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It's funny how you quote the bible as if it had any authority on profundity, given that it is full of equally vacuous bullshit, including the verses you quote.

It's funny how you quote the bible as if it had any authority on profundity, given that it is full of equally vacuous bullshit, including the verses you quote. It seems to me like that demonstrates (a) how real the effect is that this study measured, and (b) what the basic mechanism is that makes it happen: Religious people tend to start with statements that they have decided they want to believe without any actual reason and then they go out and try to find reasons, no matter how metaphorical or analogous these reasons might be, and thus no matter how much these reasons actually logically and empirically support the statement at hand. Scientifically minded people on the other hand tend to reject statements until they have evidence that supports them, so they aren't invested into finding reasons to believe, because they care more about what is actually true. That's also why religions consistently fail at discovering true facts about the world (or in other words: why they fail at rejecting bullshit), while science yields all the progress we make in understanding the world (which in particular means rejecting all the bullshit).

logicallee 11y ago
It's funny how you can say someone "quotes the bible as if it had any authority on profundity" after that person wrote "But what does the bit about valleys being raised up and mountains made low? It has to be some kind of metaphor, or it's literal but weird, or it's just random nonsense." The study was about bullshit meaning literal, meaningless nonsense statements, like "Imagination is inside exponential space time events." If you can't tell the difference between meaningless statements and ones that are simply wrong you are no better than the editors who accepted this hoax paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair You completely misread my comment.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
  Well, I would say that you didn't make yourself particularly clear, then :-) Yes, you did list the possibility that that quote might just be random nonsense, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is what you think is the case. In particular given that you also wrote this: > The (Christian) bible says there is NOTHING secret that shall not be made manifest. So anything that is a FACT (actually happened), however irrational-seeming or paradoxical, will be revealed in all its causes. This is a deeply profound statement. I don't see how there is anything profound about this. It's just a baseless assertion, as far as I can tell. So, while it's a step beyond just random gibberish, in that there is some semantic meaning to this, it's still just a deepity ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity ).
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  - logicallee 11y ago
    I'm sorry, I must have let the fact that the document I chose as a basis for comparison (and which I don't believe) influences the lives of 2.2 billion people every day and has for hundreds of years cloud me into thinking that it is more "profound" - as a basis of comparison - than if a pack of peanuts says "may contain peanuts" on it. /s In other words I don't think profound statements have to be true, and the article says people were judging profundity, not truth. (although this is irrelevant, I don't think the verses I quoted are true.)
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
      > In other words I don't think profound statements have to be true, and the article says people were judging profundity, not truth. (although this is irrelevant, I don't think the verses I quoted are true.) I think you are using an unusual definition of "profound", then? To quote the relevant definition from the oxford dictionary: "(Of a person or statement) having or showing great knowledge or insight" I don't exactly think that would be met by "incorrect knowledge" or "false insight"? Now, there is a "feeling of profundity", which indeed does not depend on truth, but which can be evoked by, for example, statements that (to a particular person) seem profound, but actually aren't, but also just by certain experiences.
      - logicallee 11y ago
        >I don't exactly think that would be met by "incorrect knowledge" or "false insight"? sure it would be met. your usage is obviously not what anybody means by profound. your usage suggests someone can say "I just read a really speculative physics paper which might be really profound, if it's true. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to test it today, so it's impossible to know whether it's profound or not. But it would certainly be interesting if it turned out to be profound!" Go ahead and find a single person online talking in such terms about whether a journal article in a hard science is profound or not, where if it turns out to be true it's profound but if it turns out to be false it's not profound. Profound is a common word. Find a single person using it in science the way you suggest I use it.

logicallee 11y ago

It's funny how you can say someone "quotes the bible as if it had any authority on profundity" after that person wrote "But what does the bit about valleys being raised up and mountains made low? It has to be some kind of metaphor, or it's literal but weird, or it's just random nonsense." The study was about bullshit meaning literal, meaningless nonsense statements, like "Imagination is inside exponential space time events." If you can't tell the difference between meaningless statements and ones that are simply wrong you are no better than the editors who accepted this hoax paper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair You completely misread my comment.

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
Well, I would say that you didn't make yourself particularly clear, then :-) Yes, you did list the possibility that that quote might just be random nonsense, but that doesn't necessarily mean that that is what you think is the case. In particular given that you also wrote this: > The (Christian) bible says there is NOTHING secret that shall not be made manifest. So anything that is a FACT (actually happened), however irrational-seeming or paradoxical, will be revealed in all its causes. This is a deeply profound statement. I don't see how there is anything profound about this. It's just a baseless assertion, as far as I can tell. So, while it's a step beyond just random gibberish, in that there is some semantic meaning to this, it's still just a deepity ( http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Deepity ).
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- logicallee 11y ago
  I'm sorry, I must have let the fact that the document I chose as a basis for comparison (and which I don't believe) influences the lives of 2.2 billion people every day and has for hundreds of years cloud me into thinking that it is more "profound" - as a basis of comparison - than if a pack of peanuts says "may contain peanuts" on it. /s In other words I don't think profound statements have to be true, and the article says people were judging profundity, not truth. (although this is irrelevant, I don't think the verses I quoted are true.)
  - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 11y ago
    > In other words I don't think profound statements have to be true, and the article says people were judging profundity, not truth. (although this is irrelevant, I don't think the verses I quoted are true.) I think you are using an unusual definition of "profound", then? To quote the relevant definition from the oxford dictionary: "(Of a person or statement) having or showing great knowledge or insight" I don't exactly think that would be met by "incorrect knowledge" or "false insight"? Now, there is a "feeling of profundity", which indeed does not depend on truth, but which can be evoked by, for example, statements that (to a particular person) seem profound, but actually aren't, but also just by certain experiences.
    - logicallee 11y ago
      >I don't exactly think that would be met by "incorrect knowledge" or "false insight"? sure it would be met. your usage is obviously not what anybody means by profound. your usage suggests someone can say "I just read a really speculative physics paper which might be really profound, if it's true. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to test it today, so it's impossible to know whether it's profound or not. But it would certainly be interesting if it turned out to be profound!" Go ahead and find a single person online talking in such terms about whether a journal article in a hard science is profound or not, where if it turns out to be true it's profound but if it turns out to be false it's not profound. Profound is a common word. Find a single person using it in science the way you suggest I use it.