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

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

#211

Post by Sniffnoy » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

There's one thing here that I don't really get here. Take a look at this paragraph, on page 18:

> There are two primary threats to the validity of our interpretation of the results above. [...] A second possibility is that young people’s responses are reflecting social desirability bias; that they are providing responses that they believe will be viewed as positively by others (e.g. that they know various mathematics concepts, that they work hard at school etc). Both of these possibilities could lead to a spurious correlation between our bullshit index and the various other psychological traits investigated in the previous sub-section.

Huh?? What on earth does "bullshit" mean if not, y'know, giving socially-desirable answers rather than correct ones? (I mean, that's basically roughly how Frankfurt defined it.) Social desirability bias isn't a separate thing interfering with your measurement of bullshit; social desirability bias is bullshit (or rather, a cause of it).

I am quite confused as to how the authors are conceptualizing "bullshit" if their notion of it apparently excludes social desirability bias as a separate thing. That seems to me to be quite different from what anyone else means. I think some explanation is really required here.

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

#212

Post by lapinot » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

misterman0 wrote: post #189

maze-le wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Solution: >> - stand the F up on every meeting where you hear BS, and call "shenanigans"!. Great way to get yourself sidelined in the near future, and not being able to intervene when it will be your job to implement a fantasy... The problem with being honest in a situation like this is, that it will disrupt everyone in that meeting, not just the bullshitter. You'll be perceived as a fire starter and the next meet…

>> You'll be perceived as a fire starter >> cigarette breaks are perfect @maze-le, realize, your fingers are going to get burnt, either way. Just do the right thing. For your kids. Because they are going to ask themselves: "why did daddy work so hard toward X, when X is so bad for humanity?" Don't fucking do X, man, is all I'm saying. You know what X is.

I empathize, it's hard realizing that bureaucracy is stronger than you are, even tho you're so much smarter and ethically stronger than all of it's constituents (and that your plan is dead simple `do what's right, no qa'). Burn'em office buildings up is what i say. And become some kind of handcraftsman (farmer, construction, mechanics, convenience X). I'm no joke :) The core of the problem here is "management" not "industry".

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

#213

Post by treis » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

munificent wrote: post #73

devonkim wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A colleague of mine put the problem more succinctly “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Most executives in finance have done some form of financial analysis and reporting, construction company owners have almost always done a hard day’s worth of labor, and a lot of directors have had to do some acting / camera work and whatnot. In tech (especiall…

> “what other industry is there where the top decision-makers have never done the basic work of the company?” Isn't the answer... most industries? My understanding is that large companies in all domains are heavily populated with executives and managers who came straight out of business school and into a leadership position. There are those who rise through the rank and file up to the executive position too. I don't…

>Isn't the answer... most industries? My understanding is that large companies in all domains are heavily populated with executives and managers who came straight out of business school and into a leadership position.

That's really not true. No one goes from MBA to a CxO leadership position at a large corporation. To pick 3 random examples:

CEO of McDonalds managed one back in 1993 and was the CEO of two other fast food restaurants

CEO of Caterpillar started in 1980 out of college at a company Caterpillar eventually bought.

CEO of CVS started out as a pharmacist at a drug store in that was acquired by CVS in 1990.

Someone in a leadership position typically will have spent decades serving in roles with increasing responsibility in their industry.

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

#214

Post by bartread » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:14 PM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #101

kuzehanka wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Fake it till you make it" is often about jumping at a market opportunity on borrowed time, money, or experience. Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it.

> Like Bill Gates licensing MS Basic before he had written it.

That's actually an interesting case because, although he didn't have MS BASIC at that point, he knew he'd be able to deliver it by the time he needed it. So, was he really faking it?

