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Comment by duopixel | Hacker News Reader

A simple self-experiment if you haven't read the paper, find which of these sentences are bullshit. Answer in order without reading further ahead, and don't go back to change your answers (as to replicate experimental conditions).

1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence.

2. The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.

3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person.

4. You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the things that you do not say.

5. Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future.

6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back.

7. Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in.

8. Your movement transforms universal observations.

9. The person who never made a mistake never tried something new.

10. The whole silence infinite phenomena.

11. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.

12. The invisible is beyond all new immutability.

13. The unexplainable touches on the inherent experiences of the universe.

14. It is one thing to be tempted, but quite another to fall for the temptation.

Here are the answers for self-assessment: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=l...

No claim is made on the validity of the experiment (the researchers' or your own). Proposed in the name of curiosity!

View on HN

I administered the self test and as I was checking my results I started patting myself on the back for doing so well, then I realized this is no different from giving yourself an online IQ test; I just wanted to affirm to myself how smart I think I am.

Also its a bit of a misrepresentation of how the questions were framed as they weren't asked to evaluate if answers were bullshit but rather if they were profound or not. We're going in with the preset mind frame sussing out the bullshit answers as opposed to the more open-ended testing scenario.

Framing of questions always affects the outcome of answers.

Lastly, a few of these read like the Chopra quote generator. http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/

Here - have an affirming upvote. :)

>11. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.

I guess I can see how this might be classed as "not bullshit", but I don't see how it's profound at all. It just seems false to me.

I agreed with all the other classifications.

edit: I know complaining about downvotes is verboten here, but seriously, that's just my take on it. I'd be interested to hear an explanation of what the profound meaning is that I'm missing here.

Based on the other comments further down, you seem to be caught up on whether the statement is technically true for specific definitions of pain, rather than the underlying point of the statement.

The underlying point is that whether you think that someone's suffering (physical or emotional) has a real or imaginary cause, that doesn't make them suffer any more or less, because you are not in their head, and they are not in yours. Their degree of suffering depends on their perception of reality, not yours, or even objective reality.

The statement is an appeal to empathy.

> The statement is an appeal to empathy.

Apparently, I'm a highly functioning sociopath then ;).

I agree with the "underlying point", but it simply isn't what the sentence says. If you're willing to put that much effort into interpreting it, practically any statement could qualify as profound.

You've already put far more effort into debating that everyone else's interpretation isn't "simply what the sentence says," when their (and my) interpretation tend to hover around the same approximate meaning.

If you're going by effort, it seems that your interpretation is anything but simpler or lower effort.

If you're trying to make the point that the statement could have been phrased better, I don't think anyone would disagree with you.

>If you're going by effort, it seems that your interpretation is anything but simpler or lower effort.

Hmm? You seem to be mixing up the effort required to reach that interpretation with the effort required to argue with other people about whether it's the correct interpretation.

I participated in various research experiments at the local university (to earn a bit of money on the side while in high school). The ones that paid the most where usually pain experiments, so I've been through quite a few of those.

One thing I found interesting is how incredibly subjective and relative painful experiences are. Increasing and varied types of pain would typically be inflicted over the course of an experiment, while I had to perform various tasks and grade the pain on a scale from 0-10.

Very often I'd grade the initial pain around 6-7, and increase that to the maximum of 9-10 during the experiment. The pain I experienced by the end would however be much more severe, and if I could've corrected the initial grading it'd have been closer to 2-3.

I guess you could say that I was unable to imagine the level of pain I'd later experience, and how relative pain is perceived in this type of experiment.

Just a tangential anecdote, but I didn't call BS on that statement :)

I don't see how that's relevant. That's a situation where you were comparing various real pains to each other in terms of their intensity. You weren't comparing them to imaginary pains.

Sure it's a bit of a tangent, but related in the sense that I was hurt more, or less, based on my ability to imagine pain (which in my experience was easier after experiencing it).

In any case, the sentence doesn't seem to require the imaginary pain to be equivalent (or even compared) to the pain experienced from whatever is causing the imaginary pain. I don't think that's even possible.

It just requires that the pain someone experience from imagining/actually being tortured hurts just as much, albeit likely differently, regardless of the nature or cause of the pain ("imagined"/"real").

The "profoundness" of the sentence is probably related to the already questionable concept "imagined pain"; and how the pain experienced by other people can easily, and way to often, be dismissed and classified as "imaginary".

The pain still hurts the person experiencing it though, regardless of whether some might call it imaginary (and whether "imaginary pain" even makes sense).

>It just requires that the pain someone experience from imagining/actually being tortured hurts just as much, albeit likely differently, regardless of the nature or cause of the pain ("imagined"/"real").

Right, but imagining being tortured doesn't hurt just as much as being tortured. That is why the sentence strikes me as obviously false.

>The pain still hurts the person experiencing though, regardless of whether some might call it imaginary.

Yes, people might disagree about whether or not someone is in pain. Similarly, they might disagree about whether or not someone is eating cake. That doesn't mean that "imaginary cake tastes just as good as real cake".

