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Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence
- meitham 6y agoErm ... this really depends on believable these lies are! Very few buy Trump’s BS yet he likes to think he’s highly intelligent!
- dang 6y agoPlease don't go there here.
- ape4 6y agoBut Trump == bullshit these days
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoPerhaps so. But still, don't do that here.
- cvaidya1986 6y agoI admire your patience in these forums.
- sunstone 6y agoDefinition of a Gentleman: someone who knows how to play the bagpipes but doesn't. This is kind of similar.
- nicharesuk 6y agoAre you saying that like: A gentleman is someone who is intelligent enough to bullshit you, but chooses not to?
- sremani 6y agoWould say, A gentleman is someone who is intelligent enough to spot Bullshit.
- chaoticmass 6y agoBeing good at bullshitting makes it easier to spot bullshit.
- karatestomp 6y agoA gentleman is one who lies about being able to play the bagpipes. (no, you're right, of course)
- the_arun 6y agoThis is a fantastic definition for Gentleman/woman
- paypalcust83 6y agoNope. An honest man of integrity already knows how to play the bagpipes and doesn't need to lie or name-drop to seem important. Bullshit is only appropriate to save the face or lives of others, or as entertainment amongst people already savvy enough to see through it.
- war1025 6y agoMy favorite version of this is: "The highest praise that one can give a man is that he is capable of doing harm but chooses not to."
- graphpapa 6y agoMuch less whimsical
- 2019-nCoV 6y agoIt would make sense that imbeciles have a harder time bullshitting. You can't continually bullshit someone that is more knowledgable on a topic. Though it would seem bullshit ability is more closely tied to that knowledge gap between participants than anything. e.g. mechanic with an IQ of 85 easily bullshits the economist with an IQ of 125 into more mechanical work than is required.
- seppin 6y ago> It would make sense that imbeciles have a harder time bullshitting. Or your lack of knowledge doesn't hold you back in any way, your BSing is pure nonsense and therefore isn't even approachable. The best BSers I know are total morons.
- jessriedel 6y agoFYI: Philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote the classic essay "On Bullshit", defining the concept. Unlike lying/fraud, where falsehood is instrumental, Frankfurt defined bullshit as potentially false speech where the truth simply wasn't important. Bullshit is characterized by giving the surface appearance of confidence, intelligence, or a convincing argument; whether it's actually true or not is besides the point. The essay is only 20 pages and available here: http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/bullshit.pdf http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/bullshit...
- clairity 6y agoi think i've read this at some point but taking a quick look to refesh myself, i was struck on the first page by the word procrustean, which apparently means something like "rigidly but arbitrarily specified"[0], possibly obliquely related to hard-shelled sea creatures. neat word. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes#Cultural_references https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes#Cultural_references
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- salty_biscuits 6y agoIt's from Procrustes, the guy who chopped your feet off to make you fit in the bed in greek myth. You find Procrustean analysis in mathematics, where you try and find the closest approximating matrix with a certain property to another given matrix (like it is a rotation matrix etc).
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoProcrustes was really one of the first slasher horror villains.
- richk449 6y agoTry reading AntiFragile. You will be very sick of that word by the time you finish the book.
- it 6y agoThis reminds me of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Galapagos, in which the human race evolves beyond the era of really big brains since they weren't doing us that much good after all and made our heads less streamlined for swimming after fish.
- wiml 6y agoA similar idea forms the background to Karl Schroeder's novel _Permanence_.
- adrianmonk 6y agoSide issue, but if someone is going to bullshit me, I really appreciate it if they do a good job. Put some effort in. Make it believable. Otherwise, you're insulting my intelligence, and maybe it's just my ego, but having my intelligence insulted offends me more than being lied to does.
- CamperBob2 6y agoThat's also reminiscent of a similar problem with the original Turing test: the test outcome says more about the intelligence of the person evaluating the test than it does about the identity of the test subject. What does it prove if a computer successfully fools a moron... or if a presidential candidate successfully bamboozles 62,979,879 of them?
- clairity 6y agoagreed. the building handyman tries to bullshit me out of doing work on my apartment, or at least to cheap out on the quality of the work. he gets mad at me for outmaneuvering him into better (but not the best) solutions. he has only himself to blame for being so bad at bullshit. if he were better at it, i might not have any room to object. but i'm offended that he thinks his bs is any good, and i do object. every time. out of principle.
