Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence

[Alphaville]

i think some people may be jumping too quickly from descriptive aspects of the experiment to normative/moralistic notions about the implications of the experiment.

it's more or less self-evident that good bullshit requires a hefty cognitive load to balance all at once various neural modules:

-invention/imagination to come up with something on the spot
-basic rigor/logic to keep it believable
-perception+evaluation of audience reaction + adjustment to response
-effective verbal performance, including not simply description but also persuasiveness
-many others i can't think of on the spot, feel free to add

bullshit is a resource-intensive faculty that cannot be sustained perpetually, and it signals something physiological and functional about the biological organism that displays it.

when we look at peacocks or chameleons or frigatebirds or peppered moths we dont judge them morally, we study them instead. btw with this choice of species im positing not just a display function as the researchers suggest, but also camouflage function, as some comments have already hinted at.

this is just ape behavior. it helps to look at the subjects as apes rather than as a source of butthurt. otherwise we can't discuss science and it all turns into the festivus settling of grievances instead.

i mean if we're going to get emotional about display and camouflage let's at least start with poets:


O make me a mask and a wall to shut from your spies
Of the sharp, enamelled eyes and the spectacled claws
Rape and rebellion in the nurseries of my face,
Gag of dumbstruck tree to block from bare enemies
The bayonet tongue in this undefended prayerpiece,
The present mouth, and the sweetly blown trumpet of lies,
Shaped in old armour and oak the countenance of a dunce
To shield the glistening brain and blunt the examiners,
And a tear-stained widower grief drooped from the lashes
To veil belladonna and let the dry eyes perceive
Others betray the lamenting lies of their losses
By the curve of the nude mouth or the laugh up the sleeve.

[Campitor]

Perhaps our definition of BS isn't quite the same. Dissembling to protect someone's dignity isn't a bad thing as long as it doesn't venture too far afield from the truth. And knowing how to frame projects in a positive manner is something that I think is valuable as long as the project is generally doing well and not flying off the rails so to speak.

The BS'ing I'm talking about is in regards to outright lies that are downplayed as just "BS" if you know what I mean. Like someone claiming expertise in coding or system administration but they have next to zero skills. People erroneously call this BS'ing.

[Campitor]

i think some people may be jumping too quickly from descriptive aspects of the experiment to normative/moralistic notions about the implications of the experiment.

it's more or less self-evident that good bullshit requires a hefty cognitive load to balance all at once various neural modules:

-invention/imagination to come up with something on the spot
-basic rigor/logic to keep it believable
-perception+evaluation of audience reaction + adjustment to response
-effective verbal performance, including not simply description but also persuasiveness
-many others i can't think of on the spot, feel free to add

I'll agree that being a good BS'er requires a certain mental aptitude and intelligence to pull off well. However truth will always win out because the rubber has to meet the road at some point unless the person is constantly switching jobs and friends.

[Alphaville]

I'll agree that being a good BS'er requires a certain mental aptitude and intelligence to pull off well. However truth will always win out because the rubber has to meet the road at some point unless the person is constantly switching jobs and friends.

or develops a cult or a political movement or wears a bizarre fake tan etc.

humanity's appetite for bullshit is endless. this is why people pay to go to the movies, knowing full well that it's all completely bullshit, then nevertheless believing it.

it makes sense that an intellectual capacity for bullshit would offer an evolutionary advantage, either for display or camouflage or something else. nature is all about masks, illusion and deception. vladimir nabokov, who was both a novelist and an entomologist, lectured his students eloquently on that subject, and the notes were eventually published as... lemme look for the title... "lectures on literature." a classic.

[Campitor]

Fake tans look fake and cults and political movements get disavowed all the time. People get fooled because they want to be fooled. History is replete with charlatans that were tossed aside once their shine had dimmed.

[Alphaville]

People get fooled because they want to be fooled.

yes, that context is precisely what would confer the hypothetical evolutionary advantage to good bullshitters.

you're mixing up a moral judgment with a "natural fact," to borrow an expression from the jazz era (lol, i think--maybe that is a bit of bullshit i deceived myself with).

[Alphaville]

ok here is the key nabokov quote:

Literature was born not the day when a boy crying wolf, wolf came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying wolf, wolf and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important. Between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature.

Literature is invention. Fiction is fiction. To call a story a true story is an insult to both art and truth. Every great writer is a great deceiver, but so is that arch-cheat Nature. Nature always deceives. From the simple deception of propagation to the prodigiously sophisticated illusion of protective colors in butterflies or birds, there is in Nature a marvelous system of spells and wiles. The writer of fiction only follows Nature’s lead.

etc etc.

a delicious book. even if it was just drafts of classroom lectures. what a class that must have been!

