
Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior - denzil_correa
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0201474
======
duopixel
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 seeking person.

4\. You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the
things that you do not say.

5\. Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future.

6\. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back.

7\. Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in.

8\. Your movement transforms universal observations.

9\. The person who never made a mistake never tried something new.

10\. The whole silence infinite phenomena.

11\. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.

12\. The invisible is beyond all new immutability.

13\. The unexplainable touches on the inherent experiences of the universe.

14\. It is one thing to be tempted, but quite another to fall for the
temptation.

 __*

Here are the answers for self-assessment:
[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l...](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0201474.t001)

No claim is made on the validity of the experiment (the researchers' or your
own). Proposed in the name of curiosity!

~~~
foldr
>11\. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.

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.

~~~
munchbunny
Based on the other comments further down, you seem to be caught up on whether
the statement is technically true for specific definitions of pain, rather
than the underlying point of the statement.

The underlying point is that whether you think that someone's suffering
(physical or emotional) has a real or imaginary cause, that doesn't make them
suffer any more or less, because you are not in their head, and they are not
in yours. Their degree of suffering depends on their perception of reality,
not yours, or even objective reality.

The statement is an appeal to empathy.

~~~
foldr
I agree with the "underlying point", but it simply isn't what the sentence
says. If you're willing to put that much effort into interpreting it,
practically any statement could qualify as profound.

~~~
munchbunny
You've already put far more effort into debating that everyone else's
interpretation isn't "simply what the sentence says," when their (and my)
interpretation tend to hover around the same approximate meaning.

If you're going by effort, it seems that your interpretation is anything but
simpler or lower effort.

If you're trying to make the point that the statement could have been phrased
better, I don't think anyone would disagree with you.

~~~
foldr
>If you're going by effort, it seems that your interpretation is anything but
simpler or lower effort.

Hmm? You seem to be mixing up the effort required to reach that interpretation
with the effort required to argue with other people about whether it's the
correct interpretation.

------
folli
I feel like this is some meta-level test for the reader.

Pseudo-profound bullshit statement: "Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial
behavior"; can the reader distinguish this bullshit paper from a profound
paper?

~~~
FabHK
Disagreed. Both key terms are fully operationalised in the paper (ie, a
measurement procedure is given), and so the sentence has empirical content (it
could be wrong, but isn't).

------
JulianMorrison
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.

~~~
occamschainsaw
Here's one such generator, based on Deepak Chopra corpus.

[http://wisdomofchopra.com](http://wisdomofchopra.com)

Note that the purple indic text on top is the word "Bullshit" transliterated
in Gujarati.

~~~
WhompingWindows
"Experiential truth experiences quantum excellence"

------
awild
I am slightly confused by the selection of those sentences, the bullshit
sentences barely make grammatical sense, while the profound sentences are
honestly pretty banal and sound like things you'd find written on tote-bags
sold in etsy stores.

I found the study pretty interesting especially table 2 is extremely
informative!

~~~
Lewton
This seems to just be a proxy that ends up measuring whether IQ is correlated
to being prosocial

~~~
pdpi
Except the paper specifically states that the effect remains after controlling
for cognitive ability.

~~~
Lewton
Thanks for pointing that out

Relevant part of the paper

> Numeracy and cognitive reflection (Section 4). Participants responded to
> three numeracy questions taken from Schwartz et al. [30] and from the Berlin
> numeracy test ([31]), and immediately thereafter to the three questions that
> make up the original CRT [12]. On both these variables, participants
> obtained a score between 0 and 3 representing the number of correct
> responses.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Bullshit-sensitivity is the ability to distinguish pseudo-profound bullshit
sentences (e.g. “Your movement transforms universal observations”) from
genuinely profound sentences (e.g. “The person who never made a mistake never
tried something new”).

Why is the second sentence "profound"? If I were to say it sounds like
bullshit to me (it actually kind of does?) what would be the counter-argument,
other than "we asked X people and the majority felt it was a profound
statement" (equally, a bullshit statement)?

I reckon there is no concrete way to formalise the meaning of "bullshit" and
"profundity". One person's bullshit statement can easily bee another's
profound wisdom ("turn the other cheek" \- bullshit, or profound? "Live and
let live" \- bullshit, or profound? etc).

So what exactly is the point of trying to predict behaviour from observations
about subjective quantities? What exactly is being claimed here? That if I
have a strong view about what is bullshit and what is not, I can predict how
people will behave?

