
BlaBlaMeter detects how much bullshit is in your text - grabeh
http://www.blablameter.com/
======
derrida
Derrida, Chapter 2 'Of Grammatology'

>Bullshit Index :0.26 Your text shows some indications of 'bullshit'

 _some indications_ ... I'd say this thing is broken.

~~~
hobbes
I agree.

I tried some Hegel, who scored 0.18. Clearly broken.

Schopenhauer got it right, where BlaBlaMeter gets it wrong:

"If I were to say that the so-called philosophy of this fellow Hegel is a
colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an
inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy
paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most
outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most
senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying
verbiage, I should be quite right. Further, if I were to say that this summus
philosophus ... scribbled nonsense quite unlike any mortal before him, so that
whoever could read his most eulogized work, the so-called Phenomenology of the
Mind, without feeling as if he were in a madhouse, would qualify as an inmate
for Bedlam, I should be no less right."

~~~
dimasg
That snippet scores 0.26

~~~
freehunter
I copied that text into the meter, got the .26 you saw. I then listened in to
a conversation at the cube next to mine and wrote that in. "Using software as
a service we can replicate and evergreen in the cloud." One simple sentence
jumped it to a .35.

~~~
brittohalloran
YES. Someone needs to make a voice-to-text app that has a "bullshit meter"
needle, and that beeps rapidly (a la PKE meter) when a threshold is exceeded.

<http://www.gbfans.com/equipment/pke-meter/>

------
grabeh
The main reason I posted was in the hope of triggering discussion over the
method used to analyse the text.

I've seen users getting a lower score simply by separating out a block of text
into numbered paragraphs which would seem to point to quite a simplistic
method.

[http://ipdraughts.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/cutting-down-
on-t...](http://ipdraughts.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/cutting-down-on-the-bla-
bla/)

~~~
DallaRosa
I'll withstand my statement: model based on a corpus of PR, scholar, licenses
and the like texts. If they are into real statistical NLP.

Or just esthetic rules + word dictionary.

~~~
slashcom
If I were to make the software, the corpus of PR, licenses, etc. would be the
way I go. But "they did it statistically" doesn't answer the question "what is
the model?" There are many different statistical models one could use. My
other post has a few things we've figured out.

But I'm starting to think a rule-based lexicon isn't out of the question,
given these >1 scores on some texts.

------
BitMastro
I got an astonishing 1.13 from
<http://www.oracle.com/uk/corporate/pricing/index.html> :D

~~~
shell0x
I tried the german version of it and pasted a SAP article, which got a score
of 1.34. They mostly talk bullshit, but the article wasn't bad to understand
imho, so I think the algorithm needs some work.

The text was:

"Möchten Sie SAP-Software vor Ort installieren oder über die Cloud darauf
zugreifen? Wir bieten in jedem Fall umfassende Services, zugeschnitten auf
Ihre individuellen Anforderungen. Wir verfügen über eines der größten
Expertenteams weltweit. Unsere qualifizierten Mitarbeiter beraten Sie gern bei
der Konzeptionierung, Implementierung und Optimierung Ihrer Systemlandschaft.
Profitieren Sie innerhalb kürzester Zeit von Ihrer SAP-Lösung."

------
brittohalloran
Great idea, but show me _what_ in my text is triggering it, and have some
"example" buttons.

~~~
nbartlomiej
You might like <http://nbartlomiej.github.com/lisense/> then.

It my old pet project; like BlaBlaMeter, but for licenses.

I still hope to experiment with the idea of improving licenses in future.

------
egypturnash
I tried it on the front page of Time Cube.

    
    
      Bullshit Index :0.12
      Your text shows only a few indications of 'bullshit'-English.
    

I get the feeling this tool is only testing for a very narrow definition of
bullshit.

