[HN Gopher] It Turns Out You Can Bullshit a Bullshitter After All
___________________________________________________________________
It Turns Out You Can Bullshit a Bullshitter After All
Author : sohkamyung
Score : 128 points
Date : 2021-03-07 12:38 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digest.bps.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (digest.bps.org.uk)
| lonesomewhistle wrote:
| This is some serious bullshit.
| chris_wot wrote:
| I am curious how they determined the subjects tested were
| bullshitters.
|
| Did they get to know them enough to realise they bullshit a lot?
|
| Or did they ask them if they were good bullshitters? If so, then
| maybe they missed those who are bullshitters but either don't
| know it, or won't admit to it.
| awinter-py wrote:
| the linked BJSP paper is paywalled
|
| what's the effect size?
| tgv wrote:
| http://psyarxiv.com/5c2ej/download says the Unpaywall extension
| (works on Firefox, probably also on Chrome). Great thing to
| have installed.
|
| However, before getting carried away, let's not forget the
| results are based on made-up scales, bad, unbalanced
| alternatives and online surveys, Mechanical Turk in this case.
| The sample is guaranteed to be unrepresentative, because
| "[o]nly those who had completed a minimum of 500 surveys and
| had at least a 97% MTurk HIT approval rating were eligible to
| participate" and 62% had at least a bachelor degree.
|
| Best r they report is .39.
| marshmallow_12 wrote:
| this article is ripe for an ig Nobel award. well done to the
| authors. they should be nominated.
| motohagiography wrote:
| When I learned to play poker with some "semi-pro" players at the
| table, they asked what I did I said I worked in security and
| cryptography, which is what got me into playing. When they said,
| "oh, you're a math guy?" I said, "not really, more code, but the
| problems I deal with at work are edge cases where assumptions
| about math break down, for example like how statistical models of
| card shuffling assume an even, normal distribution, which is
| great in theory, but doesn't bear out in practice."
|
| This created enough uncertainty and second guessing in their
| minds about their own odds calculations on each hand that with a
| bit of aggression and beginners randomness, I was able to take a
| few of them out.
|
| I wasn't doing better calculations, I was just adding uncertainty
| to theirs. I still don't know much about playing cards, but that
| is how you bullshit bullshitters.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I'm not sure I get it. How do you know this created uncertainty
| and second guessing?
| vl wrote:
| He said that he knows that the deck is not shuffled randomly.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I mean how does he know that this had influence on the semi
| pro players. It just seems unlikely to me that they would
| start second guessing after that fact.
| mpol wrote:
| Math.
|
| Or he might be a human being with feelings and perceptions,
| however subjective they may be.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| It just seems unlikely to cause anyone semi pro to start
| second guessing themselves. So I would like to understand
| how did this manifest.
| Raidion wrote:
| This is like an example of persuasive bullshitting from the
| article!
|
| Poker amateurs play badly regardless of reason. Poker
| professionals wouldn't adjust their strategy based on some
| random guy at the table. The sample size is incredibly small
| for poker (as you said) but saying that the uncertainty you
| added affected the outcome is tenuous.
|
| Additionally the best live poker players are entertainers in
| terms of they want to make you feel valued and that you have a
| chance so you come back and play more. They have a concrete
| financial interest in making you feel smart, funny, and
| competent. A true live poker pro always laughs when the worst
| player tells a joke and always says 'whoa that's interesting'
| after the worst player tells a story.
| motohagiography wrote:
| It's possible I didn't know the difference between winning
| and losing and it was an attribution error. My experience
| with people in business who lie about data and bullshit about
| crypto suggested even though the players were way more
| experienced, they could be persuaded they needed to be
| cautious by someone with a "deeper" background.
|
| Anyway, I ended up splitting the pot in that tournament, so
| lucky for sure, and maybe the guy I split it with was so good
| he could use a beginner at the table against the others as a
| shield, but in a game of confidence and perceptions, bringing
| in data points nobody else has is destabilizing.
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I've got to call bullshit on this as well. No one is going
| to lose confidence due to something like that and results
| of one game with small crowd are very luck dependant. It
| feels like you won at roulette and are attributing your win
| to something genius you think you did.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Plausible, with the slight exception it was on purpose,
| and breaking peoples balls on their mystical folk
| understandings of why they think they're good is very
| much a competitive strategy. See sports psychology for
| examples. The way to bullshit a bullshitter is to seize
| the initiative and give them an out where they save face.
| Nothing brilliant, but it's funny, and standard in sales.
| A bit of charisma goes a long way.
|
| I've absolutely been the mark in other situations, but
| that one, I thought it was intentional enough to share.:)
| andrewflnr wrote:
| That's beautiful. It sounds like you were using the standard
| odds calculations?
| smitty1e wrote:
| But does this article pass the Frankfurt test?