~~~
js8
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 that.

Note that the "profound" sentence can still be wrong or false or even
unfalsifiable statement. The point is that you can assign meaning to it, build
a mental model around it.

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
>> 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, especially when that statement is metaphorical.

Finally- I'm pretty sure I can think of statements that would map to concrete
examples that could be identified as either bullshit or profound truths,
depending on who you ask or who is making the statement. For instance, if I
say that "Careful study leads one to hidden knowledge" \- that could easily be
applied to mystical knowledge (probably bullshit) and to scientific knowledge
(probably not quite bullshit).

~~~
js8
If there isn't a concrete example of the statement that you can discover, then
it's up to the person who uttered the phrase to give you one. If they can't do
that, they are likely bullshitting.

For example, I can say "All holomorphic functions are analytic", and the fact
that you cannot come up with a concrete example, or even that you don't
understand the meaning of the sentence (if you don't know anything about
complex analysis) still doesn't mean that it is bullshit.

Metaphors are not a problem; you can also explain them in the above sense.

> "Careful study leads one to hidden knowledge"

Different people might interpret "hidden knowledge" differently, that's true.
But then I would say that whether or not the statement is objectively bullshit
or profound depends on the interpretation of whoever uttered the phrase was
using.

So if it was uttered by Deepak Chopra, it is probably bullshit. If it was
uttered by Carl Sagan, it is probably profound.

I mean, this problem is not specific to bullshit/profound statements, but to
language in general. For example, common objection to evolution is "evolution
is just a theory". Here, the word "theory" can take on two different meanings,
and the truthfulness of the sentence depends on the meaning that is assigned
to the word "theory".

This only poses potential problem for the study, where the statements should
be selected so that the confusion due to usual (assumed) meaning of words is
minimized.

------
boooooo
Wow, the interpretations of these statements in these comments is hilarious.
Is everyone on Hacker News Dwight Schrute?

~~~
AlexCoventry
The n-gate summary of this thread is going top be great.

~~~
eppsilon
Something something prime directive

~~~
AlexCoventry
Thanks for the tip. I didn't realize they really don't like that. I think the
cat is well and truly out of the bag, though.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+n-gate)

------
c3534l
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/](http://wisdomofchopra.com/) and I think that
might have been what they used.

~~~
xg15
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 were a programming language, the sentences would produce valid ASTs
but would be riddled with type errors.

I think output from markov chains or other generators have the same property:
They easily produce valid individual words and correct grammatical structures
but they don't care at all that those structures don't have a well-defined
higher-level meaning.

Couriously though, we seem to validate a sentence mostly on those lower levels
- which has the effect that you might not realize a sentence has no meaning
but just have a vague feeling of not understanding it.

The effect also reminds me of some badly-writtem math papers, where an auther
uses a familiar notation from one domain and applies it to objects of a
different domain without clearly defining what he wants to do. It can take
surprisingly long until you even realize you have no idea what it means.

~~~
c3534l
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.

------
tabs_masterrace
> Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future.

This one is classified bullshit, although I think it makes at least somewhat
sense.

~~~
peteretep
Right. Also:

> 2\. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

Describes reading the description of an artwork at a Modern Art gallery pretty
well

~~~
scns
IMO it is only Art if you feel something immediately. If you have to read some
description to get the meaning, it is only pretentious and not Art for me.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Just curious: Why does art need to make anyone feel anything?

Do you feel something if you see a landscape, portrait, or still life? Do you
think they are still art? In a similar thread, if you stare at something
abstract, if it draws you in to gaze on it because it is a cool design even if
it brings forth no feeling, does it make it art or not?

Do you understand hidden meanings from 200 years ago that would have been
obvious to viewers at the time? Do you still consider it art even if you have
to read about the meanings built into the art?

(Art is full of pretentious bullshit, and I'm of the opinion that assigning
meaning or requiring a meaning of art is, of itself, pretentious.)

~~~
js8
I think art should make feel at least someone something in order to be
considered as art.

That is not the same as having a meaning, though. For example, Mandelbrot set
makes me feel "it is wonderful", but it doesn't need to have any meaning
(technically, it is a solution to some equation, so it has meaning, but you
don't have to know the meaning in order to feel that something).

~~~
Intermernet
The problem with art is that it could be a stated goal of the art form to
minimise "feeling" and still be considered valid. In this case, if you feel
something, the art form has failed.

