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The summary: > Some earlier work has suggested that better liars are also better at detecting lies. But as the team notes, bullshit isn’t quite the same, as it

The summary: > Some earlier work has suggested that better liars are also better at detecting lies. But as the team notes, bullshit isn’t quite the same, as it falls just short of outright deception. > Recently, researchers have begun to treat bullshitting as having two separate dimensions. “Persuasive bullshitting” is motivated by a desire to impress or persuade. “Evasive bullshitting” is different — as a “strategic circumnavigation of the truth”, it’s the sort that a politician might engage in when trying to cover up a mistake, for example. > The team found that people who reported engaging in more persuasive bullshitting were more receptive to all forms of bullshit (pseudo-profound, pseudo-scientific and fake news). However, higher scores for evasive bullshitting were not related to susceptibility to the first two forms of bullshit, and were actually associated with less susceptibility to believing fake news. I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and bullshitting is.

csunbird 6y ago
Easy. The paragraphs that you have quoted does not say anything in particular but it is long and looks informative. That is bullshit. I am living in America. That is a lie.
sudhirj 6y ago
I’ll take a crack at it. Lying is when I say something and hope that you’ll believe what I’m saying, while bullshit is saying something hoping you’ll believe something else, either indirectly or transitively. If I wanted to you to think I went to Stanford, I could say I went to Stanford, which is a lie, or talk about how much I enjoyed my time studying in the Palo Alto area, which is bullshitting.
mirekrusin 6y ago
Maybe they consider lying as uniform pathology and with bullshitting they make an effort to categorise into "presuasive" and "evasive", but they could be as well defined other way around imho.
- mirekrusin 6y ago
  Thinking about it more there may be something I don't get about it because if you think about concepts like "while lie" - it is category of a lie, however doesn't belong to bullshitting category, there is something about incentive that may be distingishing between two.
darkerside 6y ago
I would say persuasive bullshitters probably includes the perhaps small group of people who have realized that everything people say (themselves included) contains at least some small measure of bullshit (however you define it), and that it isn't necessarily intentional or malicious, and that it doesn't fully invalidate the statement. Thus, they are willing to confess to engaging in bullshitters, and while quick to recognize it in others, they are generous enough to play along for what truth might lie within.
netflixandkill 6y ago
Bullshitting is manipulative storytelling. Some of what a bullshitter says is true. Some of it they even believe is true. Some of it they desperately want to be true. What's outright false they would say is unimportant and deflect rather than argue about. But they're saying it to get something they want or avoid something they don't want, and they'll tell any remotely plausible story to make that happen. Bullshitters change the story to fit the situation, often in real time as it develops. Lying is more straightforward in that the liar is saying something they specifically know is not true to deceive the listener.
justinclift 6y ago
Perhaps they're bullshitting, and it's one of those fake studies? :)
carapace 6y ago
> I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and bullshitting is. Logically there isn't one. The difference is in context and motivation. When I was a kid I had a problem with bullshitting, like when I told my friends that my dad owned a helicopter. I wasn't trying to scam them, I just wanted to be accepted and seem cool. But I got over it as soon as my brain was able to notice what a stupid thing it was to do. "You don't gotta lie to hang out." FWIW, it seems to em like this study is just showing that stupid people are stupid. It's arrested development to be a bullshitter after, say, 12 or so, surely?
layer8 6y ago
Bullshitting does not require knowledge of the truth. Liars know they are telling a falsehood. Bullshitters don’t care whether something is factual or not, as long as it serves their rhetoric purpose.
User23 6y ago
First, the distinction made between persuasive and evasive bullshitting strikes me as vacuous. Evasion is a species of persuasion so it's not two types, but rather a contains relation. On to bullshit then. Harry Frankfurt wrote an entertaining little book on the subject[1]. To boil it down, the liar is concerned with the truth, but makes it serve his ends by hiding it. On the other hand the bullshitter is concerned with persuasion and gives no particular consideration to the truth value of his claims, so long as they persuade. As such well-crafted bullshit is designed to sound plausible and elicit the sensation of truth. For example, someone running a pump and dump scheme with a stock is liable to be bullshitting. The reasons he gives for buying may well be true, but he doesn't care either way so long as the rubes drive his shares up. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385.On_Bullshit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385.On_Bullshit
alexashka 6y ago
Lying is when you know A to be true but claiming A is false. Bullshitting is not knowing enough about A but making claims about A regardless.
danaliv 6y ago
> I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and bullshitting is. Might I recommend On Bullshit, a delightful essay/short book on this and other bullshit-related questions. It’s been a while since I read it but I recall the distinction being (at least in that essay) that lying is very deliberately not telling the truth, while with bullshit, truth is irrelevant.

