of your mind that something is off or that you forgot something.

-----

As an aside: If you are interested in more on biases, may I suggest reading "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. One of my favourite non-fiction books. Some of the results in there (notably priming) have themselves unfortunately fallen prey to the replication crisis, but the book as a whole is still brilliant.

Some links RE: the replication crisis and Kahneman's responses regarding it:

The Irony Effect: How the scientist who founded the science of mistakes ended up mistaken. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

Replicability-Index Improving the replicability of empirical research Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...

Kahneman's Comment: https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...

Retraction Watch “I placed too much faith in underpowered studies:” Nobel Prize winner admits mistakes https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#160

Post by mcphage »

foldr wrote: post #67
abbasaamer wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you are paranoid and you suspect someone is deceiving you. The reality of whether or not they are actually deceiving you does not have an impact on how much pain you feel. Alternatively, someone with a mental condition that leads them to believe they are in pain would conceivably feel the same pain as someone who is actually being physically hurt. Just my take on it.

As malloryerik said in another comment, that seems to be confusing the cause of the pain with the pain itself. The paranoiac's pain is real, even if the cause is imaginary.

> The paranoiac's pain is real, even if the cause is imaginary.

That's exactly the point of the sentence.

Post reply on HN