> Right, but imagining being tortured doesn't hurt just as much as being tortured. That is why the sentence strikes me as obviously false.

That might be the case, but it's probably not the relevant comparison. The relevant comparison, for the sentence to be true, would be between "The imagined pain experienced from thinking about torture" and "The pain experienced from thinking about torture".

Or to put it another way (in the same format as the sentence we're debating): "The imagined pain experienced from thinking about torture does not hurt less than the pain experienced from thinking about torture".

I think the profoundness here is more related to the word "imaginary" being unnecessary (and even harmful) as it relates to suffering. My sentence above might make it more obvious that "imaginary pain" is somewhat ridiculous in the first place, but it is however used to dismiss people who are hurting.

> Yes, people might disagree about whether or not someone is in pain. Similarly, they might disagree about whether or not someone is eating cake. That doesn't mean that "imaginary cake tastes just as good as real cake".

If a person is conscious and claim to be in pain, that person is in pain, and it doesn't matter if other people think differently.

Similarly, if someone is eating cake it's just weird for anyone else to disagree that they're eating cake, or even discuss the difference between the taste of cake and thinking about eating cake. People of course rarely question the reality and experiences associated with eating cake, but they do with people experiencing pain, which makes the sentence more insightful than you seem to believe.

In a sense this also kinda leads to the result of the study: I do see a point in the statement (and the other non-BS statements), and I think it's a lot more likely that I'll engage in prosocial behavior, such as relieving someone from pain others may describe and dismiss as "imaginary" - or for that matter giving someone the cake they want/need, whether that be real or imaginary ;)

>The relevant comparison, for the sentence to be true, would be between "The imagined pain experienced from thinking about torture" and "The pain experienced from thinking about torture".

I don't understand what the comparison is supposed to be there. You can't "experience" imagined pain. If you're saying that you can imagine being in lots of pain, and that imagining this scenario isn't itself painful, then of course everyone agrees with that. But this is a banal observation, and one that seems to contradict the original sentence.

>People of course rarely question the reality and experiences associated with eating cake, but they do with people experiencing pain, which makes the sentence more insightful than you seem to believe.

If you're saying "we should generally believe people when they say they're in pain", then sure, I agree with that. It's just not what the sentence we're discussing says.

There's a definition of bullshit given in the paper. It does not relate to whether the statement is true or false (indeed quite the converse, it relating to an absence of concern with truth) and it does relate to whether the statement consistently has an unambiguous meaning.

Consider that you understood the statement without complaint of ambiguity, enough to question the truth of the assertion and discuss that with other people without your having to impart your own meaning that you construct. And consider the gyrations and gymnastics that people are applying in this very discussion to impart their own meanings to the other statements that are without consistent unambiguous meaning.

I said that I'm ok with calling it "not bullshit", so I'm not sure what you're getting at. I was questioning whether or not it could properly be called profound.

On the contrary, you've spent almost every post in this sub-thread questioning whether it is true.

To question whether it should properly be called profound would be, conversely, to question the paper's methodology. There is, as I said, a definition of bullshit. There is no equivalent definition of profundity. Nor were test subjects asked to evaluate the sentences with an explicit profundity criterion. The so-called profoundness-receptivity metric was actually a measurement of bullshit-receptivity of non-bullshit statements.

>On the contrary, you've spent almost every post in this sub-thread questioning whether it is true

Yes, because it's difficult for a statement to be both profound and obviously false.

I just said that it's obviously false, so I don't understand why it is labeled "profound" in the paper. That's it.

Profundity is best understood as the quality of leading to a better understanding of situations. The profound statement itself doesn't have to be 100% literally true. "All models are wrong; some models are useful."

#11 counters people's default assumption that imagined pain doesn't hurt, because it's not real. You gain more understanding of people who report imagined pain by assuming it hurts the same (even if it might actually hurt a little less) than by assuming it doesn't hurt at all.

In the book Dune, Paul Atreides' hand is put in a pain-simulating device and he has to demonstrate his humanity by resisting the urge to pull it out or he'll be killed by a cyanide needle in the neck. You can only understand that scene by assuming the simulated pain hurts as much as real pain.

“I must not fear. Fear is the mindkiller. I will face my fear. I will let it pass through me. When it is gone, there will be nothing, only I will remain.”

Imagine you are paranoid and you suspect someone is deceiving you. The reality of whether or not they are actually deceiving you does not have an impact on how much pain you feel.

Alternatively, someone with a mental condition that leads them to believe they are in pain would conceivably feel the same pain as someone who is actually being physically hurt.

Just my take on it.

As malloryerik said in another comment, that seems to be confusing the cause of the pain with the pain itself. The paranoiac's pain is real, even if the cause is imaginary.

> The paranoiac's pain is real, even if the cause is imaginary.

That's exactly the point of the sentence.

No, the sentence talks about imaginary pain, not real pain with imaginary causes.

> the sentence talks about imaginary pain

It does. But read what the sentence says about "imaginary pain"—that it still hurts. That feeling of hurt is pain. So the sentence is saying that "imaginary pain" is just "pain". So pain that you might think is imaginary, is actually real.