csunbird 6y ago

Easy. The paragraphs that you have quoted does not say anything in particular but it is long and looks informative. That is bullshit. I am living in America. That is a lie.

sudhirj 6y ago

I’ll take a crack at it. Lying is when I say something and hope that you’ll believe what I’m saying, while bullshit is saying something hoping you’ll believe something else, either indirectly or transitively. If I wanted to you to think I went to Stanford, I could say I went to Stanford, which is a lie, or talk about how much I enjoyed my time studying in the Palo Alto area, which is bullshitting.

mirekrusin 6y ago

Maybe they consider lying as uniform pathology and with bullshitting they make an effort to categorise into "presuasive" and "evasive", but they could be as well defined other way around imho.

mirekrusin 6y ago
Thinking about it more there may be something I don't get about it because if you think about concepts like "while lie" - it is category of a lie, however doesn't belong to bullshitting category, there is something about incentive that may be distingishing between two.

darkerside 6y ago

I would say persuasive bullshitters probably includes the perhaps small group of people who have realized that everything people say (themselves included) contains at least some small measure of bullshit (however you define it), and that it isn't necessarily intentional or malicious, and that it doesn't fully invalidate the statement. Thus, they are willing to confess to engaging in bullshitters, and while quick to recognize it in others, they are generous enough to play along for what truth might lie within.

netflixandkill 6y ago

Bullshitting is manipulative storytelling. Some of what a bullshitter says is true. Some of it they even believe is true. Some of it they desperately want to be true. What's outright false they would say is unimportant and deflect rather than argue about. But they're saying it to get something they want or avoid something they don't want, and they'll tell any remotely plausible story to make that happen. Bullshitters change the story to fit the situation, often in real time as it develops. Lying is more straightforward in that the liar is saying something they specifically know is not true to deceive the listener.

justinclift 6y ago

Perhaps they're bullshitting, and it's one of those fake studies? :)

carapace 6y ago

> I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and bullshitting is. Logically there isn't one. The difference is in context and motivation. When I was a kid I had a problem with bullshitting, like when I told my friends that my dad owned a helicopter. I wasn't trying to scam them, I just wanted to be accepted and seem cool. But I got over it as soon as my brain was able to notice what a stupid thing it was to do. "You don't gotta lie to hang out." FWIW, it seems to em like this study is just showing that stupid people are stupid. It's arrested development to be a bullshitter after, say, 12 or so, surely?

layer8 6y ago

Bullshitting does not require knowledge of the truth. Liars know they are telling a falsehood. Bullshitters don’t care whether something is factual or not, as long as it serves their rhetoric purpose.

User23 6y ago

First, the distinction made between persuasive and evasive bullshitting strikes me as vacuous. Evasion is a species of persuasion so it's not two types, but rather a contains relation. On to bullshit then. Harry Frankfurt wrote an entertaining little book on the subject[1]. To boil it down, the liar is concerned with the truth, but makes it serve his ends by hiding it. On the other hand the bullshitter is concerned with persuasion and gives no particular consideration to the truth value of his claims, so long as they persuade. As such well-crafted bullshit is designed to sound plausible and elicit the sensation of truth. For example, someone running a pump and dump scheme with a stock is liable to be bullshitting. The reasons he gives for buying may well be true, but he doesn't care either way so long as the rubes drive his shares up. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385.On_Bullshit https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385.On_Bullshit

alexashka 6y ago

Lying is when you know A to be true but claiming A is false. Bullshitting is not knowing enough about A but making claims about A regardless.

danaliv 6y ago

> I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and bullshitting is. Might I recommend On Bullshit, a delightful essay/short book on this and other bullshit-related questions. It’s been a while since I read it but I recall the distinction being (at least in that essay) that lying is very deliberately not telling the truth, while with bullshit, truth is irrelevant.