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122...
| MrDrDr wrote:
| My thoughts exactly! I read 'On Bullshit' a while back and it
| struck me as an hilarious thesis attacking the social sciences
| in general. There is some type of recursive irony going on
| here.
| mcphage wrote:
| What is the Frankfurt test?
| smitty1e wrote:
| The tl;dr from the book at the link is that the point of BS
| isn't so much to amuse or mislead, rather, real BS is an
| attack on the concept of truth as such.
| rq1 wrote:
| We know since at least 384BC[1] that the best strategy against a
| bullshitter is to bullshit.
|
| You can't win against someone who cheats and takes freedom with
| the rules while you follow these rules.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthydemus_(dialogue)
| hatmatrix wrote:
| The summary:
|
| > Some earlier work has suggested that better liars are also
| better at detecting lies. But as the team notes, bullshit isn't
| quite the same, as it falls just short of outright deception.
|
| > Recently, researchers have begun to treat bullshitting as
| having two separate dimensions. "Persuasive bullshitting" is
| motivated by a desire to impress or persuade. "Evasive
| bullshitting" is different -- as a "strategic circumnavigation of
| the truth", it's the sort that a politician might engage in when
| trying to cover up a mistake, for example.
|
| > The team found that people who reported engaging in more
| persuasive bullshitting were more receptive to all forms of
| bullshit (pseudo-profound, pseudo-scientific and fake news).
| However, higher scores for evasive bullshitting were not related
| to susceptibility to the first two forms of bullshit, and were
| actually associated with less susceptibility to believing fake
| news.
|
| I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and
| bullshitting is.
| carapace wrote:
| > I'm still not sure what the distinction between lying and
| bullshitting is.
|
| Logically there isn't one. The difference is in context and
| motivation.
|
| When I was a kid I had a problem with bullshitting, like when I
| told my friends that my dad owned a helicopter. I wasn't trying
| to scam them, I just wanted to be accepted and seem cool. But I
| got over it as soon as my brain was able to notice what a
| stupid thing it was to do. "You don't gotta lie to hang out."
|
| FWIW, it seems to em like this study is just showing that
| stupid people are stupid. It's arrested development to be a
| bullshitter after, say, 12 or so, surely?
| layer8 wrote:
| Bullshitting does not require knowledge of the truth. Liars
| know they are telling a falsehood. Bullshitters don't care
| whether something is factual or not, as long as it serves their
| rhetoric purpose.
| darkerside wrote:
| I would say persuasive bullshitters probably includes the
| perhaps small group of people who have realized that everything
| people say (themselves included) contains at least some small
| measure of bullshit (however you define it), and that it isn't
| necessarily intentional or malicious, and that it doesn't fully
| invalidate the statement. Thus, they are willing to confess to
| engaging in bullshitters, and while quick to recognize it in
| others, they are generous enough to play along for what truth
| might lie within.
| netflixandkill wrote:
| Bullshitting is manipulative storytelling. Some of what a
| bullshitter says is true. Some of it they even believe is true.
| Some of it they desperately want to be true. What's outright
| false they would say is unimportant and deflect rather than
| argue about.
|
| But they're saying it to get something they want or avoid
| something they don't want, and they'll tell any remotely
| plausible story to make that happen. Bullshitters change the
| story to fit the situation, often in real time as it develops.
|
| Lying is more straightforward in that the liar is saying
| something they specifically know is not true to deceive the
| listener.
| csunbird wrote:
| Easy. The paragraphs that you have quoted does not say anything
| in particular but it is long and looks informative. That is
| bullshit.
|
| I am living in America. That is a lie.
| sudhirj wrote:
| I'll take a crack at it. Lying is when I say something and hope
| that you'll believe what I'm saying, while bullshit is saying
| something hoping you'll believe something else, either
| indirectly or transitively.
|
| If I wanted to you to think I went to Stanford, I could say I
| went to Stanford, which is a lie, or talk about how much I
| enjoyed my time studying in the Palo Alto area, which is
| bullshitting.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Maybe they consider lying as uniform pathology and with
| bullshitting they make an effort to categorise into
| "presuasive" and "evasive", but they could be as well defined
| other way around imho.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Thinking about it more there may be something I don't get
| about it because if you think about concepts like "while lie"
| - it is category of a lie, however doesn't belong to
| bullshitting category, there is something about incentive
| that may be distingishing between two.
| User23 wrote:
| First, the distinction made between persuasive and evasive
| bullshitting strikes me as vacuous. Evasion is a species of
| persuasion so it's not two types, but rather a contains
| relation. On to bullshit then.
