Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence
psyarxiv.com
psyarxiv.com
The essay is only 20 pages and available here:
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/bullshit...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes#Cultural_references
That's a criteria that should be agreed upon by both parties; otherwise to the person recieving the "bullshit" it's indistinguishable from a lie.
Edit: where did I make a moral statement? Let's call a spade a spade: we're talking about "potentially false speech". If it's a false speech where the receiving party thinks the truth is important, then from their perspective they were lied to regardless of what the speaker thinks.
― Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Important in professional wrestling and Anglosphere politics.
Most politics, really. Take a look at Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines, or the guys in charge of Malaysia, or much of the grandstanding and propaganda surrounding the PM of India. Plenty of pure BS in Italian politics, and if you want to go back a bit, the rest of Europe.
Grandiose speeches and pandering aren't exclusive to the Anglo world.
i couldn't make sense of this, which motivated me to actually look at the essay, thanks :) i recommend the bit with Wittgenstein – it's what made the proposed distinction between "bullshit" and "lies" click for me. (at least i hope it did!)
what i got from the essay is:
bullshit may contain false statements. but their falseness is ultimately besides the point, because, unlike a lie, the bullshitter isn't trying to convince the bullshittee that those false statements are true; they're just props, parts of a scheme to convince you of something else.
explaining it in the abstract gets kind of unreadable (the essay suffers from this a bit imho), so here's an example:
---
say i'm doing a (bullshit) pitch for my new startup, "Uber for cats", and lead with one of these two sentences:
• "Facebook kick-started the social media revolution." (probably true)
• "Facebook created new jobs for marginalized communities." (probably false).
i'm saying something like that because i'm trying to create an impression that:
• I'm a visionary who aims to revolutionize stuff / cares about positive social change
• My startup is, at least to some degree, worth comparing to Facebook
and notice: it doesn't matter whether that opening sentence is true or false. either way i'm bullshitting – using that sentence to create an overinflated image of my startup. i might even build my bullshit out of entirely true things, arranged in a misleading way – anything works, as long as it gets you to invest in Uber for cats :)
Provided a chance to prepare a proper response, one should never bullshit anyone and doing so is quite disrespectful however when put on the spot, sometimes it does more damage to just say "I have no idea" than it does to make an argument based on assumptions.
A piece of advice that I received when I was younger that I've since taken to heart is this:
Never say cop out phrases such as "I think", "maybe", "possibly", and "I hope". The only purpose they serve is to shield you from the consequences of what you say if you are wrong. If you don't want to deal with those consequences, don't be wrong. If you can't answer with a reasonable level of accuracy, the only valid response is something to the effect of "I will find out".
This advice easily was some of the most useful advice I'd received for being able to hold my ground in a professional environment. If you know the answer, say it. If you are willing to bet the answer is true, say it. In all other cases, find out and get back to them. Very few people will press you if you can't answer something and will in most cases see you with more credibility. Nobody has all the answers so why should you have to pretend you do.
In this sense, bullshitting isn't so much about lying, it's just guessing that you are right. Should you do it often? Probably not, but if it's ultimately of low consequence and you believe you are mostly correct, it is only slightly worse than saying something incorrect on accident.
that’s terrible advice, as life is anything but absolute. we make statements all the time that include our degree of confidence in them. they’re still often very informative. you can always tack on an “i will find out” after any of those statements and have the same effect of affirming more definitive follow-up.
good bullshit though. almost had me.
As examples:
"I/We think X is (possibly) the cause of Y issue." Why should anyone care that you think X is the cause? Even more so if you only think that it might be or could possibly be the cause? Instead you should be answering "I/We know A, B, and C are happening which all point towards X as the source of Y." The difference is that by avoiding "I think" you are forced to provide a summary of the facts/evidence that brought you to your evidence. If this is too technical for the discussion, you are going into too much detail. In that case, instead go for "We have tracked down a source of issue Y and are taking steps to resolve it." and if necessary go into the externalities of this such as how much time and resources you will need to resolve issue Y. An important differentiation is that this approach to explaining the issue forces you to demonstrate your progress and not just speculate as you either go into details, you don't go into detail and they have faith in your team, or they ask you to explain and you have a neat trail of facts and evidence to detail your progress.
"We've just about wrapped up preparation for the launch and we hope everything goes smoothly." For most people in leadership, this sets off alarm bells. In the back of their heads they are asking "What do you mean we hope everything goes smoothly? What if it doesn't? What then?" It should be evident to everyone in the room that everyone hopes the launch goes smoothly. It may not be the intent but in this case, your expressed hope is suggesting that you haven't prepared for things not going as planned. The alternative is either just dropping off everything after the "and" in that sentence or replacing it with a brief summary of how you've prepared for if things go wrong.