Or, equally, pain that you might think is real is actually imaginary. (If the two terms are equivalent, substitution should work in either direction.) Seems obviously false to me.

> No, the sentence talks about imaginary pain, not real pain with imaginary causes.

That's exactly what you're getting wrong. "Imaginary pain" does not mean "imagining a situation where imaginary-you is in pain". It means pain with imaginary causes that applies to the real you.

That's not a possible meaning of "imaginary pain" in my dialect of English.

Seems like the sentence might just be a poor translation from Swedish.

But pain is subjective by definition. What does "imaginary pain" mean? The answer can only include some notion of "cause."

Imaginary pain is pain in your imagination, just like an imaginary car is a car in your imagination. If you stub your toe, you are really in pain and not just imagining it. If you imagine stubbing your toe, you are only in imaginary pain (assuming that you imagine it to be painful).

Precisely. You brought up cause (stubbing your toe). You're agreeing with me.

I didn't downvote any of your comments, but I didn't understand your gripe until this post, and I agree with you that the question is not worded well. Imaginary's primary definition is only existing in your imagination, so it's technically correct on one level, but if you look at synonyms for imaginary, and the way that people commonly use it, you get words like nonexistent, made-up, fictional, unreal, etc..

So nonexistent pain hurts as much as real pain? Doesn't that make even less sense?

I think the disconnect here is on what imaginary means in this sentence.

Most people in this thread see it as real physical pain conjured up by one's imagination - so things like psychosomatic pain, pain caused by mental illness, pain caused by fears, etc. So think of someone getting dizzy from their fear of heights, or a hoarder doubled over retching because someone is throwing away parts of their hoard.

Whereas you in essence think that it's an oxymoron - if it's real pain, it by definition can't be imaginary. So it's just a thought exercise or a theatrical performance.

So maybe the sentence would be less bullshitty if it read "irrational pain" or something like that.

But as most people read "imaginary pain" as "real pain felt, without reason" instead of "fake pain you're just imagining about", I think your reading of "imaginary" is too parsimonious.

>Whereas you in essence think that [imaginary pain] is an oxymoron

No, I think that there is such a thing as imaginary pain, just as there is such a thing as an imaginary elephant. You can imagine being in pain. You can imagine an elephant. But if someone said "imaginary elephants weigh just as much as real elephants", I would be confused (unless they just meant that the imagined weight of the imagined elephant was equal to the weight of the real elephant).

A true sign of a troll is when they write 100 words about the one word in your comment they disagree with instead of the 99% they agree with.

Sorry, I could have been more clear, and kthejoker explained it better (I think). If you use the primary definition, the question makes sense. If you use definitions like 'nonexistent,' the question doesn't make sense. The question basically asks you to infer that it means only existing in your imagination. It's too ambiguous for my taste - for no good reason.

They defined "bullshit" as equivalent to "vacuous" meaning it has no meaningful content at all.

That sentence may be obviously true, but it is not vacuous.

My wife and I have very different pain thresholds. A few days ago, I was stung by a bee. I told my wife about it after a while, and she was shocked, asking if I wanted a pain killer, but to me it was just a curiosity. To her, a bee sting is a relatively major source of discomfort.

You can't grade pain on an objective scale based on what caused it. It's a subjective experience, and therefore if you truly imagine it, it exists.

That has nothing to do with comparing imagined pain to real pain. You and your wife experience different degrees of real pain in the event of a bee sting. Imaginary pain doesn't come into it.

>It's a subjective experience, and therefore if you truly imagine it, it exists.

Nope, I can imagine being in pain without being in pain. Similarly, taste is subjective, but I can't satisfy my appetite for chocolate by imagining eating it.

Perhaps because all pain is, in a sense, "imagined"?

I don't think so. The sentence seems to be accepting the distinction between imagined pain and real pain, and saying that the imaginary nature of the former does not cause it to hurt less than the latter (technically leaving open the possibility that it does hurt less for some other reason).

Also, we clearly can distinguish imaginary pain from real pain. For example, there's a difference between the real pain I feel if I stub my toe and the imaginary pain I "feel" if I imagine myself stubbing my toe.

But a pragmatist in many people would say: “why then that person does not take any antidepressants/codeine?”, if that pain is so painful?

So it may be quite a bullshit statement, depending on how you take it.

We're just talking about cases where people suffer pain because of false beliefs, which can easily happen to people who have no mental health issues. If you heard that a loved one died, you'd be in a lot of pain, regardless of whether or not that report was true (so long as you believed it).

Bingo. You'd never say, "Oh thank the heavens they didn't die after all and so I was just imagining that pain!"

I thought it was true, because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb

I guess you could debate whether that is "imagined".

1) It doesn't make sense to call that "imaginary pain". The pain is real -- that's why it's a problem.

2) Do we know that phantom limb pain does not hurt less than the corresponding non-phantom pains? It seems entirely possible that while phantom limb pain is very acute, it's not as actually as bad as the pain associated with losing the limb in the first place.