|
| Harry Frankfurt wrote an entertaining little book on the
| subject[1]. To boil it down, the liar is concerned with the
| truth, but makes it serve his ends by hiding it. On the other
| hand the bullshitter is concerned with persuasion and gives no
| particular consideration to the truth value of his claims, so
| long as they persuade. As such well-crafted bullshit is
| designed to sound plausible and elicit the sensation of truth.
|
| For example, someone running a pump and dump scheme with a
| stock is liable to be bullshitting. The reasons he gives for
| buying may well be true, but he doesn't care either way so long
| as the rubes drive his shares up.
|
| [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/385.On_Bullshit
| justinclift wrote:
| Perhaps they're bullshitting, and it's one of those fake
| studies? :)
| alexashka wrote:
| Lying is when you know A to be true but claiming A is false.
|
| Bullshitting is not knowing enough about A but making claims
| about A regardless.
| chmod775 wrote:
| Two reasons come to mind:
|
| If you can't see through bullshit, you might think others can't
| either, and are thus more likely to bullshit yourself.
|
| If you can't see through bullshit, you may think others are
| actually accomplishing some of the things they claim, and will be
| more likely to embellish your own story to "keep up".
| spuz wrote:
| > If you can't see through bullshit, you may think others are
| actually accomplishing some of the things they claim.
|
| The converse is probably also true. I.e. if someone tells you
| something that is true but you can't tell whether they are
| bullshitting you, you might feel more justified in bullshitting
| or embellishing the truth yourself.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| A third: many pathological bullshitters don't even realize
| they're making stuff up.
| djmips wrote:
| I see a pattern where persuasive bullshitters surround
| themselves with persuasive bullshitters.
| daniellarusso wrote:
| At my work, we call it the sales team.
| fefe23 wrote:
| Oh how I'd love to see their list of profound statements and the
| pseudo profound bullshit!
| machinelearning wrote:
| Some of this seems a bit arbitrary. "Good health imparts
| reality to subtle creativity." While poorly worded, it contains
| a kernel of truth that you can only express your creativity by
| being in good health. However it is put into the bs pile. The
| non bs section contains motivational quotes which are popular
| but are bs mostly. What is the definition of bsing? Thinking
| out loud? Not being accurate? Intentionally stringing together
| words to sound impressive?
| mewpmewp2 wrote:
| I don't get this one, that is supposedly a real quote - "Art
| and love are the same thing: It's the process of seeing
| yourself in things that are not you." Seems pseudo-profound
| to me, unless I'm missing something.
| [deleted]
| rodion_89 wrote:
| Page 17 of the appendix:
| https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/action/downloadSu...
| fallingfrog wrote:
| I get the sense that the people who self reported as being good
| persuasive bullshitters probably aren't fooling people to the
| extent they think they are. They're just not aware of how
| transparent they are. And if those same people are also
| susceptible to fake news and pseudoscience, it kind of adds up to
| them just not being very smart.
|
| Or perhaps, it adds up to them not being the kind of people who
| always take two ideas they have in their heads and test them to
| see if they are consistent with each other. After all, it takes
| _work_ to try to figure out if you're actually seeing the truth.
| And it takes work to realize you're wrong about something and to
| update your mental model of the world. Maybe accepting /sowing
| bullshit is just easier.
|
| If I'm trying to convince someone they're wrong about something,
| the way I try to do it is to find a contradiction in their
| position. I point out two things they believe that can't both be
| true at the same time and then I let them trace out the
| consequences on their own. But evidently for high bullshit
| individuals, that might not work, since they might not see self-
| contradictory ideas as a problem. How would you convince those
| people of anything? I'm not sure.
| [deleted]
| xivzgrev wrote:
| "Evasive bullshitting" - that's a new term for me. I definitely
| have done that. It's where the truth hurts, but you don't want to
| "lie" so you base something in truth. But it's still lying, just
| makes you feel better because if called on it, you have at least
| some plausible deniability.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| It makes sense, one group doesn't know shit and the other does
| and the rest is implied by it.
| skybrian wrote:
| The study is paywalled, but since it seems to based on surveys
| I'll link to an article about why research based on surveys are
| often bullshit:
|
| https://carcinisation.com/2020/12/11/survey-chicken/
| cyberlab wrote:
| Worth a read:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
| "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of
| magnitude larger than to produce it"
| austincheney wrote:
| It should be noted the high refute energy isn't due to the
| error or poor logic of the argument in place. It is due to the
| trust and faith placed in that argument no matter how faulty or
| flawed that argument may be to third parties.
