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Research shows that people who BS are more likely to fall for BS (2021)
- heisenbit 3y agoThis explains BS bubbles.
- d-z-m 3y ago> They also identify two types of bullshitting— persuasive and evasive. “Persuasive” uses misleading exaggerations and embellishments to impress, persuade, or fit in with others, while ‘evasive’ involves giving irrelevant, evasive responses in situations where frankness might result in hurt feelings or reputational harm. > the researchers examined the relations between participants’ self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines. By their own definition, it seems like the people most inclined to impress and mislead in situations where frankness might result in reputational harm(in other words a real BSer) wouldn't admit to engaging in BS behavior at a rate above a non-bullshitter.
- Animats 3y agoThat's a useful distinction. From the press release: "Ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines." Does that mean the people being tested were just shown the headline? Usually, that's not enough information to decide if something is bullshit. So, were they basically asking their subjects to guess? The actual paper [1] is paywalled. US$12.00. The press release does not link to the paper, nor does it give a full citation, but it does give enough info that the paper can be found. A useful metric is that if something makes a strong but unusual claim, and the supporting data is hard to access, it's usually bullshit. [1] https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/bjso.12447 https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/...
- Lalabadie 3y agoI've been working with my first client who, I've come to recognize, is _very_ susceptible to believing exaggerated claims. This is someone who would enthusiastically dive into a cult if the right person told him it's nicer there, but instead he's tech entrepreneurship, so AI is always three weeks away from allowing him to replace all his employees. In the meantime, everyone in the design team keeps sending back content that he's requested from ChatGPT instead of an actual copywriter. Because everyone here, like everyone on HN, can easily tell the difference, but he can't/won't. What seems to be very difficult with someone like this is, they participate in hype cycles because not doing so leaves them feeling like _everyone knows something_ and they don't. They don't want to be the idiot left behind when something good happens, so they dive into every enthusiastic movement or belief that comes in range. They don't have the ability or will to suss out that each wave is made up of people exactly like them. TLDR: High energy, low critical thinking.
- elicksaur 3y ago>like everyone on HN The amount of people on this site who say AI has Yx’d their productivity is far too high for this to be an accurate generalization.
- cushpush 3y ago>AI is always three weeks away from allowing him to replace all his employees. Well isn't that a temporal oddity
- ozymandias1337 3y agoThey are constantly shifting the goal posts.
- sobasically 3y ago[dead]
- passion__desire 3y agothe best way to spot a bullshitter is to ask them A series of 5-7 why drill down questions expanding on a particular word you don't understand or do understand. And if they aren't quick to respond or don't answer don't know or aren't out of their depth , you know they are bullshitting. technique borrowed from Feynman's "why magnets work video"
- rightbyte 3y agoIsn't this some sort of Dunning–Kruger effect? I.e. BS:ers don't think the listeners understand they are full of BS, so they are more likely to push BS.
- Rury 3y agoMore like, people who are incompetent cannot determine BS from non BS as well as someone who is competent. People who are incompetent are also more likely to engage in bluffing strategies (ie BS) in order to gain status than someone that can simply rely on their competence.
- bicijay 3y agoMaybe its ignorance then...
- vlovich123 3y agoWouldn’t it be ironic if this research turned out to be BS?
- foobarbecue 3y agoThere's certainly precendent! See Francesca Gino.
- trollerator23 3y agoYou bet.
- luxuryballs 3y agoI feel like it follows because they had first to overvalue “impressive sounding information” in order to decide it was worth lying about. Like someone being star struck by a snake oil salesman.
- robocat 3y agoAssociated problem: salespeople seem to be gullible when buying - they get taken in by slick salespeople. Given their skills you would think they could spot someone pulling the wool over their eyes. I haven't yet worked out whether it is just admiration for a good snow job or falling for some status game.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoPossible that they are unable to distinguish between bullshit and reality? It would somewhat excuse their own bullshit: they may not know they are bullshitting.
- MenhirMike 3y agoThat's the problem with some of the best sales people: They are technically not lying because they _actually believe the bs they're telling you_.
- Arun2009 3y agoI've often seen this phenomenon at play in religions. They are not intentionally lying even when they put forward outrageous claims; they genuinely believe what they say.
- Fnoord 3y agoI once went to a conference about a company selling MLM products (I didn't know they were selling MLM products and I was young enough to not know about MLM). They were eating their own dogfood there, and lunch was free. It was at an expensive hotel in my country. There were loads of yuppies there. Everyone wore a suit. Despite that, the conference felt as if I was at a cult. And the CEO knew I had a couple of questions about his products. He gave me the death gaze / cold stare during a speech. I was in my early 20s, scared shitless. Now, remember I wrote the conference was as if I was at a cult? I got invited to this conference via a brother of an aunt (cold side). He used to be in a cult. Now he was a hardcore Christian. He got very rich from these MLM products because he was high up in the chain. As they say: the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
- time4tea 3y agoAnd hilarious that the article about BS is behind a BS, illegal in the EU, cookie banner.