3) Even waiving 1 and 2, that would be one rather obscure instance of an imaginary pain and a real pain having the same intensity, which would in no way establish the truth of the general statement.

I interpreted that one as emotional/psychological vs physical pain.

I was still wrong, because I categorize them differently (not that one is necessarily easier to deal with than the other).

In the end it comes down to semantics either way.

The question isn’t whether the statements are true or false, it’s between “bullshit” and “not bullshit” - not bullshit being something like “maybe has an element of truth or is a reasonable position to take”

Believing pain to not be lesser because it comes from psychosomatic sources is reasonably - Most people will act similarly in my experience, and in any case the statement is saying something

Contrast that with the bullshit statements - “The whole silence infinite phenomena”

11 does make sense even if it is false. As I see it, the distinction is on make sense/doesn't make sense axis.

It's supposed to be a distinction between bullshit statements and profound statements, which isn't the same thing at all.

Surface profoundness is similar in those statements, so I don't think that dividing them by "makes sense" axis is too wrong.

Surface profoundness is a contradiction in terms.

OK, deep soundingness.

Well, the bullshit sentences also “sound” deep to the untrained ear. That’s part of what makes them bullshit as opposed to just plain nonsense.

It's a direct response to the common belief that mental ailments--depression, anxiety, dysphoria--are less "real" than physical ones.

Basically this: http://www.robot-hugs.com/helpful-advice/

Could just be a bad translation then? Perhaps "mental pain" is what is meant.

it seems that the point isn’t whether the “profound” sentences are true, nor whether you agree with them.

The point seems to be more about being able to detect that the “bullshit” sentences are completely and utterly meaningless despite being (for the most part) grammatically correct and sounding similarly woo-ish to the “profound” ones on the surface.

I love this comment thread so much! In challenging whether the statement is profound, you've triggered a lively and thoughtful debate on whether or not it is actually profound, and in doing so proved it to be profound (at least to the HN readership) :)

ITT: People who maybe got one or two wrong, but really really don't want to have been wrong.

Come on people, this is just loosely correlated with donating time and money to charity in a study that has decent odds of having primarily been done to grab headlines - don't take it too personally, and maybe go donate if you're really that concerned. Don't feel too defined by a 13 question true/false quiz.

(Disclaimer: I fall in the "1 wrong" group)

This is a terrible research. Even the BS meter they used is not very cited elsewhere.

first sentence for example, any engineer knows that strong water jets can precisely cut steel in seconds, much better than any persistent river over several generations.

Also, they picked the most subjective "pro-social" measurements. It boils down to "volunteering" (time or money), no matter to what (can have been antifa, MAGA, etc)

> first sentence for example, any engineer knows that strong water jets can precisely cut steel in seconds, much better than any persistent river over several generations.

I agree the whole thing is dubious, but that's a pretty weird criticism to pick out. The sentence specifically says "river" and is true of rivers; the fact that water jet cutters exist is irrelevant.

Yeah, that comment is more indicting of the poster than the sentence. I would guess they're not super prosocial.. as a Rorschach test, this thing is fascinating.

It seems to me that the officially "bullshit" sentences are basically meaningless, rather than false. You can disagree about statements about how rivers wear things away; you can't really disagree with the bullshit sentences because they don't actually mean anything.

Bullshit is defined as something meaningless or not true.

You’re right, though I think there’s a lean in interpretation toward untrue. I felt my bullshit platitude detector go off a few times on the “normal” sentences, but the wacky sentences made it easy to know that wasn’t what was meant by bullshit.

You are bullshitting me, http://www5.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_...

From Neal Stephenson's Anathem:

Bulshytt: (1) In Fluccish of the late Praxic Age and early Reconstitution, a derogatory term for false speech in general, esp. knowing and deliberate falsehood or obfuscation. (2) In Orth, a more technical and clinical term denoting speech (typically but not necessarily commercial or political) that employs euphemism, convenient vagueness, numbing repetition, and other such rhetorical subterfuges to create the impression that something has been said. (3) According to the Knights of Saunt Halikaarn, a radical order of the 2nd Millennium A.R., all speech and writings of the ancient Sphenics; the Mystagogues of the Old Mathic Age; Praxic Age commercial and political institutions; and, since the Reconstitution, anyone they deemed to have been infected by Procian thinking. Their frequent and loud use of this word to interrupt lectures, dialogs, private conversations, etc., exacerbated the divide between Procian and Halikaarnian orders that characterized the mathic world in the years leading up to the Third Sack. Shortly before the Third Sack, all of theKnights of Saunt Halikaarn were Thrown Back, so little more is known about them (their frequent appearance in Sæcular entertainments results from confusion between them and the Incanters).