------
slantyyz
I just pasted some text from a random TechCrunch article relating to Spotify
and got this:

Your text: 847 characters, 145 words Bullshit Index :0.56 Something's fishy.
Obviously you want to sell something, or you're trying to impress somebody.
Are you sure that you have a real message, and if so: who would understand it?

~~~
tzaman
Apparently you're not the only one to try TechCrunch first - I did exactly the
same thing after clicking the link.

It appears our internal bullshit meters work just fine as well :)

~~~
slantyyz
After that, I pasted in an excerpt from PandoDaily and it got a marginally
higher score on the BS meter.

~~~
tzaman
while I read TechCrunch from time to time, I never visit PandoDaily. Stopped
after I saw Sarah Lacy's charade with Zuck on YouTube.

------
bilbo0s
Barack Obama's Inaugural: 0.18 Ryan's RNC Speech: 0.14

Lincoln (Gettysburg): 0.09 Lincoln (Second Inaugural): 0.09 MLK (I Have A
Dream): 0.08 (Lowest of any Political text I tried) Someone else said
Churchill got a 0.08, but I didn't actually try the unaltered text for myself.

BUT

John Donne: 0

------
shanelja
Any chance of an overview of the algorithm you're using to filter out the
text?

My thinking is you are measuring word count versus commonly used marketing or
political jargon count, but that's probably _too_ simple.

~~~
icegreentea
It is that simple. Looks like they assign a BS level to words, and then take
some sort of average bullshit level amongst all words. Word order doesn't
matter as slashcom says.

For example, if you take the score from the Oracle Pricing blurb posted by
BitMistro, and change 'strategies' to 'goals', you drop down to 0.8 or so. If
you add an extra random 'strategy' somewhere, it bumps up to 1.4 or something.

I actually suspect a bug on their pair for strategies... probably a decimal
error when building to BS level tables.

But similar things happen with other 'bullshity' words, just to a lesser
degree.

~~~
slashcom
It should also be noted that on about 400 short texts (~300 words each), it
did not correlate with the Flesh-Kinaid readability measure at all. So it's
not measuring something like average word length or syllable counts.

But it's not QUITE a true lexicon, as it handles Out-Of-Vocabulary words quite
strangely. If you use as input text:

"PR-Experts, politicians, ad writers or scientists need to be strong here!
BlaBlaMeter unmasks without mercy how much bullshit hides in any text. A
useful tool for everyone involved in writing! Simply copy your text into the
white field and check your writing style. It works with english text up to
15.000 characters (overhead will be cut off). For a meaningful result we
recommend a minimum length of 5 sentences."

Then you get 0.16. If you replace the last word 'sentences' with 'strategy'
you go up to 0.44. However, if you change the last word to 'sentstrategyences'
you get 0.47. Try it: you can basically insert 'strategy' inside ANY word and
really raise your score. Actually, if you just insert "strateg" anywhere
inside the text, it goes up massively.

So I actually think it's just doing string search counts over a lexicon.

~~~
icegreentea
As yes, you're right. If you insert random 'izations' into your text, your BS
meter goes up as well. It also has a hardon for 'activity'.

------
citricsquid
Obamas AMA answers came out between 0.10 and 0.30!
<http://www.reddit.com/user/PresidentObama>

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Holy Cr*p - The President actually did an AMA. I cannot imagine our Prime
Minister replying to an email.

Edit: oh its happening today - I thought it was old news and no-one had told
me. Apologies for the exclamation marks now gone.

------
shardling
Nice, the abstract to my thesis gets a 0.5[1]

The actual content parts hover around 0.16 (although I only tried segments
without any equations). It makes me wonder what sort of results you'd get if
you plotted this BS metric vs. page in a full length book.

    
    
      1. "You probably want to sell something, or you're trying to 
         impress somebody.  It still may be an acceptable result
         for a scientific text."

------
kitsune_
President's Obama's AMA answers score 0.21 (Your text shows some indications
of 'bullshit'-English, but is still within an acceptable range.)

~~~
nhebb
I tried that too, along with Paul Ryan's speech (which got 0.14 - Your text
shows only a few indications of 'bullshit'). Then, I tried the copy on my
landing page and got a 0.25. It's shameful to realize that I'm a bigger
bullshitter than two politicians.