I include these as examples particularly because I've both heard people get bitten by saying these and myself getting bitten by it as well. I would have come up with more examples however I'm too tired to at the moment.
Ultimately the purpose is avoiding meaningless filler, not discrediting your knowledge or performance, and avoiding speculating in such a way that you are dodging responsibility in the case that your speculation was wrong. This is by no means an end all rule but as a habit to train yourself to maintain your appearance and avoid putting your foot in your mouth, it is an excellent tool.
this is a better framing of purpose than the advice provided. as you've laid out, the advice needs too many caveats (i.e., it's too specific) to be so absolute. i generally agree it's better to minimize bullshitting under duress, for reputation, responsibility, or otherwise.
good leadership focuses on laying out purpose, providing examples and intuition, and letting teammates determine the needs and implementation(s). bad leadership tries to distill desires into rules to follow, short-circuiting the creativity needed to adapt to dynamic circumstances.
embracing and adapting to uncertainty is a hallmark of good leadership, and politics (like blaming others), a sign of bad leadership.
This is obviously a false statement, because once you expose bullshit to the ones who provide it, they never go back and say "oh sorry, I did not know it was not true", which makes them de facto liars and they are always well aware of it.
I may not agree with what they are saying but I might as well take it to heart and reconcile the difference between my and their points after the discussion. In practice I find that assuming Occam's razor works wonders in discussions. In these discussions one of us is wrong but very rarely is it malicious in intent and to be entirely honest, in a professional environment I would rather be wrong than those I am working with/over/under being wrong.
Note: I should clarify that I am by no means a paragon of virtue and open-mindedness and I don't mean to imply that in my post. I have struggled with getting caught up on certain ideas in the past and still struggle with it but I try my best to step back at each chance I get to think "Why do things not add up? What am I missing and why am I stupid for missing it?". It works surprisingly well at knocking the senses back into you.
Isn't it also the most common method, used in 99% [1] of cases?
[1] Estimation, actual number may vary.
A bullshitter, for instance, might know nothing about Picasso or cubism or even art. But if he knows about continental Europe in the 1900s, he can bullshit his way into convincing someone similarly ignorant that Picasso's Blue Period was, indeed, a reflection of Europe in the wake of WW1 (never mind that the Blue Period was years older).
It's not true, but it takes a truth and stretches it in a logical direction to be convincing.
Where do I sign up ?!
Such as something like, 'we've seen a dramatic increase in revenue' while leaving out the dramatic increase in expenditures and downplaying that profit hasn't really changed.
Or the kind of bullshit large companies use with the environment or social issues. Things like, our company uses 75% recycled products and cares about diversity, while leaving out that they destroy thousands of hectares of natural ecosystems, pollute land and water, oppress developing nations and murder their protesting citizens in the jungle while employing their children as slave labour. Meanwhile, they tell you how much they care about your rich, empty, disconnected technocrat concerns about the world and make you believe you're making a difference by buying their garbage and investing in their company.
A manager might sit down with their team and say something like, "We are targeting 10% growth in our department revenue for next year." Someone raises the question on how that 10% growth will be achieved; what is going to be done differently next year than now.
There's a big difference between a person that can whip out their 10-page growth plan with concrete marketing and operational plans to explain how their proposed changes will lead to the desired growth versus one that simply states, "10% growth is a reasonable target for our division".
The latter is just parroting superficial, general information and (critically) thinks this is a sufficient or even desirable way to set goals (set a target and let the team hit it!). The former lets their quantitative conclusion "10% growth" follow from the actual work of building out a plan.
http://www.professorsapp.com/cohen--further-into-bullshi.pdf
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/592b5bbfd482e9898c67f...
It's a bit like what happens when an intelligent coward is met with contrary evidence. He will turn away from the truth and go to great lengths to rationalize it away, and in doing so, he will blind himself to the truth. Making that a habit through repetition only deepens the vice and unravels the mind, making it increasingly difficult to dig yourself out.
Another problem is that the truth often doesn't matter, and the intelligent cowards knows it. He won't deny the truth, but he will explain why the truth doesn't matter.
> he will blind himself to the truth
Not necessarily. He would try to not turn to cynicism. But cynicism can be very tempting.
Not that you need to bullshit them, but often a woman tests a mans abilities before she decides on a relationship. The tests are many. Some are of loyalty, some of intellect.
But many are of how quickly you can react to unknown, hard to grasp things. It’s called “banter” usually, and it’s absolutely vital in many cultures and areas to attract someone.