Art is tricksome. It is what it is justified as being, but it's also just what
it is.

I've found it easier over the years to just say that I like / dislike
something, but my opinion isn't worth anything, and can happily be different
to yours.

------
js8
I am considering a Feynman detector for bullshit (as defined in the article):
See if you can come up with a specific example that the sentence describes. If
you can a point to a specific example which works, the sentence is not
bullshit.

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?

~~~
dmichulke
The test you describe is basically also a (recipe for an) integration test.

------
cjensen
Surely those questions are just a reading comprehension test? I.e. can you
read some difficult and somewhat abstract sentences and see if they have any
rational (metaphorical or whatev) meaning?

They correlate because the root cause of identifying them is reading
comprehension.

And for people who have a bit of trouble with the comprehension, the
pessimistic "this is just bs" way of throwing up one's hands and giving up is
correlated with non-social behavior. Meh.

------
barking
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.)

~~~
eksemplar
I think you can be extremely apt at detecting bullshit without being a cynic.
In fact I think a lot, though certainly not all, of cynicism stems from the
disappointment of having been fooled too much by bullshit.

~~~
ahartmetz
I guess this means that many "IT professionals" don't even reflect enough to
clearly detect rubbish even after a fad is over.

OOP (as the solution to every programming problem), Java everywhere
(performance is great and/or doesn't matter - really!!), P2P everything
(because Napster), semantic web, XML, SOAP, agile(washing), cloud (whether it
makes sense or not), server-side JS (overused), client-side JS whether you
need it or not, IoT (aka please pay us monthly), blockchain. You see a lot of
bullshit in a career.

~~~
Nasrudith
Putting disagreements of what does and does not belong there aside there are
also sunk costs of sorts - if everything works sufficiently learning a new way
puts you at a disadvantage unless the new way really is sufficently
appreciably better for the application so you stick with what you know. Not
doing so ironically itself leads to faddish behavior and falling behind due to
tripping on hidden pitfalls.

------
Devon64327
I noticed most of the bullshit phrases used a lot of big, _fancy_ words. Not
sure if this was covered later in the paper, but it could be this study
identified a correlation between language skills and prosocial behavior.

Someone who's never encountered words like elucidate could be dazzled into
believing it describes something profound. Whereas people who are familiar
with the word would recognize it's use is awkward and meaningless.

I don't think it would be a big leap to theorize that an effective education
correlates with prosocial behavior.

------
abruzzi
It is kind of interesting--maybe irrelevant to the paper, but all the
"profound" sentences rely on a comparison:

    
    
      1. power vs. persistence
      4. things you say and things you do not say
      6. our flaws and other's flaws
      7. open door and entering (what your teacher does and what you must do)
      9. the comparison is implied but trying something new vs never trying something new.
      11. again implied but imagined pain versus real pain
      14. tempted and resisting vs tempted and falling.
    

whereas the "bullshit" sentences seem mostly to be simpler constructs.

    
    
      2:  a causes b
      3:  a causes b for c
      5:  a and b provides c for d
      8:  a changes b (this one has a very weakly implied comparison, because "universal observations" 
      changes and is therefore not "universal", but there is no specificity about the difference so it 
      is not really a comparison, just noting the change.) 
      etc.
    

there are no comparisons in them. I wonder if that has anything to do with
just the structure we're used to for aphorisms and folk wisdom?

------
simonbarker87
The bullshit sentences don’t even really make sense, not at a deep “having a
think about it” level but just on a surface read they all sound weird - not
hard to detect them as bullshit I wouldn’t have thought.

~~~
DanBC
Are you reading them in their original language, or a translation?

------
zhdc1
This article uses structural equation modeling and a sample drawn by an
independent provider (meaning that they likely used an internet-based survey).

As someone who has experience with both, my bullshit senses are tingling.

------
visarga
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.

~~~
FabHK
I think their definition of BS is in line with the academic literature on
this, ie Frankfurt's seminal booklet (that the NYT had a hard time reviewing,
because their editorial policy did not let them spell out what the whole book
was about :-), namely statements that are not even concerned with truth, but
just seek to impress.

Not sure that lines up with your definition.

------
c3534l
It's entirely possible that they weren't testing "bullshit-sensitivity," but
some underlying language skills, IQ, or even something like creativity
(required to give the sentences have meaning). I don't think that they test
has sufficient evidence that it measures what they claim it measures.

