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Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

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Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#201

Post by [deleted] »

methodover wrote: post #197
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…

> 6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back. There has to be a typo here, right? I marked this as “bullshit” because it doesn’t make sense. But the link says it’s not bullshit...

[deleted]

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#202

Post by anewone »

methodover wrote: post #197
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…

> 6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back. There has to be a typo here, right? I marked this as “bullshit” because it doesn’t make sense. But the link says it’s not bullshit...

It's saying that it's easier to see flaws in other people than in ourselves.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#203

Post by twic »

asteli wrote: post #187
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…

> 8. Your movement transforms universal observations. I interpreted this one as referencing doppler shift of light emitted by celestial objects due to relative motion, but apparently I was overthinking this.

Oh, i thought it was about parallax.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#204

Post by PeterisP »

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…

What you say seems to go hand in hand with the article's conclusion.

It seems quite reasonable that if you are able to easily see concrete examples of statements for those (and only those) where others can do so as well, then this would indicate a general alignment with the wider society and also be correlated with prosocial behavior.

In essence, if you're given a subjective, metaphorical task where the "correct answers" aren't entirely logical, then this enables evaluation if your subjectivity and your metaphors are aligned with the social consensus or not. As this task is very easy for some people and not so for others, then this seems informative about some objective property or ability of the test takers, even if "bullshit-sensitivity" IMHO isn't a very accurate name for that property; there are some people for which statement #2 is clearly not bullshit and there are some people for which it's debatable, and without labelling one group as correct or wrong, it illustrates a difference between two different groups of people.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#205

Post by mirimir »

mds wrote: post #200
methodover wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back. There has to be a typo here, right? I marked this as “bullshit” because it doesn’t make sense. But the link says it’s not bullshit...

Should be “Others’”

But it's "others" (no "'") in the link ;)

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#206

Post by c3534l »

xg15 wrote: post #169
c3534l wrote: post #86

I don't know if they mention it in the article, but those BS quotes are eerily similar to those generated by http://wisdomofchopra.com/ and I think that might have been what they used.

There might be a reason for that. I think a lot the "bullshitness" of the sentences comes from the way the individual words do have meaning - however, the combinations of words used do not have an unambiguous meaning. E.g., you know what an observation is, what "universal" means and what a transformation is - but it's far less clear what an "universal observation" is or what it means if one is transformed. If this we…

Yeah, but the words and sentence structures are similar.

I got from the website:

> Hidden meaning depends on great neural networks

and the paper has

> The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

The website has

> Your heart belongs to total acceptance of observations

and the paper has

> Your movement transforms universal observations

The website has

> Information transforms mortal knowledge.

which is similar to

> Your movement transforms universal observations

and

> The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#207

Post by thaumaturgy »

sophistication wrote: post #106
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…

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.

Vague and awkward wording is a signature of bullshit artists like Deepak Chopra. They word it that way on purpose, for exactly the reason that it worked on you: people will struggle to find meaning in it until they find an interpretation that works for them, and then they'll feel like their interpretation offers them some kind of insight.

Metaphors are written to be interpreted more narrowly.

It's ... the difference is like going to an art museum, and on one wall, you have a painting featuring something recognizable as a person carrying a glass of water in a desert, and on the opposite wall, you have a blank canvas. There are multiple ways to interpret the painting of the person in the desert, and it'll have slightly different meanings to different people, but most of those will follow a similar theme. That painting has content. The blank canvas is intended for people to stare at it and invent their own meaning. It has no content. It's bullshit.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#209

Post by sporkologist »

methodover wrote: post #197
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…

> 6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back. There has to be a typo here, right? I marked this as “bullshit” because it doesn’t make sense. But the link says it’s not bullshit...

Should have been "behind our eyes" i.e. ourselves. Behind our back is empty space with other people in it. Too ambiguous/poorly thought out.

Re: Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

#210

Post by anewone »

ozzy6009 wrote: post #186
kjeetgill wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ..…

I think it would sound more metaphorical if you removed the indefinite articles, instead starting with "The river cuts through rock"

But that doesn't emphasise why. The point is to say "keep on truckin'".

If you have to spend a minute thinking about erosion first then it loses its punch.

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