Banter is essentially “bullshit”, except it’s highly entertaining. It can contain tons of truth (it can be almost all truth and even more so than a dry analytical conversation ever could, in a Straussian way). But the ability to play along, take up characters, bluff, and know exactly when to push things and when to let them up, to understand the “game” of having fun through conversation. That’s basically as important a thing you can learn, absolutely vital to reproductive success, and honestly one of the most fun activities that exists.
Sure, you can draw a line and say stupid banter is stupid or pure BS is BS. But you’re totally missing the point and the fun behind it, and the real usefulness. Talking dryly about science wont convince people - but giving a good fictional story with some (wink wink) bluster and can convey much richer meaning and keep people engaged.
e.g. just picking something random: https://inspiringcity.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/wp_2015083... and coming up with something
"The ethereal skeletal-form the character hewn - nay assembled - out of cubic masses I think really suggests a genuine fragility or frailty of humanity in a context of our modern society - you know what I mean, raising questions about the concept of self in an anonymous and increasingly digitised world. The fact this faceless figure is stationary and notably rooted solid here on the spot despite being surrounded by this busy streetscape only reminds me of our ultimate mortality, and that our place - our mark we leave - in the universe is merely fleeting... the artist really hammered this point home I think by the use of rusting steel: nothing is permanent, dust to dust ashes to ashes and all that. Moving stuff."
It is fun - bonus points for ending the critique with "Ultimately, it is about mans's inhumanity to man" for every piece :-)
I like to think that I've been able to get away with it loads of times now ("gee - I just thought it was a rusty metal man statue"). My wife now rolls my eyes whenever I do it with friends, but she lets me have my fun :)
Sometimes the BS is just too compelling, and they refuse to drop it even after your denouement.
I'm pretty sure mastering bullshittery is indeed the only way to pass such a class.
I'm sure there's some survivor/confirmation bias going on there, but even so...
> ... Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that bullshit ability is predictive of participants’ intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be higher in intelligence. ...
This abstract reads like bullshit.
The paper defines "bullshiting," but not "intelligence." Nor do the authors even seem interested in addressing any of the numerous problems in measuring human intelligence.
The "intelligence" tests being used appear to be:
- Wordsum Task. The Wordsum task is a 10-item vocabulary test commonly used as a measure of verbal intelligence (see Malhotra et al., 2007 for a review). In this task, a word in large print (e.g., “CLOISTERED”) appears above a series of smaller print words (e.g., bunched, secluded, malady, miniature, arched). Participants’ objective is to pick a small print word that is the best synonym for the large print target word. Scores on the Wordsum task were equal to the total number of correct responses provided.
- Raven’s Progressive Matrices. We administered Raven’s Progressive Matrices (RPM) as a measure of abstract reasoning and non-verbal fluid intelligence (Bilker et al., 2012). In this task, participants are presented with a partially obscured visual pattern and must select the available pattern fragment that will successfully complete the pattern. The RPM is comprised of 60 items broken up into five levels of difficulty. In order to decrease time demands on participants, we randomly selected four items from each of the five difficulty levels, resulting in 20 RPM items being presented in Study 1. We calculated an RPM score for each participant by calculating the number of correct responses they provided.
Assuming this study was in fact performed and isn't some weird bullshit inception joke, these "intelligence" tests seem flawed at best.
Also, bullshit ability is also a signal of prime mating potential.
Each turn, one player draws a card, reads out the word, name or situation listed and writes down the correct answer shown on the backside. All others think up an explanation and write this on their piece of paper instead. At the end of each turn, the sheets are collected, shuffled, read out by the active player and the players have to vote for the answer that they think is most likely to be correct. Points are awarded if they chose the correct answer and additional points for everyone they fooled with their own creation.
(And now the question is whether the described game actually exists.)
It's very close, though your version would be more like "The Encyclopedia Game".
A version of this is Practical Intelligence, an ability to talk your way out of situations or to talk about things which will soothe or convince the listener. I think this is a separate skill in itself, and has nothing to do with your general IQ levels (based on empirical evidence only, dont know of any study). This is something I found lacking in me where others would get out of an assignment or a test in school based on just convincing the teacher alone, or get access to things, work done from others while I would be left wondering how the hell they did it. It is an important skill to be taught - knowing what to say in front of who in any situation - to buid rapport, get support, connect on an emotional level (things I have struggled with occasionally hence those are more noticeable) and more like this to help you succeed in this world.
"Scaling a service to millions of requests per second? Sure, you will need X, Y, and Z."
Now, on the other side of the table, I am quick to spot the bullshit.
Also, I realize how criminal those interviews were back then. I was answering architect level questions asked by a senior engineer when applying for a junior level position.
We had a laugh about it with our line manager the other day. He was leading that interview.
Most likely I was not asked for real details, which makes me question the effectiveness of the interviewers back then.
