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I define bullshit as self-interested talk, that uses both truth and lies. It doesn't have to be lie, it's just presenting truth and lies in order to manipulate the other. There is always something to gain for the bullshitter - money, relationships, advantages or to get out of obligations.
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.
Note that the purple indic text on top is the word "Bullshit" transliterated in Gujarati.
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 not clear, maybe both seeing through bullshit and being pro-social are correlated to general intelligence?
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. 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 human who sees a hidden meaning in something may transform their opinion of something's beauty. A grain of truth under bullshit phrasing.
3. ... Now this I can't think of a non-bullshit interpretation for. The future hasn't happened yet, so it doesn't tell you anything, certainly not anything surprising, until it happens and then it's no longer the future.
4. True, though kind of tautological.
5. Health helps a brain be capable of creativity, sure. Tolerance helps not squash other people's creativity. Eh, it's kinda true.
6. I assume "other flaws" is meant to be "others' flaws". There is truth to this: at least for some kinds of flaws, it's easier to see them in others than in oneself.
7. See also "you can lead a horse to water...". Has a valid truth: I think most kinds of learning work much better when the learner is participating.
8. Um... ... universal observations? Like mathematical facts, or facts about the Sun that anyone can see? But my movement doesn't transform them. Bullshit.
9. Almost certainly true.
10. That isn't a sentence. If I try auto-correcting to "the whole silences infinite phenomena"... I guess you could E-prime-ify it to "a human who observes the whole may lose sight of the many little interesting details"... meh. I'm probably reading more insight into it than the author made an honest attempt to convey. Bullshit. By the way, I'm now suspecting an alternating bullshit/non-bullshit pattern.
11. I think this has a lot of truth to it, though it might not be true in all cases.
12. New immutability? What? I'm suspecting some of these are taken from http://wisdomofchopra.com/.
13. Ehm... one could say that we experience a lot of things without understanding (or being able to explain) most of them. "inherent experiences" sounds like experiences that every conceivable being has, which I'm not sure exist other than "the experience of consciousness and cognition", which beings probably must have in order to qualify as beings, but which are probably felt much differently by different beings. So no.
14. Agreed.
And, looking at the results... Yup, makes sense.
Bullshit-sensitivity and cynicism are practically synomyms I'd say. It feels counter-intuitive to find cynicism positively correlated with prosocial behaviour (which the article defines as donating to and/or joining a charity.)
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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The headline 'Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior' contradicts the summary from the abstract where it basically says: Profoundness-receptivity has a positive association with prosocial behaviour whereas bullshit-receptivity has a negative association with prosocial behavior. So if you go by the abstract the results match your intuition!
Bullshit-sensitivity = ability to distinguish bullshit sentences from genuinely profound sentences Bullshit-receptivity = tendency to perceive bullshit sentences as meaningful So, BS-S is not BS-R, thus there is no contradiction. Mate, the guys wrote a paper about it, they're not going to have the abstract contradict the title.
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…
I guess I can see how this might be classed as "not bullshit", but I don't see how it's profound at all. It just seems false to me.
I agreed with all the other classifications.
edit: I know complaining about downvotes is verboten here, but seriously, that's just my take on it. I'd be interested to hear an explanation of what the profound meaning is that I'm missing here.
I feel a similar way when I see the same person every day asking for money due to "hard luck.". Is this a professional or a victim? If I give this person money am I hurting myself and/or hurting them?
Difference between these situations? In second case, another human's well-being is at stake. In the first case, I could lose some novel insight.
Both cases carry a cognitive load which I must avoid bearing for the sake of my over-worked brain.
Is there a word for a kind of apathy that does not suggest immorality or lack of empathy?
> Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future. This one is classified bullshit, although I think it makes at least somewhat sense.
Howso? I don't see how either health or tolerance is related to creativity… Also why only future creativity?