- karatestomp 6y agoI bet activities and educational environments that correlate (for whatever reason) with higher-than-average intelligence train for bullshitting, directly or indirectly. Improv, verbal sparring games (e.g. "Questions"), debate, small-group discussion-driven instruction styles (as the Harkness method of Phillips Exeter Academy)
- it 6y agoAlso related: The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies by Charles Eisenstein: https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-ubiquitous-matrix-of-lies/ https://charleseisenstein.org/essays/the-ubiquitous-matrix-o....
- blueridge 6y agoGreat read. Reminds me of "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America" by Daniel Boorstin.
- mncharity 6y agoReminds me by contrast of reports of ancient Persia... > They hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies. (Herodotus I.139) > From five years of age to twenty-four they are trained to use the bow, to throw the javelin, to ride horseback, and to speak the truth; (Strabo 15:3.18) Perhaps connected to a Zoroastrianism light/truth/good at war with dark/lies/evil.
- Dowwie 6y agoConfronting indifference toward truth: Dealing with workplace bullshit: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000768132030001X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000768132...
- AzzieElbab 6y agoYeah, but the results of using this specific ability are what exactly?
- gxx 6y agoBecoming a powerful politician...
- AzzieElbab 6y agoExactly, more bs
- ikeyany 6y agoHello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is No.
- correlator 6y agoSimpsons did it
- Tade0 6y agoSomehow Jonathan Frakes seems to be more fitting here, even though it was indeed Leonard Nimoy in that episode.
- aazaa 6y agoFrom the abstract: > ... Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that bullshit ability is predictive of participants’ intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be higher in intelligence. ... This abstract reads like bullshit. The paper defines "bullshiting," but not "intelligence." Nor do the authors even seem interested in addressing any of the numerous problems in measuring human intelligence. The "intelligence" tests being used appear to be: - Wordsum Task. The Wordsum task is a 10-item vocabulary test commonly used as a measure of verbal intelligence (see Malhotra et al., 2007 for a review). In this task, a word in large print (e.g., “CLOISTERED”) appears above a series of smaller print words (e.g., bunched, secluded, malady, miniature, arched). Participants’ objective is to pick a small print word that is the best synonym for the large print target word. Scores on the Wordsum task were equal to the total number of correct responses provided. - Raven’s Progressive Matrices. We administered Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) as a measure of abstract reasoning and non-verbal fluid intelligence (Bilker et al., 2012). In this task, participants are presented with a partially obscured visual pattern and must select the available pattern fragment that will successfully complete the pattern. The RPM is comprised of 60 items broken up into five levels of difficulty. In order to decrease time demands on participants, we randomly selected four items from each of the five difficulty levels, resulting in 20 RPM items being presented in Study 1. We calculated an RPM score for each participant by calculating the number of correct responses they provided. Assuming this study was in fact performed and isn't some weird bullshit inception joke, these "intelligence" tests seem flawed at best.
- thomasqm 6y agoThey are commonplace puzzles that serve to measure commonplace intelligence. What else were you thinking?
- throwaway3999 6y agoTaking a far-reaching and encompassing notion that's very ingrained in everyone's vocabulary, redefining it so that it's easier to measure, and reducing it to a bunch of puzzles, seems to be a favorite pastime of psychologists.
- DevKoala 6y agoBack when I was younger, I would bullshit on software interviews with great success. I say "bullshit" because I would talk with a high degree of "confidence" about topics and technologies that I had barely read about or had experience with. "Scaling a service to millions of requests per second? Sure, you will need X, Y, and Z." Now, on the other side of the table, I am quick to spot the bullshit. Also, I realize how criminal those interviews were back then. I was answering architect level questions asked by a senior engineer when applying for a junior level position.
- folkhack 6y agoI mean - assuming you passed the interview how BS was it? Either the guy interviewing you had no place asking those questions or you were accurate enough in your response to get in is my take.
- Tade0 6y agoI'm in my current project because I read the right articles about ngrx an hour before the interview. We had a laugh about it with our line manager the other day. He was leading that interview.
- DevKoala 6y agoI find it hard to imagine I was accurate in my replies when I also feel I have learned so much in the past decade. Most likely I was not asked for real details, which makes me question the effectiveness of the interviewers back then.