~~~
jbooth
If you brazenly lie using strong phrases without any weasel words, it'll come
across as not being 'bullshit' grammatically. I don't think the software has a
fact checker.

------
geogra4
I used the Potsmodernism Generator (<http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/> )

And got scores of 0.35-0.45

------
joelthelion
It would be much better if it could highlight bullshit sections.

~~~
d4n3
It would be even better if it replaced the bullshit sections with "bla bla".

------
donohoe
Random articles:

    
    
      TechCrunch: 0.42 ("Amazon Wants Everyone To Know The Kindle Fire Is Sold Out")
      Paul Ryan's RNC speech: 0.14
      NYTimes: 0.11 ("Storm’s Winds Slow as It Exits Southern Louisiana")
    

Obviously its an apples and oranges comparison here but interesting (to me
anyway) nonetheless

------
tokenadult
My longest FAQ for HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4270768>

got

"Your text: 8044 characters, 1160 words Bullshit Index :0.17 Your text shows
only a few indications of 'bullshit'-English."

I too would like to know what the model is for the online ratings. Has there
been a validation study of the model?

AFTER EDIT: Paul Graham's essay "Why Nerds Are Unpopular"

<http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html>

(which is the first writing of his that I ever read) appears to reach the
maximum length (by character count) that the program will evaluate, and comes
out like this:

"Your text: 15000 characters, 2698 words Bullshit Index :0.09 Your text shows
no or marginal indications of 'bullshit'-English."

Maybe Paul's procedure of having friends look over his essays and give
suggestions helps cut out the bullshit.

------
vog
Just for fun I ran quite a few Martin Fowler's articles through the
BlaBlaMeter. On some of them, the "Bullshit Index" is unexpectedly large:

<http://martinfowler.com/bliki/SnowflakeServer.html>

 _> Bullshit Index: 0.31 – Your text shows indications of 'bullshit'-English.
It's still ok for PR or advertising purposes, but more critical audiences may
be skeptical._

<http://martinfowler.com/bliki/PhoenixServer.html>

 _> Bullshit Index: 0.4 – Something's getting a bit fishy. You probably want
to sell something, or you're trying to impress somebody. It still may be an
acceptable result for a scientific text._

------
laserDinosaur
I pasted in the Time Cube website and only got a 0.12.

~~~
kruffin
It doesn't detect crazy; maybe it scores higher in one of the other corners of
the cube.

------
ff0066mote
"I am a beautiful flower. I sway in the breeze of my meadow, drinking in the
sunshine. I love the little bees who come to visit me."

\---

Your text: 130 characters, 28 words Bullshit Index :0.05 Your text shows no or
marginal indications of 'bullshit'-English.

~~~
verisimilidude
"I am a beautiful flower. I sway in the breeze of my meadow. I drink in the
sunshine. I love the little bees who come to visit me."

\---

Your text: 129 characters, 29 words Bullshit Index :0 Your text shows no or
marginal indications of 'bullshit'-English.

BlaBlaMeter prefers an extra word over a comma. Makes sense given the goal
here.

~~~
atestu
Maybe this plays a role:

> For a meaningful result we recommend a minimum length of 5 sentences.

------
kephra
It would be nice, if <http://www.blablameter.de/fragen_und_antworten.html> is
also available in English.

The result is that non-German speakers are standing in the dark, wondering
what methodology is behind that software.