[Qazwer]

If you fought a battle a couple of thousand years ago - would you rather fight against a couple of people who felt obliged to tell the truth or some BS expert who could get a few thousand sun worshipers behind him?
Human evolution selects for the ability to BS and the ability to believe in BS

[Campitor]

At the end of the day, regardless how charismatic the leader or how effective his BS is, he has to have the prerequisite skills to walk the talk.

Any demagogue can convince someone to go to war, even a nation, but eventually he has to be able to win the battles. Generals who repeatedly lost weren't treated kindly or able to hang on to power. For every Admiral Nelson there is a Quintus Servilius Caepio. BS may get your foot in the door but it's actual skill that keeps you in the game.

[Alphaville]

At the end of the day, regardless how charismatic the leader or how effective his BS is, he has to have the prerequisite skills to walk the talk.

Any demagogue can convince someone to go to war, even a nation, but eventually he has to be able to win the battles. Generals who repeatedly lost weren't treated kindly or able to hang on to power. For every Admiral Nelson there is a Quintus Servilius Caepio. BS may get your foot in the door but it's actual skill that keeps you in the game.

okay, but if it's a species predisposition to bs, you should have a large enough population to behead the crap performers eventually.

conversely, consider the skillful individual who can't sell their way out of a paperbag and therefore lives confined as a misunderstood genius lost in the cogs of a vast bureaucracy. (i'm assuming a bureaucracy as the rightful place because that would be somewhere you could enter via exams but requires politics to move up the ranks.)

also you're assuming that all bullshit is malicious, and not benevolent/useful as in most forms of art and entertainment. since everyone seems to be into the renaissance here: let's remember that the star of the renaissance wasn't an honest and accurate beancounter laboring at the medici bank-- it was the artist who made you believe you were staring at the heavens with some extremely well-developed pictorial bullshit.

[chenda]

let's remember that the star of the renaissance wasn't an honest and accurate beancounter laboring at the medici bank-- it was the artist who made you believe you were staring at the heavens with some extremely well-developed pictorial bullshit.

So what do we all think about modern conceptual art ? I went once to the Tate Modern and whilst looking at a pile of trash wondered if I was actually looking at a pile of trash...

[Alphaville]

So what do we all think about modern conceptual art ? I went once to the Tate Modern and whilst looking at a pile of trash wondered if I was actually looking at a pile of trash...

tracy emin you mean? bullshitter extraordinaire (for me, pure sales). but it was really duchamp who started that trend. he was lots funnier though.

i like some conceptual art. unfortunately i'm nowhere near that kind of exhibit these days. i'm losing touch...

--

but oh, not all is lost: recently saw a great little documentary about yayoi kusama. heartbreaking! glorious!

https://www.kusamadocumentary.com/

actually i think regardless of form all/most modern art these days touches on conceptualism at some level.

but yeah kusama was precisely a genius who was first ignored, then robbed and plagiarized by more "connected" individuals, then ignored again... she's finally getting recognition in old age.

[chenda]

Yeah all that stuff, you're not missing much. A few interesting pieces but most of it was utter bullshit. Almost literally, there is a young Swedish artist who injects paint into his rectum and the defecates it out on the canvas in a sort of Jackson Pollock tribute act. I'm sure his parents are so proud.

[Alphaville]

Yeah all that stuff, you're not missing much. A few interesting pieces but most of it was utter bullshit. Almost literally, there is a young Swedish artist who injects paint into his rectum and the defecates it out on the canvas in a sort of Jackson Pollock tribute act. I'm sure his parents are so proud.

haaaahaaaahaaaa!! i wanna see that live. would be great to show up wasted and laugh uncontrollably. poor guy lmao. well i hope at least he makes enough to eat

in any chase, check out that kusama movie if you can. she's great!

[chenda]

Haha yeah that'd be an interesting evening

Thanks for the link that looks interesting! Yeah I wonder if the state of our art is a reflection of deep social unease...same with a lot of modern architecture, which is worse as you can't avoid looking at it. Architectural students have to do too much talking and not enough drawing...

[Campitor]

also you're assuming that all bullshit is malicious, and not benevolent/useful as in most forms of art and entertainment.

I think you're conflating BS with an amalgamation of other verbal and cognitive skills.