- yibg 6y agoI worked for a number of years in a custom software dev shop and one of my later responsibilities was to be the tech guy during the sales cycle. Essentially my job was to look and sound smart and help convince the potential customer that we're really good and the best choice for the job. I do think we were pretty good but as you can imagine most of my job was bullshitting. I can't remember the numbers of times that I would quickly read up on a topic / language / technology the prospect was using the night / morning before the meeting, then during the meeting try to sound like an expert in the topic. I know exactly how convincing I was, but I was never called out enough during the meeting to out me.
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- s_m 6y agoIf I were well known as a master bullshitter, I would simply convince the world that being a master bullshitter was a sign of intelligence.
- danielmarkbruce 6y agoI don't understand how this doesn't have more upvotes.
- KingFelix 6y agoTake mine!
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- airocker 6y ago"Blondes have more fun" -- Marilyn Monroe
- m463 6y agoPossibly by publishing something equating bs and iq? Also, bullshit ability is also a signal of prime mating potential.
- rini17 6y agoDon't forget to dye your hair orange :)
- xivzgrev 6y agoPlenty of dumb people bullshit and plenty of smart people don’t. I saw another comment here I agree with - your intelligence probably correlates with the quality of bullshit, assuming equal motivation.
- foobar_ 6y agoBullshitters are observed to be intelligent. That is true. Confident bullshitters are assumed to be intelligent but thats because of the confidence factor. Intelligent people usually outthink themselves and "appear" doubtful when the actual case is they are considering all possible options. I think it should be possible to amplify bullshit to such a degree that everyone can see the absurdity.
- krick 6y agoGPT-2 must be intelligent as fuck.
- danielam 6y agoWho cares? Being good at bullshitting is like being a good liar or good at dissimulation. The "good" is only analogical in meaning. Virtuous intelligent people, the wise, are habituated and developed in the direction of truth and away from lies, deceit and bullshit. They have a sensitivity to the truth and the value of truth. Bullshitting requires and in turn reinforces a kind of mental dullness and blindness. It leads to a kind of degeneration of the mental faculties. If you don't care about the truth—only the parochial effects of your petty machinations—then you are frustrating the intellect and its grasp of reality. You are reinforcing vices while weakening the capacity for discernment and the strengths and virtues needed for proper intellectual function and receptivity. It's a bit like what happens when an intelligent coward is met with contrary evidence. He will turn away from the truth and go to great lengths to rationalize it away, and in doing so, he will blind himself to the truth. Making that a habit through repetition only deepens the vice and unravels the mind, making it increasingly difficult to dig yourself out.
- jokoon 6y agoI agree. Another problem is that the truth often doesn't matter, and the intelligent cowards knows it. He won't deny the truth, but he will explain why the truth doesn't matter. > he will blind himself to the truth Not necessarily. He would try to not turn to cynicism. But cynicism can be very tempting.
- nwienert 6y agoBullshit is just a way to practice one of the hardest forms of interaction: attracting a difficult to get mate. Not that you need to bullshit them, but often a woman tests a mans abilities before she decides on a relationship. The tests are many. Some are of loyalty, some of intellect. But many are of how quickly you can react to unknown, hard to grasp things. It’s called “banter” usually, and it’s absolutely vital in many cultures and areas to attract someone. Banter is essentially “bullshit”, except it’s highly entertaining. It can contain tons of truth (it can be almost all truth and even more so than a dry analytical conversation ever could, in a Straussian way). But the ability to play along, take up characters, bluff, and know exactly when to push things and when to let them up, to understand the “game” of having fun through conversation. That’s basically as important a thing you can learn, absolutely vital to reproductive success, and honestly one of the most fun activities that exists. Sure, you can draw a line and say stupid banter is stupid or pure BS is BS. But you’re totally missing the point and the fun behind it, and the real usefulness. Talking dryly about science wont convince people - but giving a good fictional story with some (wink wink) bluster and can convey much richer meaning and keep people engaged.
- mgh2 6y agoI don't think so: Listen to Alibaba founder Jack Ma, he is a lucky persistent guy turned business leader. He is actually air-headed, but people still listen to his BS because he is rich. Money speaks...but substance? Not necessarily I will actually say that people who are able to detect BS are more intelligent still, because truth is so rare.
- em-bee 6y agosure, bullshitting is a form of imagination, and imagination is a sign of intelligence. but intelligence in itself is not enough. evil masterminds are intelligent too. it also matters how that intelligence is used. if you use it for bullshitting, you are at best wasting someones time, and at worst you are deceiving them.