|
| It's also why most people won't bother to entertain the stupid
| unless convinced or positively influenced by it. For example
| many people find the flat earth argument clearly absurd, but
| they won't challenge a flat earther on this even with simple
| obvious data points.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| Can't it be both? Surely it's more difficult to navigate your
| way out of a convoluted, multi-layered false understanding
| than an erroneous belief about a simple fact?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Precisely. Taking the flat earther example, if their able to
| miss so many obvious data points (some they can observe
| themselves with their own eyes!) then why would anything you
| say convince them? Someone who is capable of being talked out
| of believing bullshit is less likely to have falllen for it
| in the first place.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| How many people could actually refute a flat earther? Or
| does the average person believe in a globular earth because
| "science" without detail or just because "everybody" knows
| it to be true?
| nkrisc wrote:
| I've personally stood on the Michigan side of lake
| michigan and seen only the tops of the skyscrapers in
| Chicago while everything else was hidden behind the
| horizon. My dad showed me on a trip to Michigan when I
| was less than 10 and even then I understood the effect.
| You can even see it yourself on a clear day of you get a
| window seat on your next flight.
|
| That's not even mentioning experiments you can do
| yourself right here on the surface measuring shadows to
| estimate the circumference.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| At this point there are plenty of pictures of the earth,
| other celestial bodies, airplanes going round the earth
| and what not, so that anybody can see it and it doesn't
| require any trigonometry or scientific knowledge. Of
| course one might not have personally flown around the
| earth or been part of an operation to take a picture from
| space, but the same can be said about anything. For
| instance how would you prove that your heart pumps blood?
| Have you seen it personally?
| nitrogen wrote:
| All you have to do is gain a few hundred feet of
| elevation on a hike and watch the horizon.
| srean wrote:
| Exactly. This makes fake news, propaganda etc a denial of
| service attack enabled by freedom of speech. The freedom comes
| at a cost.
| cyberlab wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1357/
| wruza wrote:
| Then your employer sees the shitshow, fears the resonance
| and things become more intimate than just cancelling the
| show. Saying "oh, it's only true between you and the govt"
| effectively revokes the claimed right in a society. As a
| result, only those can speak freely who agree with a vocal
| majoriry. But that just seems like an obvious default, not
| a progressive achievement. Or is that wrong?
| cyberlab wrote:
| It seems that people mistakenly cry 'censorship!' when
| most of the time cancel culture is really plain
| moderation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| > most of the time cancel culture is really plain
| moderation
|
| Most moderation ends with people losing their jobs?
| Really?
| [deleted]
| ryandrake wrote:
| That would make vigilante justice, lynch mobs, all the
| way up to genocide examples of extreme "moderation". How
| do you differentiate moderation that kills someone from
| moderation that silences someone, kicks them out of their
| community, and costs them their jobs? They differ only in
| degree.
| varjag wrote:
| It's pretty easy actually, noone gets murdered or maimed.
| meowface wrote:
| A free society necessarily must permit some degree of
| what could be considered vigilantism - even if the
| vigilantism is intended to restrict someone or something
| else's freedom in some way. I'd call this the "meta-
| paradox of tolerance".
|
| The difference in degree you mention is the boundary
| between legally (and sometimes morally) acceptable and
| unacceptable forms of vigilantism.
| covidthrow wrote:
| This is one of the most scary insinuations I've read in a
| while.
|
| Careful, friend. This road does not lead where you think it
| leads...
| meowface wrote:
| Pointing out that freedom comes at a cost doesn't
| necessarily mean they want freedom to be reduced. The
| principle is that the benefits almost always outweigh the
| costs.
| srean wrote:
| Not entirely sure what you mean. Just in case you think so,
| I am not arguing for curbs on free speech. Its just another
| unhappy fact of life that freedom of speech by its very
| nature opens itself up to DDOS. The protectors of free
| speech have a much harder task on their hands than those
| who want to exploit it.
| Slartie wrote:
| I would not say that it's freedom of speech that makes it a
| DoS attack possibility. We've had freedom of speech for a
| while without having disinformation going rampant, because
| the distribution costs of bullshit were still about as large
| as those of valid facts, so even if creating the bullshit was
| cheaper than creating a rebuttal based on facts, the total
| cost of creation plus distribution was roughly equal.
|
| It's the modern (social) media environment and its inherent
| ways of allocating attention that creates the extreme
| asymmetry in distribution costs, where it's now cheaper than
| ever to distribute attention-grabbing bullshit, but still
| pretty expensive to distribute comparatively-boring facts.
| User23 wrote:
| > We've had freedom of speech for a while without having
| disinformation going rampant
|
| I'm confident that if you look at archived US publications
| going back to before the revolution you'll find rampant
| "misinformation" the whole time.