Usage note: In the mathic world, if the word is suddenly shouted out in a chalk hall or refectory it brings to mind the events associated with sense (3) and is therefore to be avoided. Spoken in a moderate tone of voice, it takes on sense (2), which long ago lost any vulgar connotations it may once have had. In the Sæculum it is easily confused with sense (1) and deemed a vulgarity or even an obscenity. It is inherent in the mentality of extramuros bulshytt- talkers that they are more prone than anyone else to taking offense (or pretending to) when their bulshytt is pointed out to them. This places the mathic observer in a nearly impossible position. One is forced either to use this “offensive” word and be deemed a disagreeable person and as such excluded from polite discourse, or to say the same thing in a different way, which means becoming a purveyor of bulshytt oneself and thereby lending strength to what one is trying to attack. The latter quality probably explains the uncanny stability and resiliency of bulshytt. Resolving this dilemma is beyond the scope of this Dictionary and is probably best left to hierarchs who make it their business to interact with the Sæculum. — THE DICTIONARY , 4th edition, A.R. 3000

> strong water jets

The aphorism concerns a river, not an industrial cutting machine.

"Strong water jet cuts through steel, not because of its persistence but its power."

Is there a better demonstration of American pragmatism?

> 8. Your movement transforms universal observations.

I interpreted this one as referencing doppler shift of light emitted by celestial objects due to relative motion, but apparently I was overthinking this.

That's the funny thing with bullshit isn't it? You can give a meaningless statement and people will just attach a meaning to it if it clicks.

Oh, i thought it was about parallax.

Aren't all observations subjective, hence not universal?

Observations are inherently a posteriori, not a priori, this is true. However, "universal observation" is not the same as "objective" or "a priori". I'd call the experience of suffering a type of universal observation, but it's not an a priori statement, and it's certainly not objectively evaluable.

That said, the phrase remains mostly meaningless without more context; I'm certainly not trying to defend the phrase itself.

Yeah, it's obviously a restatement of relativity.

> 6. We have other flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back.

There has to be a typo here, right?

I marked this as “bullshit” because it doesn’t make sense. But the link says it’s not bullshit...

It's saying that it's easier to see flaws in other people than in ourselves.

Should be “Others’”

But it's "others" (no "'") in the link ;)

Either way, it's not a universal truth. Some of us work hard on this (probably because we came across Confucius in our youth).

Isn't the fact that it needed hard work an indication that the statement is useful for the average person?

Useful for the average person, absolutely. I don't think I understood the question.

Should have been "behind our eyes" i.e. ourselves. Behind our back is empty space with other people in it. Too ambiguous/poorly thought out.

I think behind our back is a metaphor for "well hidden, even from ourselves"

The only context I've heard is "talking about someone / doing something behind their back." Yeah I suppose you can construct more meanings for it, as OP authors apparently wanted to do. And down the BS rabbit hole we go.

>1. A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but it's persistence.

This one annoys me, because of it's ether/or proposition when it is more of a and/or function.

Yes, water including rivers cuts through rocks in more than one way. For example, Ph differences in the water can cause chemical weathering of the rock. In general these effects happen slowly and need to be persistent for any measurable effect.

But to deny the absolute power of a raging torrent and the amount of physical landscape change it is capable of in just moments is absolute folly. A swift river full of sand and chunks of rock can act like a water cutter or a sand blaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_Floods are a testament to the power of water.

That seems to be entirely missing the point that it's a metaphor.

It's like taking issue with another of the profound statements: "Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in."

"Well, no," you point out, "you could be carried in by the teacher. Or maybe you're in a wheelchair and you need to wheel in."

The door, and stepping, in this case, are to be understood metaphorically. So is the river and the rock.

A bloody-minded willingness to argue over meaningless technical minutiae is one of the mighty fences separating engineering from philosophy. It subtly undermines the supposedly profound statements by pointing out that there's still a little bit of bullshit in them, too.

As no engineer ever said, "The house built from enlightenment has insufficient amps coming into the breaker panel."

The philosopher makes a profound statement that less sophisticated thinkers can understand. The engineer just builds a hydraulic cutter that is remarkable in its system to keep the silicon carbide grit slurry from clotting in the supply lines, and asks which river rock you want sliced up.

Intentionally missing the point is a form of trolling. And it's super fun when it's deflating the pomposity out of someone.

Which makes sense, as this is essentially a Rorschach test about prosocial behavior.

Basically the test is immune to this kind of criticism, because it's only interested in your response to it.

And lo and behold if you "troll" it by declaring it all bullshit, you're a type A engineer willing to argue over meaningless things, which certainly isn't very prosocial, whatever value it otherwise brings.

I was nodding along until I realized that you're proposing "a bloody-minded willingness to argue over meaningless technical minutiae" is a good thing.

It isn't good, but it's sometimes fun. That depends entirely on who you're doing it to. If you're not careful, it could end up being just mean.

I don't think it's fair to criticize metaphor as bullshit insofar as the definition of bullshit is something like "saying things without regard for their truth values" (paraphrasing Harry Frankfurt) because metaphor doesn't have the sort of truth requirement you seem to think it does.

> It subtly undermines the supposedly profound statements by pointing out that there's still a little bit of bullshit in them, too

This actually caught me and I found myself trying to game the test itself.