- nonrandomstring 3y agoObligatory: Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" [0] is a must-read for everyone interested in some stronger definitions. The full essay is easily found online. Long as short: BS has not got a lot to do with depth of knowledge or truth value so much as the attitude of the bullshitter. It's a moral not a knowldge defect. The Bullshitter is neither a liar nor self-aggrandising as we commonly think, but simply has contempt for the very concept of truth and falsehood. It's like epistemological sociopathy. Some bullshitters can be very knowledgable too. They pass the five-why questioning but then defect and talk absolute rubbish as it suits them. I think all LLMs are in essence bullshitters, and I hope something good to help us understand not just consciousness but morality too, will probably come of studying why LLMs are not really "thinking" and holding an interlocutor "in mind". Not Frankfurt now, but my own observation, if you wire that to the idea that power is the capacity to paint social reality in ones own interests, then unsurprisingly bullshitters are much more common in traditional power roles. LLMs are therefore (rather obviously) dangerous in any role that involves power or decision making. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
- pcloadletter_ 3y agoIt is cutesy to use the word "bullshit" but it seems too colloquial to glean any real information from. What do they mean by "bullshitting?" Any sort of misleading? Pretending you know something when you don't? I guess I'm just tired of reverse-engineering your information to make a good clickbaity headline.
- puzzledobserver 3y agoFrom a cursory glance at the article, they appear to use the word bullshit in the same sense as Frankfurt's essay on bullshit. Frankfurt's essay goes into a lot of detail about what is and isn't bullshit. If I remember correctly, he differentiates between deception / fraud and bullshit, which he characterizes as lack of concern for the truth. A liar has an untruth they want you to believe, a bullshitter wants you to believe something, they just don't care whether it is an untruth or not. Now of course, one might complain that Frankfurt hijacked a colloquial word for his idea, but he does spend a lot of time trying to understand the everyday use of the word bullshit.
- ls612 3y agoPeople who BS (researchers in psychology) are more likely to fall for BS (this sort of social psych research).
- lelanthran 3y agoCould be the other way around. "People who are more gullible are more likely to try a bluff" makes more sense: they aren't aware enough to read the situation and react accordingly. That makes them more gullible as well as more likely to attempt a bluff.
- Anotheroneagain 3y agoI think it's more likely that people judge if there is an opportunity to lie by thinking if they would themselves fall for it. So, morals aside, somebody gullible sees the opportunity to lie all the time, while somebody very skeptical may think that they would only embarrass themselves by trying to lie. Or possibly lie unintentionally, giving an evasive reply, incorrectly believing it will be understood that they don't want to answer.
- ShamelessC 3y agoIt’s hard to know but I doubt there’s that much reflection happening. Perhaps it’s as simple as “people with low emotional intelligence lie more often because they think they’re getting away with it more than they are. Also they are fairly insecure but don’t know how to manage it in a healthy way”
- mrxd 3y agoThis is what I think it is too. A gullible person draws on their personal experience and overestimates other people’s susceptibility to deception.
- marcodiego 3y agoI call BS.
- droptablemain 3y agoThe way they've defined "persuasive bullshitting" sounds like would capture 90% of human-to-human interaction. People almost always have an angle. I suspect this research itself has an angle as well, making it meta persuasive bullshitting.
- Fnoord 3y agoDoesn't this contradict that people who believe they're too clever to get scammed are the easiest marks? It seems like a complex topic where multiple factors are a force.
- mgh2 3y agoSomething tells me the reverse doesn’t work that way. Ex: how do you recognize a fake dollar bill? By knowing what a real one should look like. “Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.” - Blaise Pascal
- trollerator23 3y agoAfter the whole replication crisis debacle it's clear all of these studies are ... BS.
- sandspar 3y agoQuoting "A study says..." has gone from a signal that you're intelligent to a signal that you're not.
- htoierjwerwer 3y agoSounds like half the startup-bros I meet who tell me Quantum-Crypto-AI will take over the world.
- 0x0203 3y agoOne of the most common assumptions people make when dealing with other people is that everyone else thinks like they do. So many problems with communication, instruction/teaching/learning could be better resolved if each person understood that different people process information in different ways and made sure to present information in a way that the receiver is capable of following.
- pseudocomposer 3y agoI agree with you wholeheartedly! Of course… not everyone thinks the way we do…
- DonsDiscountGas 3y agoThis is about 1,000x easier said than done. For starters it's hard to present information even for an audience just like yourself. Then you need to learn additional ways of presenting information, know your audience, and since audiences often have more than one person try to make everybody happy.
- 0x0203 3y agoOh, absolutely. I've spent some time in education as a teacher, tutor, and other things. It's incredibly difficult. Especially with an audience of multiple people. But I'd wager just knowing that this might be a source of difficulty for some people can help. If things just aren't connecting, come at it from a different direction and/or method. But I agree, it's not easy.
- renonce 3y ago> the researchers examined the relations between participants’ self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines If I understand correctly, they simply asked the participants themselves if they are BS’ing and drew the conclusions solely from that? How do you expect people BS’ing others would admit doing that?
- richrichie 3y agoI think people want such things to be true. Makes catchy one liners. This probably biases research methods.
- lalith_c 3y agoIt’s a vicious cycle.
- danscan 3y agoAh, so you can bullshit a bullshitter
- kazinator 3y agoPeople who BS well are unfazed by the implausibilities in what they are saying, and that's probably because a good chunk of them don't think it through that far: they remain cool not just by adopting that attitude as a strategy, but also because they actually don't perceive the implausibilities.