Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

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Campitor
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by Campitor »

@jacob

I agree with you. But that's why modifiers exist such as early and extreme. Where I grew up a bullshitter was considered someone who spoke untruths and/or exaggerated or lied about their accomplishments.

The study that was referenced only attempt to define BS, that I could see, was by quoting Harry G. Frankfurt"

[The Bullshitter]…is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

So I can only interpret their meaning of BS by that quote. Being good at BS only means you're good at BS. Success requires skillful execution and repeated success requires skillfully repeated execution. BS will only get you so far. Real skill is required to maintain continued success.

One of the quoted expectation of the study: Therefore, we expected bullshit ability to relate positively with measures of cognitive ability as well as perceptions of intelligence.

Has there ever been any circumstances in your experience where BS ability outstripped cognitive ability? Can a case be made that an audience receptibility of BS might be a consequence of the expense of cognitive load? In other words perhaps people are deceived by BS because they don't want to spare the time to think about what is actually being said and/or verifying the veracity of the claims? Ergo, it's not that the BS'er is especially intelligent at crafting his or her BS but rather the audience is just intellectually lazy because thinking requires effort.

daylen
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by daylen »

Lazy evaluation probably skews BS results out of context but BS may still be a relative signal in context. I imagine that a ranked list of total BS produced by agents during the course of an event probably gives you a better than random guess at relative intelligence between every agent participating in that context, but a ranked list of this kind is probably not as useful in predicting inter-contextual or absolute intelligence unless you have a ton of cross-contextual BS data.

daylen
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by daylen »

Another note might be that BS(*) could be thought to stem from primitive instincts of play or the art of mixing reality and fantasy. Fantastical elements often fool agents into unfoolishness.. whereby mistakes fuel an evolutionary dynamic that discovers enduring aspects of existence. This instinct is then projected into language games whereby agents can play with pointers to what is considered realistic (as established in prior play). Within a given language game, an agent that is BS'ing is probably producing both a lot of nonsense and a lot of sense. The better an agent is at playing a particular language game, the more sense and nonsense they can create given a normalized cognitive load.

In addition, agents will tend to sort themselves into groups and contexts with a desirable signal/noise ratio. This ratio varies individually due to interpretive differences but tends to stabilize inter-subjectively as groups cohere. Smart agents will tend to get bored of contexts dominated by BS'ers with a low signal/noise and move somewhere else, increasing accuracy in individually-selected contexts. I would expect major discrepancies to arise in both very immature and very mature groups, where individuals have either not yet sorted themselves into/within contexts or have developed inter-contextual bonding.

(*) ..and perhaps the more developed version of deception in a different light.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I think Henri Poincare believed that even the language of mathematics is a form of bullshit. Humans can’t talk about anything without referencing their own bodies through metaphor. The literal only exists along a sliding scale of perception and assumption.

Jin+Guice
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by Jin+Guice »

BS is an intelligence signifier bc it is its own skill and mastery of any skill signals intelligence.

A good BSer understands that reality is subjective and people rarely if ever have coherent internal mental and emotional frameworks. They understand that our world is shaped by subjective beliefs which are defined by narrative and they seek to control that narrative, shape our beliefs, appeal to the emotions which influence our intellect and exploit the inconsistencies in our mental models.

Limiting someone who is good at BS to someone who tells outright lies for direct personal gain (resume faker) is a very narrow definition, which also assumes an objective truth.

The risk of being a BSer is that a bad BSer signals a lack of intelligence. Being identified as a BSer is also harmful to ones reputation.... which is why being good at it signals intelligence.

ducknald_don
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by ducknald_don »

biaggio wrote:
Mon May 17, 2021 12:00 pm
In software industry bullshitters tend to concentrate around product roles.
They are a pain in the backside, usually really good at taking credit for other peoples work or solving needless problems that they created in the first place.

It can't be very satisfying from their perspective though, unless they believe their own bullshit I suppose.

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Jean
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Re: Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

Post by Jean »

Ability to bullshit is very closely related to making guesses about how something really Works from an incomplete set of information. In this regard, science is comming up with bullshit and try to prove it wrong. It only stay bullshit if you lie about the unknown toute trying to cover. I think thé way journalist talk about science without acknowkedging thé unknown is a great part of why more and more people a conflating science and bullshit.

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