- markus_zhang 6y agoSomehow I habe a feeling that the whole experiment is self referential...
- greendave 6y ago> We interpret these results as adding further evidence for human intelligence being naturally geared towards the efficient navigation of social systems. Seems to be a talking about a very specific type of intelligence, e.g. quite different from the stereotypical geek.
- mattlondon 6y agoRelated fun game that I like to play when there are "pop up" public art/sculpture things that appear on the street: totally ad-lib a mini-critique/-explanation for the piece there on the spot if you are there with someone else and see if you can get away with it. e.g. just picking something random: https://inspiringcity.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/wp_20150830_15_06_13_pro.jpg https://inspiringcity.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/wp_2015083... and coming up with something "The ethereal skeletal-form the character hewn - nay assembled - out of cubic masses I think really suggests a genuine fragility or frailty of humanity in a context of our modern society - you know what I mean, raising questions about the concept of self in an anonymous and increasingly digitised world. The fact this faceless figure is stationary and notably rooted solid here on the spot despite being surrounded by this busy streetscape only reminds me of our ultimate mortality, and that our place - our mark we leave - in the universe is merely fleeting... the artist really hammered this point home I think by the use of rusting steel: nothing is permanent, dust to dust ashes to ashes and all that. Moving stuff." It is fun - bonus points for ending the critique with "Ultimately, it is about mans's inhumanity to man" for every piece :-) I like to think that I've been able to get away with it loads of times now ("gee - I just thought it was a rusty metal man statue"). My wife now rolls my eyes whenever I do it with friends, but she lets me have my fun :)
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- kinkrtyavimoodh 6y agoWhat if your friends know you are bullshitting but are too polite to point out, or are just playing along for fun?
- hunterx 6y agomaybe yardstick for real friends
- TuringNYC 6y agoSounds like a fun game if all your friends are on it. We used to play this game as Management Consultants -- we'd go into a restaurant/venue and pretend to offer a semi-serious unsolicited strategy update for the place. Extra points for keyword bingo and more extra points if you could do it with a straight face.
- bfung 6y agoBullshit.
- 6510 6y agoEverything you wrote reduced to nothing in my mind.
- 6510 6y agoI hate explaining good jokes but I guess the topic is worthy. The idea is to repeat everything people say (or write) in your own words. That way others can polish their words all day long without changing the facts. I often wish we all had a natural gift for this kind of objectivity. I mean, if someone describes something, wouldn't you want it to describe the thing the way it is? (Its different if someone is genuinely passionate about a topic. Then I want to wear the pink glasses and get a set of my own.)
- hasa 6y agoMany personality disorders are related to intelligence. Nothing new. The dark side exists.
- ankit219 6y agoWhat they are measuring is the confidence levels of an individual and how they relate to us trusting them or detecting something is amiss. A version of this is Practical Intelligence, an ability to talk your way out of situations or to talk about things which will soothe or convince the listener. I think this is a separate skill in itself, and has nothing to do with your general IQ levels (based on empirical evidence only, dont know of any study). This is something I found lacking in me where others would get out of an assignment or a test in school based on just convincing the teacher alone, or get access to things, work done from others while I would be left wondering how the hell they did it. It is an important skill to be taught - knowing what to say in front of who in any situation - to buid rapport, get support, connect on an emotional level (things I have struggled with occasionally hence those are more noticeable) and more like this to help you succeed in this world.
- AQuantized 6y agodoes "based on empirical evidence only" mean anecdotes then?
- ankit219 6y agoanecdotes is a part of them, I used empirical in the sense that i noticed (and somewhat envied) they had the ability to get out of situations while I could not. The reason I said nothing to do with IQ or intelligence is probably an underlying bias where I have seen some smarter folks (compared to me) do it as well as some not as smart folks do it too. Not using anecdotes because it has happened way too often, and this is also the experience of a few individuals in my friends group
- nicetryguy 6y ago"Life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way." - Bob Dylan
- koolhead17 6y agoReminds me of another paper [1] on bullshitters about which we discussed in details here.[2] [1]: http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19749130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19749130
- 29athrowaway 6y agoExploiting information asymmetry and lying, like any other form of adversarial information manipulation, requires skill. And applying intelligence can be an effective way to acquire an skill. You can also acquire bullshit skills from knowledge transfer, and you can become effective at bullshit in that way. You can train an entire sales force using a script in order to convince customers to buy stuff they do not need, like insurance, using bullshit pretenses. While that will make a lot of people good at bullshit, that does not mean those people will become more intelligent.
