FYI: Philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote the classic essay "On Bullshit", defining the concept. Unlike lying/fraud, where falsehood is instrumental, Frankfurt defined bullshit as potentially false speech where the truth simply wasn't important. Bullshit is characterized by giving the surface appearance of confidence, intelligence, or a convincing argument; whether it's actually true or not is besides the point.
I've always thought of bullshit as being more about what you don't say than what you say. It's a lot easier to get away with bullshit when your bullshit consists of truths with a healthy dose of leaving important details that affect the implications of your statements out.
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.
There's a kind of limbo zone where non-bullshitters internalize bullshitting as the normal pattern of communication and that's where the damage can really happen vis a vis genuine competence.
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.
That's not the type of BS the author means, what you're referring to is called "falseness" by the author, eg. deliberate misleading statement. BS is more like sitting around with people telling stories and embellishing with some details that are irrelevant, or in the more useful case, discussing an idea that is incomplete without fear of the potential falsehoods impacting the creative process of exploring that idea. Say you're unsure of which car to buy, you could BS it in some story about your cousin buying that car (cousin actually bought a truck but that isn't the point of the story) and see how the people around you respond to it. Everyone who hates that car, while BS'ing with you is free to state it, but when you own that car already they have to hedge their opinions.
I wouldn't worry so much about what the "real" meaning of BS is. People clearly mean different things by it, and there's no reason to think there's one true answer. The interesting question is "Is the concept called 'bullshit' by Frankfurt a coherent idea that's useful for understanding the world?". If so, then in the present context we can call it "bullshit in the sense of Frankfurt", or "bullshit" for short, and get on with the non-semantical discussion.
> "potentially false speech where the truth simply wasn't important"
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 :)
In your example the falseness is not besides the point. Even if you wouldn't technically lie, using deceptive language as a tool to raise capital is extremely unethical. You might be able to dodge lawsuits by this kind of deception, but ethically you are the same as a liar.
The thing in my eyes that separates bullshitting someone from lying to them is that when you lie, you know what you are saying is probably or definitely false but when you are bullshitting someone, you just don't know if it's definitively true.
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.
> ‘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.’
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.
Of course life is anything but absolute. We know that as a fundamental aspect of life. The point of avoiding those statements is that they don't add anything of value when used in the best case and in the worst case weakens the strength of the points you are making by sowing uncertainty. Note that expressing degrees of certainty is still fine as long as it actually expresses the degree of certainty. Additionally, note that this is for professional discussions. In everyday speech use whatever is most comfortable but removing these phrases from all aspects of your professional life can be immensely helpful.
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.
> "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 ..."
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.
> The thing in my eyes that separates bullshitting someone from lying to them is that when you lie, you know what you are saying is probably or definitely false but when you are bullshitting someone, you just don't know if it's definitively true.
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 can't speak for everyone but if someone points out I said something incorrect, I generally respond well to it. Whether I am 100% sure about it or making assumptions, unless I have definitive evidence on hand to make a counterpoint, there's not really a good way to avoid making a fool of yourself other than just honestly listening to what the person has to say.
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.
oh, i didn't mean "besides the point" legally or morally! lying is lying (though @jacoblambda makes a great point in a sibling comment), it's just useful to distinguish this specific kind for some purposes
Convincing bullshit is often a single truth stretched thin in a logically consistent manner.
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.
Bullshitting is priming someone to agree with you even though they have reasonable doubts. When trump implies that a Chinese reporter may have ties to the Chinese government it’s not something that has any evidence behind it, but he’s basically making your subconscious engage with the idea (as even a low percentile chance could be true). Then, he applies the same to the pitch he’s making.
Everyone expects startup pitches to be over-inflated and over-confident. Because something is wrong (e.g, the entrepreneur is dispassionate) if they aren't. Which sets up this "they have to be full of themselves, but it's meaningless and no measure of their true ability" situation. It's odd.
i think i've read this at some point but taking a quick look to refesh myself, i was struck on the first page by the word procrustean, which apparently means something like "rigidly but arbitrarily specified"[0], possibly obliquely related to hard-shelled sea creatures. neat word.
It's from Procrustes, the guy who chopped your feet off to make you fit in the bed in greek myth. You find Procrustean analysis in mathematics, where you try and find the closest approximating matrix with a certain property to another given matrix (like it is a rotation matrix etc).
GA Cohen wrote "Deeper into Bullshit" as a sort-of reply to Frankfurt, which drew attention to what I find the more interesting kind of bullshit, namely pseudo-academic and/or pseudo-technical bullshit. This, Cohen sensitively observes, is always found to have the property of "unclarifiability" - which is just exactly on the money. Very much worth the read. Frankfurt published a reply to it, as well, as I recall.
