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Bullshit-sensitivity predicts prosocial behavior

212 points by tchalla 8y ago

mozumder 8y ago
At the root is narcissism. Narcissism blocks profound insight, and rewards anti-social behavior.
- topmonk 8y ago
  > Narcissism blocks profound insight How would you even measure what profound insight is, nevermind determining whether something causes its absence?
simonbarker87 8y ago
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 8y ago
  Are you reading them in their original language, or a translation?
folli 8y ago
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?
- ak39 8y ago
  Precisely. That would of course be the follow up, meta analysis.
- steve1977 8y ago
  Sokal hoax 2.0?
- FabHK 8y ago
  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).
- raverbashing 8y ago
  Extreme nihilism seems to be as naive as buying any falsely profound phrase.
barking 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
  - barking 8y ago
    I think you're right. I hadn't looked at it that way.
  - a3n 8y ago
    I'd guess Fred Rogers was an excellent bullshit detector.
  - ahartmetz 8y ago
    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 8y ago
      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.
tomp 8y ago
Sounds very profound, but unfortunately it also trips up my bullshit sensor.
awild 8y ago
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!
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  The bullshit sentences look like they were put together by a Markov chain.
  - magicalhippo 8y ago
    Yet they sound a lot like what's written on countless mugs, pillows and plaques sold these days.
  - Moodles 8y ago
    We can even generate bullshit CS papers (and get them accepted into some unscrupulous journals) now! https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/ https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/
    - JulianMorrison 8y ago
      This should be automated like a chaos monkey for journals.
- mkohlmyr 8y ago
  As someone who grew up and studied in Sweden I'd be surprised if a random selection of the population were able to parse those sentences well enough to make a qualified judgement to begin with. And then there's the question of how 'profound' the second set is to begin with..
  - awild 8y ago
    They are translated from Swedish for this paper.
visarga 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
- p0nce 8y ago
  I define bullshit as using big words and social proof, to present a conceptual theory (split) that might have some merit, but isn't particularly insightful.
DrNuke 8y ago
>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.
YouAreGreat 8y ago
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.
riacom 8y ago
unfortunately it also trips up my bullshit sensor. https://soundcloud.com/ahmed-el-fanagely2 https://soundcloud.com/ahmed-el-fanagely2
have_faith 8y ago
> assessed participants’ bullshit-receptivity Deriving meaning from what others deem meaningless could be profound in itself?
- gweinberg 8y ago
  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.
practice9 8y ago
I'm surprised that Nassim Taleb is not mentioned
austincheney 8y ago
> 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.
duopixel 8y ago
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=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0201474.t001 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l... No claim is made on the validity of the experiment (the researchers' or your own). Proposed in the name of curiosity!
- ak39 8y ago
  No 10. sounds just like something Slavoj Zizek would say.
  - FabHK 8y ago
    I wonder whether there's research correlating low bullshit-sensitivity with endorsement of postmodern "thought".
    - drb91 8y ago
      What area are you talking about? Postmodern means a lot of different things.
  - Fordec 8y ago
zhdc1 8y ago
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.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
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.
- DanBC 8y ago
  This must become a twitter bot.
- occamschainsaw 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    "Experiential truth experiences quantum excellence"
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  - If you immediatley know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
- EthanHeilman 8y ago
  You have a real gift at this.
- justwalt 8y ago
  If you swapped ‘road’ for ‘seeds’ in the one about apples, it becomes not bullshit.
  - JulianMorrison 8y ago
    My approach was to take stereotypical schemas, populate them with nouns that are drawn from the same stereotypical set of actors, but in surreal ways, and then tweak them until they are right on the edge of bullshit. That one was originally "Although many people seek apples, few seek the banana", for example. So it's not too surprising they are close to the boundary of banal "profundities".
tabs_masterrace 8y ago
> Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future. This one is classified bullshit, although I think it makes at least somewhat sense.
- akvadrako 8y ago
  I think the bullshit part is "for the future". "in the future" would make some sense.
- __david__ 8y ago
  Howso? I don't see how either health or tolerance is related to creativity… Also why only future creativity?
  - foldr 8y ago
    To be fair, it says "for the future", not "only for the future". If I say "these reforms will ensure a clean environment for the next generation", I'm not ruling out the possibility that they'll also do so for the current generation.
  - nichtich 8y ago
    Because they imply a safer and longer life and the creativity of dead people are zero. I think it makes some sense.
    - sophistication 8y ago
      There might be slightly positive causal correlations between health and creativity (probably not too strong though because there are lots of mentally deranged successful artists), and, more plausibly, between tolerance and creativity, but that's not enough profundity. It does not give you that "kick" of information gain you get from the profound sentences. It abuses a poetic/proverbial form to only state weak to non-existent causal associations and henceforth it is bullshit.
  - ACow_Adonis 8y ago
    As someone who picked out the "two categories" of statements with 100% accuracy before looking at the answers... I think he has a point. Creativity could be proposed to be conditional on maintaining personal well-being (health) while undergoing exposure to many new experiences (tolerance). Losing your health during exposure to new things makes you reactionary and conservative and want to cling to set ideas. Have no tolerance and you won't even want to be exposed to new or uncomfortable experiences in the first place. But if you can maintain your health, and tolerate exposure to new ideas, why the fruit that comes from both those while undergoing continued diverse experiences is presumably creativity (being in the future because you can only get it after said experiences).
js8 8y ago
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 8y ago
  The test you describe is basically also a (recipe for an) integration test.
heddycrow 8y ago
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?
amelius 8y ago
Is this related to "shit tests" (see link)? 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 https://www.quora.com/What-are-common-shit-tests-The-term-sh...
- dropit_sphere 8y ago
  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.
c3534l 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.
skate22 8y ago
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-charities/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/executive-salaries-chariti...
- Devon64327 8y ago
  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.
c3534l 8y ago
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.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> 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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    >> 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).
Devon64327 8y ago
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.
kweinber 8y ago
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.
pure-awesome 8y ago
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/2016/12/kahneman_and_tversky_researched_the_science_of_error_and_still_made_errors.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... 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/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc... Kahneman's Comment: https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-1454 https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc... Retraction Watch “I placed too much faith in underpowered studies:” Nobel Prize winner admits mistakes https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-underpowered-studies-nobel-prize-winner-admits-mistakes/ https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
Symmetry 8y ago
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.
xamuel 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.
abruzzi 8y ago
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?
ridewinter 8y ago
No mention of Trump here?
boooooo 8y ago
Wow, the interpretations of these statements in these comments is hilarious. Is everyone on Hacker News Dwight Schrute?
- AlexCoventry 8y ago
  The n-gate summary of this thread is going top be great.
  - eppsilon 8y ago
    Something something prime directive
    - AlexCoventry 8y ago
      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+n-gate https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
- spiderfarmer 8y ago
  Trying to point out faults, not because it adds to the conversation but only because it makes us feel superior, is a common trait among HN commenters. A social experiment that might explain some of our own behavior is the ideal subject. It’s a social experiment, for gods sake, that’s not hard science at all!
throw7 8y ago
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.
ashleyn 8y ago
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.
apo 8y ago
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
deviationblue 8y ago
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.
cjensen 8y ago
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.
foobarbecue 8y ago
I think this is actually a study designed to determine who can detect bullshit studies. "Bullshit-sensitivity" here appears to mean "reading comprehension."
mamon 8y ago
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.
SZJX 8y ago
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.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

