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thanks for collecting these. I was very curious what the research team thought constituted "profound sounding bullshit". now that I've seen it I am inclined to

thanks for collecting these. I was very curious what the research team thought constituted "profound sounding bullshit". now that I've seen it I am inclined to believe that this is actually just some kind of cultural or communication gaps. quite a few of those sentences can be "translated" to very pedestrian, non-controversial, and obvious sounding statements that even the most hard nosed materialist scientist would probably accept. Let me try a few. > Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena Translation: a healthy and balanced lifestyle is helpful for the purpose of feeling less bothered/annoyed/irritated by the things in the world. > Imagination is inside exponential space time events Translation: Imagination is a behavior of the mind/brain > We are in the midst of a self aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself Translation: Recently, more people have expressed in interest in spiritual and religious practice are my translations good or meaningful? am I just falling into the bullshit trap myself? who knows. I think we would all benefit from being less judgmental of others who communicate using different symbols and turns of phrase than the ones we are accustomed to, though. Its a pretty vicious and petty culture that disparages people who have different preferences for their favorite metaphors. I'm really failing to see the benefit in saying "this is bullshit and if you believe it isn't then you're an idiot." which seems to largely be the point of the research. and yes, I do know that some of these were generated semi-randomly by a computer program. that doesn't exclude the potential for meaning. the words were chosen by someone originally, after all. language is tricky. the words can mean things beyond the original context they were produced in.

solipsism 10y ago
You're completely ignoring words that don't fit into your translations. For the first one... you forgot to explain the word "infinite." For the second, you forgot to explain the word "exponential.". The third.. umm.. WTF is "the nexus itself." For most people these statements are meaningless. To say "I can assign basically random meanings, if I just say whatever I think of first, ignoring inconsistencies between the statement and the translation".... Well you're just pointing out the exact problem.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  translations are always problematic. I assure you I didn't ignore those words though. I may, however, be a poor translator. Or you may be a poor reader. Or both. Those weren't "basically random meanings" or "whatever I think of first" though.
- zardo 10y ago
  >The third.. umm.. WTF is "the nexus itself." It is itself, the very Nexus of itselfness.
paulajohnson 10y ago
The point is that at the semantic level these statements are random noise. Sure you can see a signal in it if you look hard enough, but what you are actually doing is over-fitting. Some of these statements look like they might be meaningful, but that's just like generating 5 random points and finding that they are roughly in a line. The finding here is that people on the conservative end are more prone to doing this semantic over-fitting than people on the liberal end. Sure, the sample is self-selected and not representative, but the results are still intriguing. The next step is to replicate this with a better sample, or at least a different one.
- metaphorm 10y ago
  I think the research is of such dubious quality in both experimental design, and unfounded underlying assumptions, that I wouldn't trust its results further than I could spit. The next step is not to replicate this with a better sample, but to seriously question the underlying assumptions that lead the research team to even attempt a study of this kind in the first place. I can think of better ways to "validate" your own in-group preferred belief system, language, politics, and whatever other kinds of tribal identifiers they want. The most dubious part of this exercise is not that its possible for people to do line-fitting on the bullshit sentences. Its that the research team has such a poor understanding of language and communication that they would think their experiment was anything more than an exercise in tribal piss-marking.

solipsism 10y ago

You're completely ignoring words that don't fit into your translations. For the first one... you forgot to explain the word "infinite." For the second, you forgot to explain the word "exponential.". The third.. umm.. WTF is "the nexus itself." For most people these statements are meaningless. To say "I can assign basically random meanings, if I just say whatever I think of first, ignoring inconsistencies between the statement and the translation".... Well you're just pointing out the exact problem.

metaphorm 10y ago
translations are always problematic. I assure you I didn't ignore those words though. I may, however, be a poor translator. Or you may be a poor reader. Or both. Those weren't "basically random meanings" or "whatever I think of first" though.
zardo 10y ago
>The third.. umm.. WTF is "the nexus itself." It is itself, the very Nexus of itselfness.

paulajohnson 10y ago

The point is that at the semantic level these statements are random noise. Sure you can see a signal in it if you look hard enough, but what you are actually doing is over-fitting. Some of these statements look like they might be meaningful, but that's just like generating 5 random points and finding that they are roughly in a line. The finding here is that people on the conservative end are more prone to doing this semantic over-fitting than people on the liberal end. Sure, the sample is self-selected and not representative, but the results are still intriguing. The next step is to replicate this with a better sample, or at least a different one.

metaphorm 10y ago
I think the research is of such dubious quality in both experimental design, and unfounded underlying assumptions, that I wouldn't trust its results further than I could spit. The next step is not to replicate this with a better sample, but to seriously question the underlying assumptions that lead the research team to even attempt a study of this kind in the first place. I can think of better ways to "validate" your own in-group preferred belief system, language, politics, and whatever other kinds of tribal identifiers they want. The most dubious part of this exercise is not that its possible for people to do line-fitting on the bullshit sentences. Its that the research team has such a poor understanding of language and communication that they would think their experiment was anything more than an exercise in tribal piss-marking.