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.
“Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw!—Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen!—and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose!”
“I went camping with Brasky, his wife, and his daughter Debbie! Debbie Brasky. She’s 7-years-old, goes about 3’5″, 55 pounds. So, I’m in the back of a pickup with Bill Brasky and a live deer! Well, Brasky, he grabs the deer by the antlers, looks at it and says, ‘I’m Bill Brasky! Say it!’ Then he squeezes the deer in such a way that a sound comes out of its mouth – ‘Billbrasky!’ It wasn’t exactly it, but it was pretty good for a deer!”
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.
Bullshit is different than lying, but that doesn't mean anyone is arguing that it's moral. The fact that the listener might be led to believe something false is just one negative aspect of bullshit.
Who cares? Being good at bullshitting is like being a good liar or good at dissimulation. The "good" is only analogical in meaning. Virtuous intelligent people, the wise, are habituated and developed in the direction of truth and away from lies, deceit and bullshit. They have a sensitivity to the truth and the value of truth. Bullshitting requires and in turn reinforces a kind of mental dullness and blindness. It leads to a kind of degeneration of the mental faculties. If you don't care about the truth—only the parochial effects of your petty machinations—then you are frustrating the intellect and its grasp of reality. You are reinforcing vices while weakening the capacity for discernment and the strengths and virtues needed for proper intellectual function and receptivity.
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.
Bullshit is just a way to practice one of the hardest forms of interaction: attracting a difficult to get mate.
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.
I don’t see “banter” as “bullshit”. Sure, it’s usually the exact opposite of a geeky, factual conversation, but the purpose of banter is to bond, whereas the purpose of bullshit is to mislead (consciously or unconsciously) (while avoiding outright lies).
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.
Related fun game that I like to play when there are "pop up" public art/sculpture things that appear on the street: totally ad-lib a mini-critique/-explanation for the piece there on the spot if you are there with someone else and see if you can get away with it.
"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 :)
I just tried that out for a couple sentences when I realised that this is /precisely/ what I would do for English Literature classes, years ago.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that that subject that seemingly trains you to 'bullshit' is then also related to intelligence.
Reminds me of what my friend once told me during my university years - that yes, I do have the ability to get out of tough places with class assignments by inventing a barrage of completely sensible-sounding and technically true chaff like this, and that this ability is making me lazy; that I start to rely on my ability to talk my way into an A instead of putting more work into polishing the project. That remark touched me deeply. I realized that yes, I've been considering this to be a very fun game (the self-imposed restriction that I have to stay truthful was what made it challenging, in a fun way). Ever since I've put an effort into avoiding doing this - it's too easy, and you don't learn as much as you can when actually doing the work to the best of your abilities.
I'm in a technical online Master's program right now, and I'm amazed sometimes at where I get marks taken off, and where I don't, in some of my submissions. The areas I feel I bullshitted the most seem to be the most accepted.
I'm sure there's some survivor/confirmation bias going on there, but even so...
Does it matter? After all, there's no real underlying conversational reality to be referenced; just the Ur-Zeitgeist of performative familiarity, the verbal construction of an image and its presentation to the Other ...
Sounds like a fun game if all your friends are on it. We used to play this game as Management Consultants -- we'd go into a restaurant/venue and pretend to offer a semi-serious unsolicited strategy update for the place. Extra points for keyword bingo and more extra points if you could do it with a straight face.
Given how art is as much about intentions as it is about the reaction of the observer, a compelling enough BS might take a new life as a honest reflection on art. Arguably, that's what most art criticism is today.
Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is No.
> ... 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.
Taking a far-reaching and encompassing notion that's very ingrained in everyone's vocabulary, redefining it so that it's easier to measure, and reducing it to a bunch of puzzles, seems to be a favorite pastime of psychologists.
I'm always impressed by psychologists' claim to be able to accurately define and measure intelligence, creativity, or indeed most personality traits, when researchers from other, presumably adjacent fields (AI to neuroscience to animal behavior to developmental biology) haven't come near approaching these notions. Not only that, but (in the case of intelligence) it apparently stems from the ability to match words and recognized predefined patterns very quickly? This is such an extraordinary claim to make, so either psychologists are onto something people from other fields are too close-minded or feeble-minded to grasp, or some kind of intellectual shortcut was taken there.
It reminds me of a game called "Nobody is perfect" where there are cards with names and words that usually only few people know (don't worry, nobody is perfect). Goal is to write convincing explanations for them.
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.)
There used to be a program on the Belgian national French-speaking radio called "Le Jeu des dictionnaires". The rules were similar but the radio hosts never played seriously, and just made up absurd and hilarious definitions.