212 points by tchalla 8y ago

mozumder 8y ago

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

topmonk 8y ago
> Narcissism blocks profound insight How would you even measure what profound insight is, nevermind determining whether something causes its absence?

simonbarker87 8y ago

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 8y ago
Are you reading them in their original language, or a translation?

folli 8y ago

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?

ak39 8y ago
Precisely. That would of course be the follow up, meta analysis.
steve1977 8y ago
Sokal hoax 2.0?
FabHK 8y ago
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).
raverbashing 8y ago
Extreme nihilism seems to be as naive as buying any falsely profound phrase.

barking 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
- barking 8y ago
  I think you're right. I hadn't looked at it that way.
- a3n 8y ago
  I'd guess Fred Rogers was an excellent bullshit detector.
- ahartmetz 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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.

tomp 8y ago

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

awild 8y ago

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!

JulianMorrison 8y ago
The bullshit sentences look like they were put together by a Markov chain.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  Yet they sound a lot like what's written on countless mugs, pillows and plaques sold these days.
- Moodles 8y ago
  We can even generate bullshit CS papers (and get them accepted into some unscrupulous journals) now! https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/ https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/
  - JulianMorrison 8y ago
    This should be automated like a chaos monkey for journals.
mkohlmyr 8y ago
As someone who grew up and studied in Sweden I'd be surprised if a random selection of the population were able to parse those sentences well enough to make a qualified judgement to begin with. And then there's the question of how 'profound' the second set is to begin with..
- awild 8y ago
  They are translated from Swedish for this paper.

visarga 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.
p0nce 8y ago
I define bullshit as using big words and social proof, to present a conceptual theory (split) that might have some merit, but isn't particularly insightful.

DrNuke 8y ago

>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.