| [deleted]
| covidthrow wrote:
| I'm confident that speculation--no matter how well-
| intentioned--is a form of misinformation.
| User23 wrote:
| In case it wasn't clear that wasn't the rhetorical "you"
| as in "one," but rather a suggestion that parent
| personally ought to spend some time learning about 17th,
| 18th, and 19th century publications by actually reading
| them and seeing how fast and loose they played with the
| truth to achieve desired political and economic goals.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| As in 'let's spread a rumour that he shagged a pig! But who
| will believe this nonsense? It doesn't matter,but it will fun
| to see how they'll refute it!'.
| jjgreen wrote:
| Badly, it seems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piggate
| gweinberg wrote:
| That's a relatively recent incarnation of a much older
| story. As I recall in one of Hunter S Thompson's books he
| accuses LBJ (or possibly Nixon, it's a long time since I
| read it) of spreading rumors one of his political enemies
| fucked pigs. Whichever dead president it was was quoted as
| saying, "I know it's not true, I just want to make th son
| of a bitch deny it".
| cosmodisk wrote:
| What's interesting with this approach that it doesn't
| even take that much effort once the seed of doubt is
| planted. I remember back in the day,I was attending this
| party and after having a few beers,I started looking for
| some entertainment. My eyes stumbled upon a CD case 'Eros
| Ramazzotti'. I exclaimed, and told to one of the the
| friends who was standing close enough that it's a cheap
| knock-off. 'How would you know', he asks? Well, for
| starters, the name is written incorrectly. It's correct,
| I'm a fan of his music and have multiple CDs, it's
| definitely like this. Nope it's not, it's 'Razamotti'. He
| gets puzzled.. then a few others join, including the
| owner of the place. Fast forward 10 min or so and I've
| already convinced some of them. Others start
| 'remembering' and even supporting my claim. Eventually I
| tell everyone I'm just winding them up,but people were
| very surprised how quickly they started to doubt their
| knowledge.
| ranit wrote:
| Yes, it is like cleaning an oil spill.
| koolba wrote:
| It's a natural extension of entropy only being created, and
| never destroyed.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered,
| striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till
| he rebounded from it, 'I refute it thus.'
|
| -- James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson
| chris_wot wrote:
| As an aside, Boswell also noted that James Grainger removed
| the line "Come muse, let us sing if rats" in his poem _The
| Sugar Cane_ because he discovered that when he uttered these
| words his audience dissolved into laughter.
| current123123 wrote:
| What kind of social engineering did this guy do to get a
| wikipedia page and a whole "law" after his name so people can
| quote it forever.
|
| We've had proverbs for millennia about this. But no, let's use
| a silly Italian name to make it sound academic or something.
| cyberlab wrote:
| No social engineering was needed I suppose. This image:
| https://truth-sandwich.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/02/ziobra... done the rounds on social
| media for a while and someone mustered up the courage to
| create a Wikipedia article about it. It's basically an
| Internet meme, not really a law. I use the image sometimes in
| heated debates where two people throw peer reviewed academic
| 'links' at each other for hours to prove their point(s).
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| You'll need to spend order of magnitude more energy refuting
| this page to make a difference here I'm afraid
| ithkuil wrote:
| Please share a few of those proverbs, possibly some with nice
| anglo-saxon words in them, least we get overwhelmed by too
| much latinate pomposity
| cyberlab wrote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/bullshit
| cyberlab wrote:
| My favorite:
|
| > "Apparently people don't like the truth, but I do like
| it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. If you
| show them enough times that their arguments are bullshit,
| then maybe just once, one of them will say, 'Oh! Wait a
| minute - I was wrong.' I live for that happening. Rare, I
| assure you" -- Lemmy Kilmister
| ithkuil wrote:
| EDIT: /s
| matsemann wrote:
| Sometimes when reading comments below articles (about
| vaccination for instance) I wonder if it would be more
| effective to stoop down to the anti-vaxxers level instead of
| trying to refute their claims. Just pump out loads of
| exaggerated pro-vaxx stuff.
| toto444 wrote:
| That's clever but there is one reason I think this would not
| work. Most pro-vaxx don't (and don't want to) spend their
| entire days thinking about why they are pro-vaxx. Being anti-
| vaxxer is a lifestyle.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Sadly, antivaxxers _already_ believe that scientific findings
| are "exaggerated pro-vaxx stuff".
| darkerside wrote:
| Which is exactly why this would probably work. It's all
| bullshit on both sides (in their view), so it might as well
| be balanced bullshit. Right now, the bullshit evidence
| points to potential for horrific outcomes, not worth it!
|
| I think a similar dynamic is behind Trump's rise to power.
| First you confuse the people, them you can tell them what
| to think.
| EverydayBalloon wrote:
| Labelling people "anti-vaxxers" because they don't want to
| become beta testers for a new vaccine technology that's only
| been tested for a fraction of the time as normal vaccines is
| some first class bullshitting. Bravo!