For the first one, I was like "Yeah, it's true and is saying that persistence is important if you want to achieve your goals, but it's kind of a bullshitty way to say it" And then reading the rest, they all felt like they belonged on posters of silhouetted people looking over mighty vistas. So I declared the entire exercise a trick question.

Also. Water saws are fucking scary.

So it's all bullshit?

You're right of course but you get what they _mean_ right?

Persistence can be key to accomplishing something significant you don't feel capable of.

Or am I being too charitable?

That specific example seems more like some combination of persistence and power is required: great power suddenly and temporarily expressed could cut through stone while a weak power expressed over a long-enough time frame would have the same effect. On it's face it's only a partially true statement and thus is effectively 'BS' when presented as an aphorism.

As well, it anthropormorphizes the effect of gravity on water as 'persistence.' It might serve as a fine metaphor for human persistence but that's all.

Possibly Controversial:

I think it's key to read it a specific (overly charitable?) light.

You kind of have to take for granted that it's good advice in context. Someone is feeling discouraged and incapable facing come significant task and the best advice is to not be distracted by the feelings of incapability but rather persevere.

If you're reading it as statement on the relationship between power and persistence .. um .. you're missing it's point. Whether you agree or think it isn't well communicated is besides the point a little bit.

I think it would sound more metaphorical if you removed the indefinite articles, instead starting with "The river cuts through rock"

But that doesn't emphasise why. The point is to say "keep on truckin'".

If you have to spend a minute thinking about erosion first then it loses its punch.

> It might serve as a fine metaphor for human persistence but that's all.

That's what it's intended to do. It's not trying to be a statement about Geology.

Reminds me of Jenny Holzer’s work (she’s a conceptual artist who works with text).

https://www.moma.org/collection/works/63755

"BAD INTENTIONS CAN YIELD GOOD RESULTS"

“CATEGORIZING FEAR IS CALMING"

  1 False, there is no persistence in the absence of power
  2 False, the hidden/unknown has no transformative effect unless it is revealed
  3 Missing information, what are 'irrational facts'?
  4 Highly debatable, situational
  5 False, creativity is not bound to either health or tolerance but modified through their experience.
  6 Flowery way to say we like to shift perspective unto flaws that are not our own? We certainly have a track record when it comes to this behavior. Still not universally true.
  7 You cannot be forced to learn. Context dependent.
  8 Universal observations? Movement as in 'through life' (experience)? Our observations are contextualized by past experiences. Unsure about this sentence.
  9 The person who has never tried anything literally died in the womb.
  10 Missing context.
  11 Being in pain is painful, 'imagined pain' makes no sense.
  12 What, missing context.
  13 What is 'the inherent experience of the universe'? Can the unexplainable touch anything?
  14 Correct, being temped can be interpreted to be done unto you, not falling for temptation is the act of resisting it. There is *a difference*.

edit: typos

Now that you've participated in the study, how would you self-evaluate your level of prosocial behavior?

I'd like to point to statement number six and tell you I'm definitely more prosocial than the other guy.

Jokes aside, I do like to help people out but won't go out of my way to seek opportunities to do so.

No 10. sounds just like something Slavoj Zizek would say.

I wonder whether there's research correlating low bullshit-sensitivity with endorsement of postmodern "thought".

What area are you talking about? Postmodern means a lot of different things.

Incidentally, I wonder whether the translation from the Swedish original is somewhat deficient here, as it doesn't seem to be entirely grammatical.

I wonder about that too.

He's a rather big fan of Lacan, so that should already be setting off the bullshit alarms.

Or a random sentence generator. Or an unlocked phone in a pocket with autocomplete enabled

This reminds me of the tremendous and only slightly trolling "What is wrong with our thoughts" by philosopher David Stove: http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/wrongthoughts.html

(If you're finding it TLDR then at least skip to the list of numbered propositions in the middle)

This essay is incredibly ironic. Thousands of words to sneer at "fatally bad thought," based on nothing but bald assertions that it's flawed, pretence that we dear readers all agree and can see that it's flawed, and appeals to emotion via expressions of Stove's disgust at the intellectual corruption its flaws reflect.

A "nosology of thought" sounds like a fine research program, but a manifesto about it ought to at least give a few examples to show the criteria for helpful diagnostics.

I like the dialog with Muggeridge at the end, though.

> 11. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.

This statement confuses cause (some damage) and effect (pain) and so should be in the bullshit category, or else it's poorly written/translated.

An imagined cause may lead to real pain, for example if you believe you've been betrayed but you haven't. The pain is the same as if you had actually been betrayed, and in both cases that pain isn't imagined, it's a real mental, neurological phenomenon.

But the only pain that's imagined is pain that's not happening to us, like someone else's pain and future pain, and sorry but despite all sympathy and fear, yeah that does usually hurt a lot less.

The study doesn't make any claims about the validity of the "actually" profound statements, because the validity or lack thereof is irrelevant to the study. Those statements simply have actual semantic content, as opposed to the meaningless bullshit statements, which don't communicate anything and therefore can't even be assessed for their validity.