YouAreGreat 8y ago

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.

riacom 8y ago

unfortunately it also trips up my bullshit sensor. https://soundcloud.com/ahmed-el-fanagely2 https://soundcloud.com/ahmed-el-fanagely2

have_faith 8y ago

> assessed participants’ bullshit-receptivity Deriving meaning from what others deem meaningless could be profound in itself?

gweinberg 8y ago
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.

practice9 8y ago

I'm surprised that Nassim Taleb is not mentioned

austincheney 8y ago

> 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.

duopixel 8y ago

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=large&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0201474.t001 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l... No claim is made on the validity of the experiment (the researchers' or your own). Proposed in the name of curiosity!

ak39 8y ago
No 10. sounds just like something Slavoj Zizek would say.
- FabHK 8y ago
  I wonder whether there's research correlating low bullshit-sensitivity with endorsement of postmodern "thought".
  - drb91 8y ago
    What area are you talking about? Postmodern means a lot of different things.
- Fordec 8y ago

zhdc1 8y ago

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.

JulianMorrison 8y ago

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.

DanBC 8y ago
This must become a twitter bot.
occamschainsaw 8y ago
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 8y ago
  "Experiential truth experiences quantum excellence"
TeMPOraL 8y ago
- If you immediatley know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago.
EthanHeilman 8y ago
You have a real gift at this.
justwalt 8y ago
If you swapped ‘road’ for ‘seeds’ in the one about apples, it becomes not bullshit.
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  My approach was to take stereotypical schemas, populate them with nouns that are drawn from the same stereotypical set of actors, but in surreal ways, and then tweak them until they are right on the edge of bullshit. That one was originally "Although many people seek apples, few seek the banana", for example. So it's not too surprising they are close to the boundary of banal "profundities".

tabs_masterrace 8y ago

> Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future. This one is classified bullshit, although I think it makes at least somewhat sense.

akvadrako 8y ago
I think the bullshit part is "for the future". "in the future" would make some sense.
__david__ 8y ago
Howso? I don't see how either health or tolerance is related to creativity… Also why only future creativity?
- foldr 8y ago
  To be fair, it says "for the future", not "only for the future". If I say "these reforms will ensure a clean environment for the next generation", I'm not ruling out the possibility that they'll also do so for the current generation.
- nichtich 8y ago
  Because they imply a safer and longer life and the creativity of dead people are zero. I think it makes some sense.
  - sophistication 8y ago
    There might be slightly positive causal correlations between health and creativity (probably not too strong though because there are lots of mentally deranged successful artists), and, more plausibly, between tolerance and creativity, but that's not enough profundity. It does not give you that "kick" of information gain you get from the profound sentences. It abuses a poetic/proverbial form to only state weak to non-existent causal associations and henceforth it is bullshit.
- ACow_Adonis 8y ago
  As someone who picked out the "two categories" of statements with 100% accuracy before looking at the answers... I think he has a point. Creativity could be proposed to be conditional on maintaining personal well-being (health) while undergoing exposure to many new experiences (tolerance). Losing your health during exposure to new things makes you reactionary and conservative and want to cling to set ideas. Have no tolerance and you won't even want to be exposed to new or uncomfortable experiences in the first place. But if you can maintain your health, and tolerate exposure to new ideas, why the fruit that comes from both those while undergoing continued diverse experiences is presumably creativity (being in the future because you can only get it after said experiences).

js8 8y ago

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 8y ago
The test you describe is basically also a (recipe for an) integration test.

heddycrow 8y ago

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?

amelius 8y ago

Is this related to "shit tests" (see link)? 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 https://www.quora.com/What-are-common-shit-tests-The-term-sh...

dropit_sphere 8y ago
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.

c3534l 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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.

skate22 8y ago

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-charities/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/executive-salaries-chariti...

Devon64327 8y ago
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.

c3534l 8y ago

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.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> 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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  >> 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).

Devon64327 8y ago

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.

kweinber 8y ago

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.

pure-awesome 8y ago

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/2016/12/kahneman_and_tversky_researched_the_science_of_error_and_still_made_errors.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201... 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/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc... Kahneman's Comment: https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/comment-page-1/#comment-1454 https://replicationindex.wordpress.com/2017/02/02/reconstruc... Retraction Watch “I placed too much faith in underpowered studies:” Nobel Prize winner admits mistakes https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-underpowered-studies-nobel-prize-winner-admits-mistakes/ https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...

Symmetry 8y ago

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.

xamuel 8y ago

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 8y ago
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.

abruzzi 8y ago

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?

ridewinter 8y ago

No mention of Trump here?

boooooo 8y ago

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

AlexCoventry 8y ago
The n-gate summary of this thread is going top be great.
- eppsilon 8y ago
  Something something prime directive
  - AlexCoventry 8y ago
    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+n-gate https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
spiderfarmer 8y ago
Trying to point out faults, not because it adds to the conversation but only because it makes us feel superior, is a common trait among HN commenters. A social experiment that might explain some of our own behavior is the ideal subject. It’s a social experiment, for gods sake, that’s not hard science at all!

throw7 8y ago

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.

ashleyn 8y ago

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.

apo 8y ago

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

deviationblue 8y ago

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.

cjensen 8y ago

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.

foobarbecue 8y ago

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

mamon 8y ago

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.

SZJX 8y ago

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.

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