The definition of bullshitting by various sources:

• Merriam-Webster: to talk foolishly, boastfully (merriam defines boastful as expressing excessive self-pride), or idly; to engage in a discursive discussion; to talk nonsense to especially with the intention of deceiving or misleading.
• Oxford Dictionary : Stupid or untrue talk or writing; nonsense.
• Cambridge Dictionary: complete nonsense or something that is not true.
• Collins Dictionary: If you say that something is bullshit, you are saying that it is nonsense or completely untrue.

When I'm talking about bullshitting I'm using it as defined in the dictionary. It appears you're using it euphemistically.

let's remember that the star of the renaissance wasn't an honest and accurate beancounter laboring at the medici bank-- it was the artist who made you believe you were staring at the heavens with some extremely well-developed pictorial bullshit.

I wouldn't describe the great art of the renaissance as pictorial bullshit, regardless these artists had the skill to make great art and not bullshit about making great art.

And someone had to fund those artists - typically it was the bean counters hired by other bean counters who knew what beans to count like the Medicis who owned a bank - the Medici's had the skill in banking and not just the skill to BS about banking.

[Alphaville]

I think you're conflating BS with an amalgamation of other verbal and cognitive skills.

i think it's precisely the amalgamation of verbal and cognitive skills that makes bs "an honest signal of intelligence" as the researchers propose.

dictionaries are fairly limited catalogues of signifiers, and this isn't scrabble. a free and still modest public reference like wikipedia offers a lot more interest on the subject:

In philosophy and psychology of cognition the term "bullshit" is sometimes used to specifically refer to statements produced without particular concern of truth, to distinguish from a deliberate, manipulative lie intended to subvert the truth.[1] In business and management, guidance for comprehending, recognizing, acting on and preventing bullshit, are proposed for stifling the production and spread of this form of misrepresentation in the workplace, media and society.[2] Within organizations bullshitting is considered to be a social practice that people engage with to become part of a speech community, to get things done in that community, and to reinforce their identity.[3] Research has also produced the Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale (OBPS) that reveals three factors of organizational bullshit (regard for truth, the boss, and bullshit language) that can be used to gauge perceptions of the extent of organizational bullshit that exists in a workplace.[4]

While the word is generally used in a deprecatory sense, it may imply a measure of respect for language skills or frivolity, among various other benign usages. In philosophy, Harry Frankfurt, among others, analyzed the concept of bullshit as related to, but distinct from, lying.

(emphasis mine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit

a couple of click from that article leads one here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

where a philosopher had to write a book to address the matter. if you look at the beginning of the original article from 1986 you'll see how he begins by discussing the loose definition of the expression and how he figures we need a theory of bullshit to properly define the subject.

https://archive.org/details/importanceo ... 7/mode/2up

anyway, i'm not trying to win a discussion at all costs here; i'm just trying to engage with the more interesting aspects of the experiment presented, which concerns the power to conjure up fantasies and its role in social evolution.

if that doesn't interest you, ok, but that's what the experiment was about. the paper, in fact, quotes harry frankfurt, discusses at length what the researchers mean by bullshit, and speculate about its connections to intelligence and social performance.

[Campitor]

@Alphaville

Dictionaries are fairly limited by design because their purpose is to define the meaning of words. There has to be a mutually agreeable meaning to a word for it to have value in any discussion.

And the research article you point to suffers from 2 things: sample size and built-in bias.

1) Study #1 had 483 participants. Study #2 had 584 participants. Such a small sample size would spike any intelligent BS meter.
2) The participants were undergraduate students. So it's not surprising that some of the BS'ers were smart. Also being an undergraduate would prime the mind to be receptive to "pseudo-profound bullshit statements" since so many college professors write in this manner (see Steven Pinker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AN2tbfSGm4).

I award this study 2 raspberries.

[Alphaville]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AN2tbfSGm4

well, that was a nice video about academic writing

[jacob]

Dictionaries are fairly limited by design because their purpose is to define the meaning of words. There has to be a mutually agreeable meaning to a word for it to have value in any discussion.

Dictionaries are fine but they're also stultifying for debating concepts, especially complex concepts. The dictionary definition of "retirement" is rather limiting for example. See https://earlyretirementextreme.com/that ... tired.html for some FIRE movement battle scars. OMGWTFBBQ was that a slog.

In particular, the definition of words can limit thoughts which is something Orwell understood well. Entire languages can lack words that make talking about certain ideas difficult. For example, English doesn't have much vocabulary for discussing religious experiences outside the domain of church.

This is why philosophy books spend 4/5 of the verbiage explaining their terms.
Similarly, "On Bullshit" (the book), which started this whole focus is still some 100 pages long.