Right, but if you ask people whether a sentence is 'profound' or 'bullshit', then it's pretty unclear which of those two categories you should put a sentence in if it makes sense but is also clearly false. Such a sentence doesn't really fall into either category. "The moon is made of cheese" has semantic content, but it's not very profound.

Pain hurts by definition. Even if the pain is imagined, it still hurts, by definition. If you are imagining something that doesn't hurt, you are not imagining pain, by definition. Pain hurts, even if it is all in your head.

Same as 'irrational fears are scary despite being irrational', or 'imaginary fears are scary despite being imaginary'.

Pain is always all in your head. I'm saying that experienced pain is never imagined: it is a real, physical event in the brain, experienced through the mind, a presumably measurable mental phenomenon with physiological, neurochemical aspects. It is the effect of some cause, and that cause could be imagined and it could cause real pain, but if you experience pain, that pain is by definition not imaginary, though the cause may be.

We can imagine other people's pain, however, or hypothetical pain, and that is not the same as experiencing pain itself.

>If you are imagining something that doesn't hurt, you are not imagining pain, by definition.

By the same logic, I can feel happy just by imagining myself feeling happy?

Yes you can. In fact, considering happiness is a feeling, it’s a reasonable question whether there is even a difference between feeling happy and “being” happy.

Ok -- we must have such different internal lives that I'm willing to believe that your imagined pains actually hurt you.

Responding to your edit:

>whether there is even a difference between feeling happy and “being” happy.

That's not the question. The question is whether there's a difference between feeling happy and imagining yourself feeling happy.

The difference is maybe analogous to laughing uncontrollably and imagining yourself laughing uncontrollably. Imagining yourself laughing uncontrollably can lead you to feel more ready to laugh, but it is not the same.

If you answer, well laughter is physical while pain is mental, then I will ask you how that is a genuine dichotomy. The mental representation of unexperienced pain is also, in truth, a physical phenomenon since the mind is a physical experience, but the mental representation of pain is not the same as experienced pain.

But pain or pleasure, sadness or happiness from some imagined event, yes, that's real and it's what the original sentence intended to say, I believe.

Edit: This was meant as a reply to addicted rather than foldr...

Imagining yourself feeling happy can lead to you really feeling happy, but imagined happiness is not the same as experienced happiness. You imagine being happy, and _then_ might put you in the right state of mind for actually experiencing happiness. Let's remember that also the mind is either a physical phenomenon or else it is a spiritual, supernatural one. I go for physical.

Indeed. Thinking happy thoughts can make us feel happy. All experience is colored by records of past experience. So bad shit reminds us of similar bad shit, in the past. And so the bad thoughts and feelings become self-reinforcing. By interrupting that, we can make ourselves happy. Or at least, stoically happy.

I was tempted to call bullshit on that too. But a lot depends on the sort of pain at issue. If it's emotional pain, sure. But I can't imagine the imagined pain of boiling water hurting in any sense as much as reality.

However, I get that the most effective torture doesn't rely on actual physical pain. The worst thing is the knowledge that one is being permanently disfigured. And that's all about imagining the future.

> "its power but it's persistence"

Can I call BS on getting the first its right and the 2nd one wrong?

On that subject, I would have classified 5 differently but it seems to be the highest score of the BS sentences so I guess it's debatable

I got 100%. My BS meter is quantum!

Only one I got wrong is 6, because it has a grammar error in it.

The only sentence that confused me is this one:

> 3. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person.

I'm not a native English speaker, so I might be wrong, but I'm reading this as "the future will more likely reveal the truth to those who are open-minded" which seems to be too profound to be bullshit. Of course, "irrational fact" is an awkward way to refer to false beliefs, but awkwardness≠bullshit.

Vague and awkward wording is a signature of bullshit artists like Deepak Chopra. They word it that way on purpose, for exactly the reason that it worked on you: people will struggle to find meaning in it until they find an interpretation that works for them, and then they'll feel like their interpretation offers them some kind of insight.

Metaphors are written to be interpreted more narrowly.

It's ... the difference is like going to an art museum, and on one wall, you have a painting featuring something recognizable as a person carrying a glass of water in a desert, and on the opposite wall, you have a blank canvas. There are multiple ways to interpret the painting of the person in the desert, and it'll have slightly different meanings to different people, but most of those will follow a similar theme. That painting has content. The blank canvas is intended for people to stare at it and invent their own meaning. It has no content. It's bullshit.

I gave it a 6/10 bullshit rating on my own scale. I agree that metaphors in proverbs are never as vague, so yeah, it's bullshit. It might pass as a poorly translated proverb in a Chinese fortune cookie.

You did better at an interpretation than I did as a native English speaker. I just parsed it as a string of unrelated words.

Basically if I couldn't understand and agree with or accept the statements at first glance then I considered them bullshit. It was an accurate result except for statement 5 with which I agreed.

Awkwardness, vagueness can equal bullshit because it is a blank slate you project your own meaning over.

The one that tripped me up was “imagined pain hurts not less because its imagined” Is that saying people who suffer psychologically actually suffer? Or should i take it at face bullshit value?