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Every anti-vaxxer I came across had a history involving their
| kids reaction to vaccines. You may call them bullshitters all
| you want, but they are incredibly more motivated than you
| given above mentioned history.
| eloisius wrote:
| Every one of them had a history of their kids having an
| adverse reaction to vaccines, you mean? That's quite a
| different circle than I've swam in. The anti-vaxxers I've
| known all adopt their beliefs based on some quasi-
| religious, libertarian, self-sufficiency ideology and
| indeed have withheld vaccines from their children.
|
| Whenever I argued with them they would invariably claim to
| be familiar with hundred of peer-reviewed papers
| demonstrating the dangers. When pressed on the issue, one
| of them finally did dig up this trove of papers for me.
| Because I'm an idiot, I actually did carefully review and
| refute them, so I can say from personal experience that the
| "orders of magnitude" adage is pretty true. Of course,
| after admitting that maybe these papers weren't the best
| materials to prove his point, he decided to pivot to
| another website that would surely contain all the "proof" I
| need. There is no arguing. They have a heap of bullshit and
| don't intend to make their beliefs based on critical
| analysis.
|
| If you're curious about how I wasted several evenings
| reading anti-vax papers you can read my analysis here [1].
| It's almost invariably about a disproven link between
| thimerosal and autism spectrum disorder or random non-
| scientists hucksters trying to sell crystal healing powers
| or some horse shit.
|
| [1]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/19IFB_2dzq6Gb5z6igj
| sIEFMh...
| cgriswald wrote:
| What is the libertarian argument against vaccination?
| andrewflnr wrote:
| That you should not be legally required to vaccinate. I
| suspect this to be a smokescreen for the usual nonsense
| but, apropos of OP, they may believe it's their real
| reason.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| I did not say everyone of them, I said everyone that I
| personally came across. I do not swim in antivaxxers. Are
| we testing our bs powers?
| eloisius wrote:
| When I said "every one of _them_" I was referring to
| every one of them that you have met. Not implying that
| you meant all of them in existence. I'm surprised by your
| experience, because growing up in an Evangelical
| community in the south anti-vaxxers were a dime a dozen,
| but I've never met anyone whose children were harmed by
| vaccines.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Possible a timing/age issue. When I first encountered the
| antivaxers, it was in the late 90s with parents of
| children on the autistic spectrum grasping at whatever
| cause they could. Now it is pretty much just the kind of
| people that are attracted to ideas like climate
| skepticism or crystal healing. And they all have a
| bogeyman like evil corporations or the government.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| That is exactly it.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Oh interesting. I don't know many religious people. I
| grew up in the USSR.
| varjag wrote:
| Much of the former USSR is the domain of superstitious
| and religious. Antivaxx is also mainstream there.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Maybe, but back then we never even thought about it. Some
| shots we have taken actually leave scars.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| eloisius, I applaud you for your efforts. You certainly
| appear to have done it sincerely. ( I had a cursory
| glance at the doc you put)
|
| But there is a fundamental problem, you are looking at
| numbers gleaned from 'studies' and IMHO mostly they revel
| nothing unless the study was done carefully,
| intelligently and with integrity. All these traits are
| missing at large in the scientific community. A broken
| clock is correct twice a day. Also factor in politics,
| something which I did not early on, most of us with a
| technical bent of mind are naively un-aware of this.
|
| Regarding autism + vaccines, I never looked into it. But
| I have looked at (and mostly listened to people who I
| think are credible have dug up numbers from the CDC
| website) and my conclusion is that for most part they are
| generally useless, perhaps 1 or 2 vaccines out of the 30
| or so are truly effective. There are also instances of
| clear harm where populations what were vaccinated fell
| ill and the ones that we not vaccinated did not fall ill.
| Finally anecdotally, the people who most certainly get
| the flu are the ones that were vaccinated. Ofcourse
| people will dismiss that by saying anecdotes are not
| data.
|
| Where ever a vaccine did appear to have succeeded, there
| were other factors in play. A clear case of (well-
| intentioned) people who drink their own kool-aid believe
| that their efforts are paid off.
| eloisius wrote:
| I reread what you posted a couple of times, and I still
| have no idea what your point is. Vaccines are or are not
| harmful? If they are harmful, would you assert any
| specific claims and provide evidence please?