It might be even difficult to translate the concept to English, as some terms
and ideas like <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalstil> are missing in the
(restricted) English language. German is so much more elaborated, its a
language of philosophers ;-)

~~~
haeikou
* What's a good BlaBla Meter result?

High-quality journalistic texts are usually in the range of 0.1 and 0.3

* Are there any texts with an indexof 0.0?

This is rare, but occurs. Too low of an index is rather suspicious though, and
might also indicate stilistical deficits.

* What is the highest index value?

Thile the BlaBla Meter was designed for index values between 0 and 1, but in
rare cases the scale can be exceeded. The highest measured values so far have
been over 2.0 even.

* Does Google use a similar algorithm?

We don't know, but if we were Google, we'd probably try! Our samples for
highly competitive search terms show that highly ranked sites often show good
index values.

* How does BlaBla Meter work?

BlaBla meter checks texts for various linguistic traits, e.g. it checks for
exceeding use of Nominalstil[1]. In addition, the text is checked for various
phrases [buzzwords] with a certain weighting. We don't want to reveal the
secrets though ;)

[1] Heavy use of "nominal style" is a German particularity. You can replace
most verbs by nouns, adding suffixes like '-ion' or '-age', and transform the
sentence into passive. This is often found in legal texts, where the author
doesn't want to appear as a suject.

* Why does my scientific text have such a high index?

Nominalstil has crept into scientific language at large. This often serves to
'beat around the bush' - in this regard, there are analogies to typical PR
tongue.

* My mindless text gets a good score, why?

BlaBla Meter can't really understand the topic, it looks after linguistic
traits. While rainbow press can be attributed all kinds of substantial
weaknesses, their language is usually short and concise.

* My text is wrongly devalued!

As every computer algorithm, BlaBla Meter might be at fault - in doubt, human
beings must decide of course. Generally the hit rate is quite large, so you
should usually tweak the wording upon receiving high indices.

* But humans read texts completely differently ...

When BlaBla Meter crys havoc, one can usually assume that a human reader is
alerted too. People are trained every day to tell authentic messages from
artifical advertising messages - it'd be naive to belive they couldn't!

* What happens with entered texts?

Texts are private matter of course, and are neither saved nor processed in any
way or shape.

~~~
arielweisberg
One of my blog posts got a .16 so you have my seal of approval ;-)

~~~
haeikou
I am not involved with them by any means.

Yeah, personally I also score around .16 to .18 on my internet texts. Long
papers get around 0.2, so I'm probably losing momentum after the fourth page
:-/

------
originalcvk
"We use innovative cloud-based patent-pending technologies to leverage
synergies between verticals. In order to facilitate the maximum return on
investment, we hyperfocus on execution and delivery. We find our clients often
fail to think outside the box, but with our proprietary technologies we help
to identify action items that directly impact the bottom line."

Bullshit Index: 0.46 Something's getting a bit fishy. You probably want to
sell something, or you're trying to impress somebody. It still may be an
acceptable result for a scientific text.

Pretty good figuring it's under the 5 sentence recommendation.

------
brianjyee
It would be nice if they gave even the smallest hint of what they're
measuring.

------
skeltoac
The text of the site itself scores a surprisingly low 0.14: "Your text shows
only a few indications of 'bullshit'-English."

This is not a useful tool because it does not define or point to the problems
in the text.

------
raesene2
I wonder if it's possible to get it to higher than 0.5. I just tried it with
some patent gibberish and it only made that score. \--

"This project is a blue sky implementation of a cloud based virtual paradigm
which really shifts the boundries of our connected world.

Using patent pending technology to accelerate your business, we use full-stack
web-scale systems built on noSQL databases to drive clicks.

And your security is safe with us. We use military grade encryption to protect
all your data at rest."

~~~
ChuckMcM
Top story 'Amit on Grids' as I write this scored a .69 on the first paragraph.

------
mdlthree
I tried past cover letters for jobs and they all scored in the 0.5-0.6 range.
This makes sense since I AM trying to sell myself in an honest but tailored
way. Does this reveal a flaw in my writing style or in the purpose of cover
letters in the hiring process? Is it even possible for a cover letter to score
low on a bullshit scale?

~~~
jschulenklopper
Just tried to same with a recent cover letter, scoring 0.44. I wouldn't worry,
although you (and me) can always try to bring it to a more down-to-earth
level, making text easier and more pleasant to read. Unfortunately, a job
application isn't the right domain for some scientific analysis on correlation
between bullshit-measurements and interview invitations, if you're really
interested in the job :-)

------
throwaway1979
Hilarious! I plugged in some paragraphs from press releases and it was spot
on. I also appreciated the "or Scientist" part ... simply awesome!

"Bullshit Index :0.64 This reeks. I bet you're a PR-Expert, Politician,
Consultant or Scientist. If there is a message, it's unlikely it will reach
anyone."