What they are measuring is the confidence levels of an individual and how they relate to us trusting them or detecting something is amiss.
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.
anecdotes is a part of them, I used empirical in the sense that i noticed (and somewhat envied) they had the ability to get out of situations while I could not. The reason I said nothing to do with IQ or intelligence is probably an underlying bias where I have seen some smarter folks (compared to me) do it as well as some not as smart folks do it too. Not using anecdotes because it has happened way too often, and this is also the experience of a few individuals in my friends group
Back when I was younger, I would bullshit on software interviews with great success. I say "bullshit" because I would talk with a high degree of "confidence" about topics and technologies that I had barely read about or had experience with.
"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.
I worked for a number of years in a custom software dev shop and one of my later responsibilities was to be the tech guy during the sales cycle. Essentially my job was to look and sound smart and help convince the potential customer that we're really good and the best choice for the job. I do think we were pretty good but as you can imagine most of my job was bullshitting.
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 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.
I mean - assuming you passed the interview how BS was it? Either the guy interviewing you had no place asking those questions or you were accurate enough in your response to get in is my take.
This reminds me of the Kurt Vonnegut novel Galapagos, in which the human race evolves beyond the era of really big brains since they weren't doing us that much good after all and made our heads less streamlined for swimming after fish.
Nope. An honest man of integrity already knows how to play the bagpipes and doesn't need to lie or name-drop to seem important. Bullshit is only appropriate to save the face or lives of others, or as entertainment amongst people already savvy enough to see through it.
That's also reminiscent of a similar problem with the original Turing test: the test outcome says more about the intelligence of the person evaluating the test than it does about the identity of the test subject.
What does it prove if a computer successfully fools a moron... or if a presidential candidate successfully bamboozles 62,979,879 of them?
agreed. the building handyman tries to bullshit me out of doing work on my apartment, or at least to cheap out on the quality of the work. he gets mad at me for outmaneuvering him into better (but not the best) solutions.
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.
I think this type of thinking is dangerous because there are at least two factors at play when it comes to bullshitting:
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.
Plenty of dumb people bullshit and plenty of smart people don’t. I saw another comment here I agree with - your intelligence probably correlates with the quality of bullshit, assuming equal motivation.
I don't think so: Listen to Alibaba founder Jack Ma, he is a lucky persistent guy turned business leader. He is actually air-headed, but people still listen to his BS because he is rich. Money speaks...but substance? Not necessarily
I will actually say that people who are able to detect BS are more intelligent still, because truth is so rare.
I bet activities and educational environments that correlate (for whatever reason) with higher-than-average intelligence train for bullshitting, directly or indirectly. Improv, verbal sparring games (e.g. "Questions"), debate, small-group discussion-driven instruction styles (as the Harkness method of Phillips Exeter Academy)
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!"
Having spent a lot of time in the C-suites, I would say that I have never really gotten the bullshit vibe from many CEO's. I have gotten the sociopathic tendencies / devil may care, vibe from more than a few of them, but bullshitting seemed to be a sales exec's expertise. CEO's (at least successful ones) don't really care about the small stuff and the touchy feely, they tend to mow over that stuff for the big picture and a lot of bullshit focuses on the details and the emotional aspects of the conversation. That's not to say that they don't lie, they just don't tend to color it like a bullshitter does.
Reminds me by contrast of reports of ancient Persia...
> 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 seems to describe how I generally argue. I guess as long as I'm called intelligent, I can agree to be called a bullshitter too?
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.
> I mean you can't bullshit about quantum physics or advanced math.
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.
Exploiting information asymmetry and lying, like any other form of adversarial information manipulation, requires skill. And applying intelligence can be an effective way to acquire an skill.
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.
"Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of high score on Raven’s Progressive Matrices"
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.
sure, bullshitting is a form of imagination, and imagination is a sign 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.
> We interpret these results as adding further evidence for human intelligence being naturally geared towards the efficient navigation of social systems.
Seems to be a talking about a very specific type of intelligence, e.g. quite different from the stereotypical geek.
I hate explaining good jokes but I guess the topic is worthy. The idea is to repeat everything people say (or write) in your own words. That way others can polish their words all day long without changing the facts. I often wish we all had a natural gift for this kind of objectivity. I mean, if someone describes something, wouldn't you want it to describe the thing the way it is?
(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.)
Bullshitters are observed to be intelligent. That is true. Confident bullshitters are assumed to be intelligent but thats because of the confidence factor. Intelligent people usually outthink themselves and "appear" doubtful when the actual case is they are considering all possible options.
I think it should be possible to amplify bullshit to such a degree that everyone can see the absurdity.
The essay is only 20 pages and available here:
http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/bullshit...