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Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

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Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#31

Post by will_brown »

kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

>The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness

The industry (tech, startups, VC money) do bring bullshit to the front of the industry consciousness. I’ve never seen another industry push and promote “fake it till you make it” so hard.

Democratizing this...disrupting that...we respect your privacy and data...DAO/code is law...Self driving cars...uber is creating good jobs...Fyre fest...VR/AR...Theranos

From top down the industry promotes bullshitters.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#32

Post by jwilli »

rmbryan wrote: post #2

It's important to note that this study focuses on data from 15-year-olds taking a math test. I assert that drawing broad conclusions based on that sample is suspect and may be, in fact, bullshit itself.

I agree with your point. 15 year old boys are by no means a good sample for the population as a whole. I would argue 15 year old boys are in fact one of the worst samples for this study. Aren't boys going through puberty known to be reckless and shortsighted?

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#33

Post by filleokus »

kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

I have always thought that the hierarchical system used for doctors here in Sweden could be applicable to tech.

Doctors here specialise in a field after some time of general practice and then some of them become "överläkare" (lit. superior physician), and have both deep expertise in their area but also some managerial responsibility for their department.

Of course there is hospital administration etc, but the senior doctors still provide domain expertise and experience. Their criticism/opinions about practices at the hospital etc are generally respected, while they still practice medicine and assist in the most complicated cases.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#34

Post by teslaberry »

read it, study is bullshit because it's too narrowly focussed on a few tests of 'bullshittery' and avoids the big question of how good some bullshitters are about being persuasive in areas OTHER THAN MATH, where KNOW complexities are able to be obfuscated or ambiguous.

for example, financial advisors bullshiting about financial advise. is a far more complex thing to study than teenagers lying about expertise in fake maths and how likely someone is to nakedly lie about mapping skills.

this isn't semantics: the best bullshitters pick and choose what they bullshit about , and for this reason, often go undetected or rather, REWARDED for their bullshit.

shit on that apple and tell me how you like it later.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#35

Post by formalsystem »

I think we need to take the right message from this. BS seems to be a necessary evil and instead of lamenting the fall of intellectualism, I would encourage techies to focus on their craft, writing and speaking in that order.

The other day I was reading https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312427581/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b... and the TL;DR was that most of the modern art movement was brewed out of a PR machine which did involve some artistic skill but was mostly lots of BS. So lesson to us programmers would be spend more time cultivating a brand on Twitter and Github.

Over longer timelines and repeated games the techies will have more influence than the BSers who just know how to write and speak.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#36

Post by stelfer »

tru3_power wrote: post #15
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

Dude I struggle with this everyday. When I first started off in my career I was so nervous to express any technical ideas or questions in front of other people because I thought I was stupid- as I started progressing in my career I learned that a lot of the people I encountered at work who were ultra confident (and probably attributed to my tech self-consciousness) actually knew way less than I thought. I still don’t…

The realization that I came to was that by speaking up I was usually asking a question that many people were not asking; by providing a strong opinion it would help to catalyze deliberate action. If you stay silent we'll never get anything really done.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#37

Post by [deleted] »

kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

[deleted]

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#38

Post by kuzehanka »

will_brown wrote: post #31
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

>The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness The industry (tech, startups, VC money) do bring bullshit to the front of the industry consciousness. I’ve never seen another industry push and promote “fake it till you make it” so hard. Democratizing this...disrupting that...we respect your privacy and data...DAO/code is law...Self driving cars...uber is creating good jobs.…

I always interpreted 'fake it till you make it' as 'promise what you could do with sufficient resources'.

That is fundamentally different from people who just make up random shit that sounds good to whoever has money, without any idea or plans to materialise it or whether it's even possible.

You do raise a good point with Uber/theranos/dao.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#39

Post by jackcosgrove »

jwilli wrote: post #32
rmbryan wrote: post #2

It's important to note that this study focuses on data from 15-year-olds taking a math test. I assert that drawing broad conclusions based on that sample is suspect and may be, in fact, bullshit itself.

I agree with your point. 15 year old boys are by no means a good sample for the population as a whole. I would argue 15 year old boys are in fact one of the worst samples for this study. Aren't boys going through puberty known to be reckless and shortsighted?

Exactly boys are cognitively less developed than girls at that age. The fact that the authors of the study did not control for this well-known fact suggests to me that the study is just more clickbait academic bullshit.

Re: Bullshitters: Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives? [pdf]

#40

Post by majormajor »

Veen wrote: post #12
kuzehanka wrote: post #7

The notion of bullshitters needs to be brought to the front of our industry's consciousness. Our industry is one where the impostor complex is rife and anyone who sounds confident must know what they're talking about, since even the PhD's aren't half as confident in their field of expertise as a bullshitter is at anything. The tech industry is increasingly inundated with these types of people who manage to get placed…

If bullshitters rise to the top with very little work or knowledge, then perhaps being a bullshitter is the smart choice for people of a certain disposition.

Yes, that would be the problem.

Parent poster is saying we need to stop letting it be that easy for them.

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