- larsrc 6y agoBS. The Bullshitting skill is based on CHA, not INT.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoOk, before I go knee-deep, can anyone tell me: Is this article itself bullshit?
- didibus 6y ago"Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of high score on Raven’s Progressive Matrices" The study is equivocating intelligence with RPM, and I feel I missed the paper that proved that RPM was an accurate measure of intelligence? Or that we even arrived at a general consensus on the formal definition of intelligence.
- croo 6y ago> "Bullshitting, a style of communication characterised by an intent to be convincing or impressive without concern for the truth" A wonderful and suprisingly precise definition.
- cryptica 6y agoI think this type of thinking is dangerous because there are at least two factors at play when it comes to bullshitting: 1. Ability to bullshit 2. Willingness to bullshit And I think the second one is inversely correlated with intelligence. It's short term thinking which tends to lead to trouble in the long run. Truly smart people know that there will be a point when reality will catch up with their BS; especially if they're dealing with other smart people. I think BS has worked pretty well so far because most people are delusional and they'd rather lie to themselves and maintain their existing relationships rather than admit that they've been duped into using an inferior product or service.
- _Microft 6y agoIt reminds me of a game called "Nobody is perfect" where there are cards with names and words that usually only few people know (don't worry, nobody is perfect). Goal is to write convincing explanations for them. Each turn, one player draws a card, reads out the word, name or situation listed and writes down the correct answer shown on the backside. All others think up an explanation and write this on their piece of paper instead. At the end of each turn, the sheets are collected, shuffled, read out by the active player and the players have to vote for the answer that they think is most likely to be correct. Points are awarded if they chose the correct answer and additional points for everyone they fooled with their own creation. (And now the question is whether the described game actually exists.)
- jml7c5 6y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictionary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictionary It's very close, though your version would be more like "The Encyclopedia Game".
- roman030 6y agoFibbage is a similar game
- abyssin 6y agoThere used to be a program on the Belgian national French-speaking radio called "Le Jeu des dictionnaires". The rules were similar but the radio hosts never played seriously, and just made up absurd and hilarious definitions.
- mg794613 6y agoWhat a great bullshit-article (pun intended)! However it completely forgets the willingness aspect. I think a lot of smart people are brilliant bullshitters, however they have morale and pride which make them avoid this. I'll bet this article will be shared among CEO friends, "See, we are smart!"
- kls 6y agoHaving spent a lot of time in the C-suites, I would say that I have never really gotten the bullshit vibe from many CEO's. I have gotten the sociopathic tendencies / devil may care, vibe from more than a few of them, but bullshitting seemed to be a sales exec's expertise. CEO's (at least successful ones) don't really care about the small stuff and the touchy feely, they tend to mow over that stuff for the big picture and a lot of bullshit focuses on the details and the emotional aspects of the conversation. That's not to say that they don't lie, they just don't tend to color it like a bullshitter does.
- jokoon 6y agoIt seems to describe how I generally argue. I guess as long as I'm called intelligent, I can agree to be called a bullshitter too? It's true that being able to "navigate" vague ideas of politics, economics, philosophy, communication, and understand how others perceive those ideas, enables one intelligent person to play with those ideas to make some bullshit. The problem is that when ideas are not precisely defined, or when those ideas are controversial and/or misused because they're important societal values, it gives more and more opportunity for someone to make bullshit. I mean you can't bullshit about quantum physics or advanced math. But it's easier to do it for law or social sciences.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> I mean you can't bullshit about quantum physics or advanced math. Depends on your audience. In general, on any given subject, you can successfully bullshit people who are less familiar with it than you are. In terms of social wins, I think that's usually what matters - bullshitting people on the spot. They won't go and fact-check it later anyways, but will be left with an impression that you're smart and knowledgeable.
- _Microft 6y agoIsn't bullshitting about STEM topics basically technobabble?
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- rurban 6y agoThey got it completely wrong. Not the ability to produce bullshit is intelligence, but the ability to detect it.
- azhu 6y agoBullshitting is spitting out a valid model for a nonexistent phenomenon. It's reasoning without knowledge.