I can't remember the numbers of times that I would quickly read up on a topic / language / technology the prospect was using the night / morning before the meeting, then during the meeting try to sound like an expert in the topic. I know exactly how convincing I was, but I was never called out enough during the meeting to out me.
I'm the technical guy on the other side of the table. We don't call people out of politeness - just smirk and enjoy the ride. After the meeting we talk freely to people in charge and destroy all your hopes of sale.
We knew we (collectively as a team) weren’t experts in everything, but the prospects called for expertise in x, y and z. Most of the time we knew a lot about x and y but not much about z. But at the same time we also knew no one is a perfect fit and we were pretty good for the job. In a lot of ways it’s very much like most interviews. It’s a back and forth of some BS and attempts to detect BS. The BSing wasn’t always successful I’m sure, but seemed necessary in most cases.
I certainly understand that when expertise in topics A, B and C are necessary to get in the door, you do the best you can. Getting a handle on the basics of a tertiary topic so you can start the conversation and focus on your legitimate strengths is a far cry from throwing up a smoke-screen in front of a potential client to push a sale.
Thanks for the follow up.
This is kind of similar.
(no, you're right, of course)
Otherwise, you're insulting my intelligence, and maybe it's just my ego, but having my intelligence insulted offends me more than being lied to does.
What does it prove if a computer successfully fools a moron... or if a presidential candidate successfully bamboozles 62,979,879 of them?
he has only himself to blame for being so bad at bullshit. if he were better at it, i might not have any room to object. but i'm offended that he thinks his bs is any good, and i do object. every time. out of principle.
1. Ability to bullshit
2. Willingness to bullshit
And I think the second one is inversely correlated with intelligence. It's short term thinking which tends to lead to trouble in the long run. Truly smart people know that there will be a point when reality will catch up with their BS; especially if they're dealing with other smart people.
I think BS has worked pretty well so far because most people are delusional and they'd rather lie to themselves and maintain their existing relationships rather than admit that they've been duped into using an inferior product or service.
I will actually say that people who are able to detect BS are more intelligent still, because truth is so rare.
However it completely forgets the willingness aspect. I think a lot of smart people are brilliant bullshitters, however they have morale and pride which make them avoid this. I'll bet this article will be shared among CEO friends, "See, we are smart!"
> They hold it unlawful to talk of anything which it is unlawful to do. The most disgraceful thing in the world, they think, is to tell a lie; the next worst, to owe a debt: because, among other reasons, the debtor is obliged to tell lies. (Herodotus I.139)
> From five years of age to twenty-four they are trained to use the bow, to throw the javelin, to ride horseback, and to speak the truth; (Strabo 15:3.18)
Perhaps connected to a Zoroastrianism light/truth/good at war with dark/lies/evil.
It's true that being able to "navigate" vague ideas of politics, economics, philosophy, communication, and understand how others perceive those ideas, enables one intelligent person to play with those ideas to make some bullshit.
The problem is that when ideas are not precisely defined, or when those ideas are controversial and/or misused because they're important societal values, it gives more and more opportunity for someone to make bullshit.
I mean you can't bullshit about quantum physics or advanced math. But it's easier to do it for law or social sciences.
Depends on your audience. In general, on any given subject, you can successfully bullshit people who are less familiar with it than you are. In terms of social wins, I think that's usually what matters - bullshitting people on the spot. They won't go and fact-check it later anyways, but will be left with an impression that you're smart and knowledgeable.
You can also acquire bullshit skills from knowledge transfer, and you can become effective at bullshit in that way.
You can train an entire sales force using a script in order to convince customers to buy stuff they do not need, like insurance, using bullshit pretenses. While that will make a lot of people good at bullshit, that does not mean those people will become more intelligent.
A wonderful and suprisingly precise definition.
The study is equivocating intelligence with RPM, and I feel I missed the paper that proved that RPM was an accurate measure of intelligence? Or that we even arrived at a general consensus on the formal definition of intelligence.
but intelligence in itself is not enough. evil masterminds are intelligent too.
it also matters how that intelligence is used. if you use it for bullshitting, you are at best wasting someones time, and at worst you are deceiving them.
Seems to be a talking about a very specific type of intelligence, e.g. quite different from the stereotypical geek.
Is this article itself bullshit?
(Its different if someone is genuinely passionate about a topic. Then I want to wear the pink glasses and get a set of my own.)
I think it should be possible to amplify bullshit to such a degree that everyone can see the absurdity.
Though it would seem bullshit ability is more closely tied to that knowledge gap between participants than anything.
e.g. mechanic with an IQ of 85 easily bullshits the economist with an IQ of 125 into more mechanical work than is required.
Or your lack of knowledge doesn't hold you back in any way, your BSing is pure nonsense and therefore isn't even approachable.
The best BSers I know are total morons.