~~~
impendia
_Scientist_?

I put in a page or so from a scientific paper I recently wrote and got 0.19.

~~~
throwaway1979
Heh .. try putting in the first para from a scientific paper. I bet 10 karma
points that this will have higher BS content than the rest. Similarly, the
last para of the intro is also almost always content free.

Note: I'm a scientist too ... good to poke fun at ourselves, eh? :)

------
AllTheThings
Joel on Software's "Software Inventory"[1] gets a 0.22 rating. I'm a big fan
of Joel on Software and am curious as to how this model evaluates "bullshit".

1\. <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/07/09.html>

------
yskchu
Tried Churchill's "we shall fight them on the beaches" speech; got 0.08 BS
index; I think it works :)

------
abarringer
I just tried some text from one of our corporate announcements. Seems
accurate.

0.8 This reeks. We bet you're a PR-Expert, Politician, Consultant or
Scientist. If there is a message, it's unlikely it will reach anyone. Maybe
you should spend less effort on trying to impress somebody.

------
lucaspiller
I copied in a Daily Mail article and it only gave me 0.12. I think your
algorithm needs work...

------
tzaman
Tried PG's _Writing and speaking_ article. 0.1 bullshit index, which is almost
zero :)

------
001sky
How did Reddit's AMA do? NOT BAD!

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4451328> \- full text
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4451586> \- summary text

    
    
      4. Small-Business tax breaks - [major bullshit] 0.5 [a]
      1. Space Race - [PR level bullshit] 0.33
      7. Money in Politics - [Some bullshit] 0.28
      2. Internet Freedom - [some bullshit] 0.23
      10. Work/Life Balance - [little bullshit] 0.16
      9. Jobs / recent grads - [little bullshit] 0.16
      6. Most Difficult Decision/afghanistan - [No Bullshit] 0.07
    
      [Un-analyzable]
    
      3. Favorite Basketball Player - too short
      8. White House Beer Recipe - too short
      5. First Activity on Nov 7 - too short
    
     [a]"Are you sure that you have a real message, and if so:
         who would understand it?"

------
finin
I tried this on Paul Ryan's RNC address from last night, Barack Obama's
innaugarel address, and a recent IEEE TKDE journal article. It gave bullshit
measures of 0.15, 0.13 and 0.25, respectively. :-(

------
mikle
My blog posts (<http://sveder.com/blog>) are between .18-.22 so I feel
relieved. Great idea, and like everyone else I'd like to know where I fail
too.

------
flexie
I tried with Paul Ryan's speech at the RNC. Here's what it said:

Your text: 15000 characters, 2645 words Bullshit Index :0.13 Your text shows
only a few indications of 'bullshit'-English.

Does that mean the algorithms work?

------
ColinWright
Just thought I'd share:

    
    
        Your text: 2418 characters, 451 words
        Bullshit Index :0.05
        Your text shows no or marginal indications of
            'bullshit'-English.

------
gulbrandr
I got 1.24 from Vmware: <http://www.vmware.com/solutions/cloud-
computing/index.html>

------
instakill
Best use case to test it with: <http://startupista.com/corporate-bullshit-
generator/>

------
droob
Good companion to Paul Ford's Passivator:
<http://www.ftrain.com/ThePassivator.html>

------
thewarrior
I think that this works by calculating something called the Gunning Fog index
, ie the no. Of words in a sentence with more Syllables than usual .

------
selectout
Interesting to look at Privacy Policies in here. Google's policy had a
slightly more bullshit leaning side than the average document.

------
clwoodson
Whatever algorithm it uses thinks George W Bush and Sarah Palin lace their
speeches with less bullshit than Winston Churchill.

------
nayanga
"english text up to 15.000 characters (overhead will be cut off)", did I read
it as 15 characters ? Bullshit

------
DanielRibeiro
Meta index: the page itself has 0.14 bulshit index...

------
JoeAltmaier
I'm writing a story; its a 0.12, acceptable.