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| Well, the burden is proof is on the vaccine to show that
| is near completely safe and that it is clearly providing
| a benefit, isn't it? ( not the other way round where the
| burden of proof is put on someone to prove that it not
| harmful).
|
| The point that I'm trying to make is this - to the extent
| I have looked I see no clear benefit, and in some cases
| there appears to be a clear harm. So why bother taking
| it?
|
| >Vaccines are or are not harmful?
|
| My guess - only one 1 or 2 are effective, rest are either
| useless or harmful. These are ball park figures based on
| fair amount of reading/listening, I could be wrong. But
| it begs the question, why should it be so hard to see
| clear benefits? One has only so much time to investigate
| these things, I did it years back and have moved on. My
| default today is to mistrust anything that medicine has
| to offer. ( it used to be the other way round)
|
| Also don't forget to look at the drugs Thalidomide and
| Vioxx - should give you a glimpse of the how murky the
| industry is. These are IMO not isolated incidents. That
| should at least tip you off in the right direction.
|
| Last, but not the least - if a vaccine has clear benefits
| ( based on broader set of parameters that I would
| consider) , I would take it, who in their right mind does
| not want to protect their health?
| jariel wrote:
| " to the extent I have looked I see no clear benefit"
|
| The elimination/near elmination of polio? rubella?
| measles? Soon COVID? Etc..
|
| " the burden is proof is on the vaccine to show that is
| near completely safe"
|
| They do.
|
| "My guess - only one 1 or 2 are effective, rest are
| either useless or harmful ... I could be wrong."
|
| Yes, completely wrong.
|
| "don't forget to look at the drugs Thalidomide ..."
|
| There are thousands upon thousands of drugs. Some are
| going to fail, many will be misrepresented. Like
| everything in life. It doesn't mean they don't work.
|
| "My default today is to mistrust anything that medicine
| has to offer."
|
| This is irrationally conspiratorial, indicative of a
| broader problem.
|
| "who in their right mind does not want to protect their
| health?"
|
| The above statements are not so 'right of mind'
| unfortunately.
|
| There are no Lizard People trying to control us, and most
| of the people in non-political power are doing their jobs
| reasonably on some level. There are some systematic
| failures (i.e. Walmart over-subscribing oxycontin) but
| most of us are not surprised when that happens.
|
| Approved vaccines are overwhelmingly more effective than
| they are detrimental, i.e. the 'balance of outcomes' is
| monumentally positive.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >The elimination/near elimination of polio? rubella?
| measles? Soon COVID? Etc..
|
| All of them have alternative explanations not found in
| mainstream media. ( and no I won't put forth the material
| for you. You will have to look for it)
|
| >>"My guess - only one 1 or 2 are effective, rest are
| either useless or harmful ... I could be wrong."
|
| >Yes, completely wrong.
|
| So I presume you looked/read at many of these vaccines
| closely, way beyond what is found is mainstream media?
|
| >most of the people in non-political power are doing
| their jobs reasonably on some level.
|
| This is where I have changed my mind over the years.
| People may be sincere but not competent.
| meowface wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you believe in anything publicly
| considered a "conspiracy theory"? (For example, "9/11 was
| an inside job", "Holocaust wasn't real/deaths were
| unintentional due to disease", "Sandy Hook shooting
| wasn't real", " COVID-19 isn't real/isn't nearly as
| dangerous as reported", "US politicians rape and murder
| children in Satanic rituals".)
| [deleted]
| User23 wrote:
| I imagine that in order to be an anti-vaxxer and not crumble
| under the crushing weight of cognitive dissonance one would
| have to believe that claims about the benefits of vaccines
| already are loads of exaggerated pro-vaxx stuff that has been
| pumped out by (Big Pharma|The
| Government|Russians|Illuminati|Lizard People|Whatever other
| crazy thing).
| roland35 wrote:
| There is nothing more frustrating than dealing with a BSer.
| Unfortunately I have found that a lot of effective BSers are
| actually pretty smart which makes sense since they tend to have
| some credentials to back up their arguments.
|
| The other hard part about dealing with BSers at work is that
| oftentimes they are saying the types of things management wants
| to hear, ie "yes of course our team can build an entire hardware
| product in 8 months, it's easy!".
| [deleted]
| karmakaze wrote:
| I might believe it more if I was given access to their surveys
| and data.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > The results were clear: while those who scored highly for
| evasive bullshitting were also better at distinguishing between
| the genuinely profound and the pseudo-profound statements, the
| high persuasive bullshitters were poor at this. "Put another way,
| high persuasive bullshitters appear to interpret/mistake
| superficial profoundness as a signal of actual profoundness," the
| team explains.