Second, donation experience did not have a statistically significant
relationship with "bullshit sensitivity," which is kind of a bad smell. As for
prior plausibility, the authors admit "previous theory and research does not
give us strong reasons for predicting a direct relation between reactions to
bullshit and prosocial behavior." The study also lacked a control group.

------
austincheney
> Despite bullshit-receptivity and profoundness-receptivity being positively
> correlated with each other, logistic regression analyses showed that
> profoundness-receptivity had a positive association whereas bullshit-
> receptivity had a negative association with both types of prosocial
> behavior.

Not surprising. People incapable of differentiating objectivity from self-
satisfying statements are less likely predict anything objectively.

Whereas...

> The results suggest that people who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-
> profound from the actually profound are more prosocial.

People who are objective are better able to analyze social contexts.

I further suspect objective people are already aware of this and self-
satisfying people are not aware there is any difference.

------
SZJX
What does that even actually prove? Like, of course people who can distinguish
the reasonable from the unreasonable are likely to be smarter, more
experienced and more responsible, and thus contribute more to the society. If
somebody is not very bright as to not even tell the BS from the sensible, then
surely they also can't have the intelligence and smartness and resolve to
actually contribute to the community in meaningful ways. Hell, they might well
even put a load of money and support into foolhardy schemes that absolutely
don't work and damage the community, or that are downright scams. On the
contrary, smart people of course would know where to dedicate their
money/efforts for the maximum effect on the society as a whole.

Also, the so-called "bullshit sensitivity" is undoubtedly related to many
other factors like literacy, educational level, income, social status etc. No
doubt people who enjoy a higher social status and have more money on their
hands instead of having to worry about making ends meet, would find it easier
to contribute to "pro-society" activities. I just simply fail to see how this
study is much meaningful. (Even the word "prosocial" is just dubious. It's not
in the sense of "socializing more" but "contributing more to the society".)
Sounds like quite a BS study to me.

------
tomp
Sounds very profound, but unfortunately it also trips up my bullshit sensor.

------
DrNuke
>The results suggest that people who are better at distinguishing the pseudo-
profound from the actually profound are more prosocial.

I would attempt a correlation with economic means though. I am pretty sure
most people are able to see that a spade is a spade but too many would put up
with sh*t because in need.

------
xamuel
But the so-called 'genuinely profound sentences' are themselves subjective.

In the abstract, the 'profound' example they give is: "The person who never
made a mistake never tried something new".

But this is itself a deeper level of BS. The intended moral of this quotation
is "You should try something new", but if you accept that as an axiom, then
the act of never-trying-something-new is itself a mistake, and so the sentence
contradicts itself.

If Albert Einstein wracked his brain for the most profound statement he could
come up with, it would be indistinguishable from bullshit to anyone but a top
theoretical physicist.

The article should be titled something more like: "Fortune-cookie sensitivity
predicts prosocial behavior"

~~~
methodover
The moral isn’t that you should try something new. It’s that if you’re trying
something new and not doing great with it — and feeling embarrassed about it,
keep soldiering on. Embarrassment is a natural part of the process.

------
heddycrow
I have trouble taking meaning from the "bullshit" sentences. At some point in
trying, part of my brain begs me to give up while another asks me to go on.

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?

------
kweinber
Couldn’t advanced interpretative ability predict greater income, translating
into more charitable giving?

Perhaps English speaking people who can’t parse those sentences don’t have the
free time or cash to give away.

------
mamon
Maybe I’m missing something but it seems that this “bullshit sensivity test”
is just a verbal IQ test in disguise?

They basically test your ability to correctly parse an English sentence.

------
apo
Having been scarred for life from accidental exposure to the drivel of dozens
of cryptocurrency "thought leaders," I think the authors may have chosen
prosocial behavior as the wrong correlation.

Here are some alternatives that might correlate well to lack of BS-sensitivity
and attraction to profound-sounding fluff:

\- ability to solve quantitative reasoning problems

\- ability to use deductive logic

\- likelihood to take unnecessary risks for minimal rewards

\- likelihood to change one's mind in face of new information

------
ashleyn
I know times are changing and all, but to me, it's still damn weird to see
something as informal as "bullshit" used in a journal article definition.

------
amelius
Is this related to "shit tests" (see link)?

[https://www.quora.com/What-are-common-shit-tests-The-term-
sh...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-common-shit-tests-The-term-shit-test-is-
commonly-used-in-PUA-activities-when-a-girl-throws-out-an-unusual-compliment-
or-comment-to-a-male-to-test-the-answer)

~~~
dropit_sphere
No.