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

#215

Post by xiaolingxiao » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:15 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #138

trevor-e wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think academia is a special brooding ground for this kind of people. Everyone is worried about their own professional reputation since it sticks with them for a long time — unlike a regular job where you can jump around easier — so very few people are willing to put theirs on the line unless they have undeniable proof. There's also a big power dynamic at play where underlings don't want to question a senior profess…

>There's also a big power dynamic at play where underlings don't want to question a senior professor because obviously the professor knows what they're doing. This exists much more directly in business. Questioning your boss can lead to you getting fired by that boss. A senior professor can't fire an adjunct. A dean can't arbitrarily fire a professor with tenure.

can confirm. It took me a long time to confront my own suspicion that the so called tenured faculty around me are not as technically inclined as you'd think. Most of the line work is done by the grad students. Meanwhile the faculty plays a different game, maintaining an image, keeping the money in the wheel, "staying in the game." The primary skill of a tenured faculty is salesmanship, the most valued trait of a grad student is docileness.

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

#216

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:19 PM UTC

Sniffnoy wrote: post #211

There's one thing here that I don't really get here. Take a look at this paragraph, on page 18: > There are two primary threats to the validity of our interpretation of the results above. [...] A second possibility is that young people’s responses are reflecting social desirability bias; that they are providing responses that they believe will be viewed as positively by others (e.g. that they know various mathematics…

> Huh?? What on earth does "bullshit" mean if not, y'know, giving socially-desirable answers rather than correct ones?

They are saying that social desirability bias in responding to the questions that are used to measure correlates of the bullshit scale could distort the correlations, not that social desirability bias on the questions used to measure the bullshit scale distorts the bullshit measurements.

Loosely, they are explaining a reason for concern that bullshitters might tend to bullshit more than other people, in a systematic direction, about traits with which the study is trying to assess the relationship to bullshitting, which might make the results bullshit.

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

#217

Post by varjag » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:23 PM UTC

wsdfsayy wrote: post #14

Veen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly not if only half of management are bullshitters. It's also not exclusive to management: I've met plenty of rank-and-file developers who specialize in talking shite.

The difference is that if you're an IC you generally have to produce actual work that will be evaluated at some point. It's of course possible to BS your way into showing your manager you did more than you actually did or better than what you actually produced. If you're in management , then your job becomes mostly talking/meetings, which is much more conducive to "hand waving," which is probably why there are so man…

If there's a team of any substantial size, it's quite easy to BS your way in a contributor position for a year or two, and then hop to the next job.

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

#218

Post by d883kd8 » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

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.…

How tf is Fyre Fest on the tech industry, that was 100% entertainment and hospitality.

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

#219

Post by yummypaint » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

pintxo wrote: post #179

minikites wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's also a big power dynamic at play where underlings don't want to question a senior professor because obviously the professor knows what they're doing. This exists much more directly in business. Questioning your boss can lead to you getting fired by that boss. A senior professor can't fire an adjunct. A dean can't arbitrarily fire a professor with tenure.

Do you believe a Phd student should risk questioning his supervisor? Which could likely end a planned career in science right there?

i cant imagine an academic group environment that toxic. Most groups ive interacted with in the sciences actively encourage everone to ask difficult questions of each other to further the collective understanding. One of the first things my advisor told me as a new student was to make sure i independently understood what was going on because he doesnt know everything. Now that im more experienced i also see the upside of having youger people around who are engaged and help catch my mistakes. Hearing horror stories about corporate power dynamics from people around me makes me never want to leave academia.

There are of course a few crazy/asshole PIs, but if you dont work for them they have no power over you.

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

#220

Post by sevensor » Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 8:50 PM UTC

Fede_V wrote: post #21

If you've never experienced it before, the first time you work with someone who is a pathological liar and bullshitter is a completely disorienting experience. Normal people just don't lie that brazenly and with so little remorse - so you walk out of meetings wondering if perhaps you just misunderstood because there's no way someone would straight up lie that way. Interestingly, both of the worst bullshitters I've ev…

This is quite visible in academia. I don't know if it's more common, but it's more obvious. I was advised for a while (until he jettisoned me as a student) by one of the most stupendous bullshitters I've ever met. In one-on-one meetings with him, he'd say things I didn't understand, and I'd say "____, I don't understand what you just said, could you expand on that?" This would go on for a while, and at first I thought it was because I was new to the field. Eventually after reading enough papers, I'd understand. But that's not what happened. Eventually I realized that he had no idea what he was talking about. It was a bit shocking. He's now at an Ivy League college.