On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

[TheRealJoeFish]

Neat article from the November 2015 edition of Judgment and Decision Making:

On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit

A scientific look at bullshit and our proclivities for it, and an interesting read all around!

[Minimalist]

What might cause someone to erroneously rate pseudo-profound bullshit as profound?

The single most effective way has been to call it a religion.

[TheRealJoeFish]

What might cause someone to erroneously rate pseudo-profound bullshit as profound?

The single most effective way has been to call it a religion.

They certainly cite quite a bit of religiosity as examples of the mental errors leading to/consisting of bullshit. Some of the paper's thoughts on this topic:

Both children and adults tend to confuse aspects of reality in systematic ways.  Any category mistake involving property differences between animate and inanimate or mental and physical, as examples, constitutes an ontological confusion.  Consider the belief that prayers have the capacity to heal (i.e., spiritual healing).  Such beliefs are taken to result from conflation of mental phenomenon, which are subjective and immaterial, and physical phenomenon, which are objective and material.  On a dual-process view, ontological confusions constitute a failure to reflect on and inhibit such intuitive ontological confusions.  Ontological confusions may also be supported by a bias toward believing the literal truth of statements.  Thus, ontological confusions are conceptually related to both detection and response bias as mechanisms that may underlie bullshit receptivity.  As such, the propensity to endorse ontological confusions should be linked to higher levels of bullshit receptivity. (internal citations omitted)

Translation: Religious people = more susceptible to bullshit.

Beliefs that conflict with common naturalistic conceptions of the world have been labelled epistemically suspect.  For example, the belief in angels (and the corresponding belief that they can move through walls) conflicts with the common folk-mechanical belief that things cannot pass through solid objects.  Epistemically suspect beliefs, once formed, are often accompanied by an unwillingness to critically reflect on such beliefs.  Indeed, reflective thinkers are less likely to be religious and paranormal believers, and are less likely to engage in conspiratorial ideation or believe in the efficacy of alternative medicine. (internal citations omitted, bolding mine)

[TheRealJoeFish]

One of the main upshots of the paper (or at least the first five pages I've been able to get through at work) is that it takes some mental processing work to parse or comprehend a statement, it takes additional work to determine whether the statement needs higher scrutiny, and then it takes more work to determine if the statement is bullshit. Basically, it's a three step process, and a lot of people are too mentally unprepared or lazy to go beyond step one.

[Iroscato]

One of the main upshots of the paper (or at least the first five pages I've been able to get through at work) is that it takes some mental processing work to parse or comprehend a statement, it takes additional work to determine whether the statement needs higher scrutiny, and then it takes more work to determine if the statement is bullshit.  Basically, it's a three step process, and a lot of people are too mentally unprepared or lazy to go beyond step one.

That's overly generous. I've seen plenty who utterly fail to grasp step 1.

[TheRealJoeFish]

One of the main upshots of the paper (or at least the first five pages I've been able to get through at work) is that it takes some mental processing work to parse or comprehend a statement, it takes additional work to determine whether the statement needs higher scrutiny, and then it takes more work to determine if the statement is bullshit.  Basically, it's a three step process, and a lot of people are too mentally unprepared or lazy to go beyond step one.

That's overly generous. I've seen plenty who utterly fail to grasp step 1.

They address that too! Basically, they say people who aren't good at logical reasoning, when they encounter a vacuous statement, are predisposed to unconsciously assume their failure to understand is a problem with them rather than the statement. 

Essentially, when people who are skilled at rational thinking see a statement they don't comprehend, they remain neutral about its truth value until they determine whether there is enough content to make a truth value at all, whereas people who are unskilled at rational thinking assume the truth of the statement (because they subconsciously feel it is more likely the statement is true and they do not have the capacity to evaluate that truth, rather than the statement itself is lacking of content), and then sort of bootstrap the assumption of truth into an assumption that there is content in the statement.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Here's the first of four studies they did for the paper:

We presented participants with ten statements that have syntactic structure but that consist of a series of randomly selected vague buzzwords. Participants were asked to indicate the relative profundity of each statement on a scale from 1 (not at all profound) to 5 (very profound). We argue that high ratings indicate receptivity toward bullshit. Participants also completed a series of relevant cognitive and demographic questions.

The buzzwords were actually pulled from Deepak Chopra's Twitter feed. (!) Examples of sentences were "Imagination is inside exponential space time events" and "We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself".

[Jackalope]

Here's the first of four studies they did for the paper:

We presented participants with ten statements that have syntactic structure but that consist of a series of randomly selected vague buzzwords.  Participants were asked to indicate the relative profundity of each statement on a scale from 1 (not at all profound) to 5 (very profound).  We argue that high ratings indicate receptivity toward bullshit.  Participants also completed a series of relevant cognitive and demographic questions.

The buzzwords were actually pulled from Deepak Chopra's Twitter feed. (!)  Examples of sentences were "Imagination is inside exponential space time events" and "We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself".

That's odd, it takes me little effort at all to dismiss both of those as word salad.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Here's the first of four studies they did for the paper:


The buzzwords were actually pulled from Deepak Chopra's Twitter feed. (!)  Examples of sentences were "Imagination is inside exponential space time events" and "We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself".

That's odd, it takes me little effort at all to dismiss both of those as word salad.

pssst that means u r smart

On the basic 10-question randomly generated list, the average "profundity" was 2.6 on a 1 to 5 scale. The average profoundness of a participant's rating was negatively correlated with both verbal and quantitative competence and positively negatively correlated with their religiosity (as measured by belief in things like heaven, hell, soul and satan).

[Reforged]

I honestly think this is one of the most important studies. We've all been tricked into thinking something was deep then ten minutes later when the perpetrator got away going "Wait, what?" at some point in our lives. What if those are just the times we detected it? What if 99 percent of all the "deep" stuff you ever heard that you followed as words of wisdom in reality had more holes in it than a Nicole Brown Simpson novelty sponge? What if Opera isn't actually a genius guru?
Granted its unlikely but thats still some scary shit to consider.