It's the bs sentence that came closest to having meaning to me. I thought of something similar;

"Only by looking into the future will you find inconvenient/perplexing/complex/weird/unbelievable/seemingly paradoxical/unwanted truths/facts"

Where the "irrational fact" is very open to interpretation, however.

I did mark it as bullshit though, it's way way way too open to interpretation. It could be poetry, if presented in a reasonable context, I suppose.

Yeah I only labeled it as bs because "irrational fact" makes no sense.

But a belief isn't a fact.

That's why I described it as "awkward". It could even be poetic, an ellipsis of "irrational facts [that people believe in]", or an elliptical reversal of "facts [that people] irrational[ly believe in]".

I didn't mark #5. It's oddly worded, but I think it's hinting at something that actually is profound.

They're otherwise pretty obvious.

Yeah, agreed. I think that's why it has a score closer to profound statement.

Copy of the questions above contains several typos that alter the meaning of the questions.

I can set up positive or negative cases for each of these. I call bullshit. There are plenty of bullshit "profound" statements that abound in everyday culture ("Look before you leap" vs. "He who hesitates is lost".... which one is right? It depends!).

Well for the non-BS ones, and even the ones you mentioned, they can at least be assigned a truth value. They take A point of view, leaving aside the question of whether that view is right/wrong - like a falsifiable theory. in real life, it will likely apply to some situations but not others.

The BS ones on the other hand are totally meaningless (to me , atleast) like -

"The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty."

Like WTF?

Interestingly, that was the only one I categorized differently from the authors—I could find a meaning for it. It's not an aphorism in the same way as the others (I'm not clear on whether that was the point, or just whether the statement had to be meaningful in general)—but it could be interpreted as follows:

Something has 'abstract beauty' (as opposed to concrete, surface beauty) through some conceptual significance it contains; however, once you look more, there is a deeper hidden meaning to the concepts, which changes the beauty into something else.

In another interpretation, something can be "superficially" beautiful in an abstract way (say, a fractal or abstract mosaic), but if you can find another meaning in it, it changes the way you see it, probably for the better.

Is that not just a complicated way of saying meaning (intentional or not) is important in art?

"The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty."

Not BS! Take for instance, E=mc^2. Thought of as a beautiful equation by many in the sciences. But, one of the hidden meanings is you can make an atomic weapon using it, which transforms it to horror.

It's like #3: You see things differently once you see the pattern.

I would change the scale to profound vs. inconsequential or shallow.

"Genuinely profound"? I'd call them cheesy.

Yea, I read "Genuinely profound" and flinched a but too. I read it here to mean even basically coherent ideas. Compared to the "bullshit" ones I think they still stood out though.

Expert steelmanner here. This is fun.

1. The river cuts through a rock because its power is above some threshold where it causes more than zero damage, and the damage multiplied by the persistence (time spent) is what it does to the rock. (Compare the photoelectric effect; if the photons are too weak, they don't do anything no matter how many you have.) Of course, a scientist probably wouldn't use that language.

2. A human who sees a hidden meaning in something may transform their opinion of something's beauty. A grain of truth under bullshit phrasing.

3. ... Now this I can't think of a non-bullshit interpretation for. The future hasn't happened yet, so it doesn't tell you anything, certainly not anything surprising, until it happens and then it's no longer the future.

4. True, though kind of tautological.

5. Health helps a brain be capable of creativity, sure. Tolerance helps not squash other people's creativity. Eh, it's kinda true.

6. I assume "other flaws" is meant to be "others' flaws". There is truth to this: at least for some kinds of flaws, it's easier to see them in others than in oneself.

7. See also "you can lead a horse to water...". Has a valid truth: I think most kinds of learning work much better when the learner is participating.

8. Um... ... universal observations? Like mathematical facts, or facts about the Sun that anyone can see? But my movement doesn't transform them. Bullshit.

9. Almost certainly true.

10. That isn't a sentence. If I try auto-correcting to "the whole silences infinite phenomena"... I guess you could E-prime-ify it to "a human who observes the whole may lose sight of the many little interesting details"... meh. I'm probably reading more insight into it than the author made an honest attempt to convey. Bullshit. By the way, I'm now suspecting an alternating bullshit/non-bullshit pattern.

11. I think this has a lot of truth to it, though it might not be true in all cases.

12. New immutability? What? I'm suspecting some of these are taken from http://wisdomofchopra.com/.

13. Ehm... one could say that we experience a lot of things without understanding (or being able to explain) most of them. "inherent experiences" sounds like experiences that every conceivable being has, which I'm not sure exist other than "the experience of consciousness and cognition", which beings probably must have in order to qualify as beings, but which are probably felt much differently by different beings. So no.

14. Agreed.

And, looking at the results... Yup, makes sense.

> Expert steelmanner here

You are risking DoS attack, steelmanning statements from untrusted sources.

> The whole silence infinite phenomena

That works as a sentence even without the change. "The whole " can be parsed as "People who are whole".

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