"Shit tests" in the most common usage, refer to doing provocative things to
throw someone off their stride and see how unflappable they are.

The paper is about sentences that don't really mean anything, but carry some
(false) markers of profundity.

------
skate22
Not surprising that people who pick up on bullshit would be less likely to
donate to a "non proffit" where many execs make over 1m a year

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/executive-salaries-
chariti...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/executive-salaries-charities/)

~~~
Devon64327
I believe the paper makes a distinction between bullshit receptivity (Eating
it up), bullshit sensitivity (Calling it out), and profoundness sensitivity
(Correctly identifying profound statements). Donating was positively
correlated with profoundness sensitivity and less so to bullshit sensitivity.
And slightly negatively with bullshit receptivity.

------
have_faith
> assessed participants’ bullshit-receptivity

Deriving meaning from what others deem meaningless could be profound in
itself?

~~~
gweinberg
Maybe. If you give different individuals the task "translate this gobbledygook
into coherent English", and you get a bunch of different translations and a
bunch of "can't be done" answers, I think the "can't be done" group are right.
If everyone who comes up with the same translation ends up with the same
answer, then presumably that mening was actually there.

------
pure-awesome
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone here both of the
replication crisis:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis)
and of hindsight bias:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindsight_bias)

I see quite a few comments of people looking at the result and trying to come
up with explanations for why it might hold. Heck, there even seems to be some
confusion with the term "bullshit-receptivity" (and "bullshit-sensitivity"),
which means that, even if the paper is valid, you might be drawing the
opposite conclusion.

I'd like you to imagine, without going back to check right now, that you are
wrong about the result. That they've found the opposite correlation to the one
you thought holds. Can you find a reason why it would? Does it seem
justifiable, explainable? As much so as your original belief? That should be a
warning sign that your explanation might be a bit pre-emptive.

I am glad for the commenters saying they found the result "counter-intuitive".
Noticing your confusion in this way is a good skill to learn, especially in
this day and age. That nagging feeling in the back of your mind that something
is off or that you forgot something.

\-----

As an aside: If you are interested in more on biases, may I suggest reading
"Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman. One of my favourite non-fiction
books. Some of the results in there (notably priming) have themselves
unfortunately fallen prey to the replication crisis, but the book as a whole
is still brilliant.

Some links RE: the replication crisis and Kahneman's responses regarding it:

The Irony Effect: How the scientist who founded the science of mistakes ended
up mistaken.
[http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...](http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2016/12/kahneman_and_tversky_researched_the_science_of_error_and_still_made_errors.html)

Replicability-Index Improving the replicability of empirical research
Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails
[https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...](https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails)

Kahneman's Comment:
[https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc...](https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-
of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-
page-1/#comment-1454)

Retraction Watch “I placed too much faith in underpowered studies:” Nobel
Prize winner admits mistakes [https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-
much-faith-und...](https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-
underpowered-studies-nobel-prize-winner-admits-mistakes/)

------
foobarbecue
I think this is actually a study designed to determine who can detect bullshit
studies. "Bullshit-sensitivity" here appears to mean "reading comprehension."

------
Symmetry
Tthere's a replication crisis on and so I'm going to wait for confirmation -
no matter how pleased with myself believing this result would make me.

------
deviationblue
It's telling that the profound statements are inherently prosaic. So are they
really 'profound' or categorized so because they can be tied to some kind of
natural or observable or relatable phenomena. I guess that doesn't matter
since we are tying this to prosocial behavior, the idea here is to identify
what can induce the feeling of 'birds of a feather' (at least, that's my take
of it).

The bullshit statements were easy to pick out because they're too abstract or
require lateral thinking.

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practice9
I'm surprised that Nassim Taleb is not mentioned

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throw7
i kinda found the description of the "non-bullshit" statements as being
"genuinely profound" to be also a little "bullshitty". Personally would have
described them as pithy rather.

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YouAreGreat
People who honestly believe a lie can convincingly tell it.

Analogously, people who don't get tripped up by bullshit might be better (more
convincing) at spouting self-serving bullshit.

Framed that way, I can believe it.

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mozumder
At the root is narcissism. Narcissism blocks profound insight, and rewards
anti-social behavior.

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topmonk
> Narcissism blocks profound insight

How would you even measure what profound insight is, nevermind determining
whether something causes its absence?

