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Pfft. It doesn't matter how honest a signal of intelligence bullshit generation is because if you apply a substantial amount of your supposed intelligence towar

Pfft. It doesn't matter how honest a signal of intelligence bullshit generation is because if you apply a substantial amount of your supposed intelligence toward creating bullshit on a regular basis then, at best, you are not useful. At worst you're actually harmful. You certainly don't deserve respect or praise for it.

_Microft 5y ago
That's not what they found. The ones that are better at bullshitting are actually the ones that are less inclined to do so. Here is the results and discussion of the first experiment almost in entirety. I only removed the actual numbers to make the paragraph more readable. You can find the full paragraph in the submitted article. "Additionally, we find that participants’ bullshit ability was uncorrelated with their willingness to bullshit (i.e., feign knowledge of fake concepts) and their receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit (i.e., endorse meaningless pseudo-profound statements as profound). Furthermore, participants’ willingness to bullshit was negatively associated with scores on the Wordsum, suggesting that those scoring higher on our measures of cognitive ability were less willing to bullshit. Finally, we find that those more willing to bullshit were also more likely to be receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit (i.e., rate pseudo-profound bullshit items higher on profoundness), as well as were less likely to distinguish between meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit and meaningful motivational quotations (bullshit sensitivity: calculated as the difference between pseudo-profound bullshit ratings and ratings of motivational quotations for their profoundness)."
uyt 5y ago
Most real time conversations I have is complete bullshit, so that's plenty of practice. The problem is that when chatting I don't have time to put any deep thought into my words, I just say whatever is heuristically true. The alternative is to constantly add disclaimers about how much I believe the words I am spouting which kills convo very quickly. If you have smart friends who are willing to challenge your bullshit occasionally, your bullshitting skill should improve and converge into simply "good intuition". Which is a great skill to have when dealing with actual hard problems.

_Microft 5y ago

That's not what they found. The ones that are better at bullshitting are actually the ones that are less inclined to do so. Here is the results and discussion of the first experiment almost in entirety. I only removed the actual numbers to make the paragraph more readable. You can find the full paragraph in the submitted article. "Additionally, we find that participants’ bullshit ability was uncorrelated with their willingness to bullshit (i.e., feign knowledge of fake concepts) and their receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit (i.e., endorse meaningless pseudo-profound statements as profound). Furthermore, participants’ willingness to bullshit was negatively associated with scores on the Wordsum, suggesting that those scoring higher on our measures of cognitive ability were less willing to bullshit. Finally, we find that those more willing to bullshit were also more likely to be receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit (i.e., rate pseudo-profound bullshit items higher on profoundness), as well as were less likely to distinguish between meaningless pseudo-profound bullshit and meaningful motivational quotations (bullshit sensitivity: calculated as the difference between pseudo-profound bullshit ratings and ratings of motivational quotations for their profoundness)."

uyt 5y ago

Most real time conversations I have is complete bullshit, so that's plenty of practice. The problem is that when chatting I don't have time to put any deep thought into my words, I just say whatever is heuristically true. The alternative is to constantly add disclaimers about how much I believe the words I am spouting which kills convo very quickly. If you have smart friends who are willing to challenge your bullshit occasionally, your bullshitting skill should improve and converge into simply "good intuition". Which is a great skill to have when dealing with actual hard problems.