|
| Interesting way of breaking down the categories. In my
| experience, the persuasive bullshitters might not even understand
| that they're bullshitting. That is, they drink their own kool-
| aid, and therefore the line between their pseudo-profundity and
| reality starts to disappear.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > In my experience, the persuasive bullshitters might not even
| understand that they're bullshitting. That is, they drink their
| own kool-aid, and therefore the line between their pseudo-
| profundity and reality starts to disappear.
|
| This is the essence of Dunning-Kruger, in my experience. Very
| good point.
| mannykannot wrote:
| I suspect we are dealing with two populations here: those who
| think bullshit is a valid mode of argumentation, and those who
| know it is not, but use it anyway. Those in the latter category
| know that their bullshit can be called, so they are only likely
| to use it when they are fairly confident that it will not be
| recognized as such by their target audience, or when they
| consider the stakes justify the risk.
|
| Politicians and political commentators, trial lawyers and PR
| flacks come to mind.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| All Caca del Toro to me.
| k__ wrote:
| That's the difference between sociopaths and clueless, I
| think
| mannykannot wrote:
| As a confirmed loser, I appreciate the corollary!
| nandhinianand wrote:
| As someone oscillating between loser and clueless, I
| appreciate the reference..
| mabbo wrote:
| But the study accounted for that by having people self assess
| how often they would persuasively bullshit and evasively
| bullshit.
| hntrader wrote:
| Might not a bullshitter bullshit the bullshit-assessment?
| coldtea wrote:
| Self-assessment being nearly useless for such a purpose
| jgtrosh wrote:
| > In my experience, the persuasive bullshitters might not even
| understand that they're bullshitting.
|
| But if so, it seems disingenuous to call it "bullshitting",
| since that word caries the negative connotation of purposeful
| deceit, and not of simple wrongbeing. The latter can be
| considered either neutral or also negative, but strictly less
| so if you desire truthfulness.
| tjpnz wrote:
| >That is, they drink their own kool-aid, and therefore the line
| between their pseudo-profundity and reality starts to
| disappear.
|
| Largely helped by a society that would deem it too impolite to
| challenge them on it.
| marmaduke wrote:
| There's a cost to challenging people. It's not about
| politeness (for me) rather that I simply expect net negative
| for challenging BS so only do it when job or family obliges.
| danaliv wrote:
| I'll note that the researchers found this category to have
| "less insight into their own thoughts, feelings and
| behaviours," which is absolutely not the description of a
| person who is capable of receiving feedback.
| dennis_jeeves wrote:
| >>>That is, they drink their own kool-aid, and therefore the
| line between their pseudo-profundity and reality starts to
| disappear.
|
| >Largely helped by a society that would deem it too impolite
| to challenge them on it.
|
| Actually no. People who drink their own kool-aid generally
| speak with enormous conviction. Society largely has
| individuals that cannot access the substance of what is being
| said, however commitment/conviction ( how ever misplaced)
| come across very clearly and that is valued.
|
| My thoughts are that is people like these who aid evil to
| thrive. Like the say, the road to hell is paved with good
| intentions.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| It's worse than that, because the society drinks their kool-
| aid too. They don't think it's impolite, they heard the
| challenges, and decided the BSer's idea was best.
|
| Like the buzzword guru that convinces everyone on your team
| that a javascript server can handle all the requirements of,
| say, a game streaming server. You can present evidence of the
| superiority of C++, Java, and Rust until you're blue in the
| face, but you don't have the gift of gab.
|
| If you're a persuasive BSer, you can go far in life.
| tjpnz wrote:
| I've been faced with a similar situation and my objections
| were proven right when we went to production. The most
| galling aspect of the experience was that it meant
| absolutely nothing. Nothing was fixed and the people who
| mattered just continued to drink the kool aid. The
| individual responsible received accolades while the team
| lost sleep fire fighting the dumpster fire he started.
| These people are running rampant in the industry and trying
| to counter their bullshit does absolutely nothing, more
| often than not it can inflict real damage on one's own
| career.
| playingchanges wrote:
| In my experience all true bullshitters drink their own brew.
| What came first the self or external delusion?
| failrate wrote:
| I've seen this in action: someone bullshitting in a group until
| they believe their own bullshit.
| austincheney wrote:
| That is my experience as well. The people who lie so much, so
| compulsively to the point of a narcissistic personality
| disorder, drink their own kool-aid. They are manipulating
| themselves with the stupid as much as everybody else they lie
| to. Perhaps this is due to a combination of frequent life
| failures, low confidence, and low ability of critical
| examination. That low ability of critical examination that
| permits the self delusion also opens them to undue manipulation
| from others.
| mpol wrote:
| > Perhaps this is due to a combination of frequent life
| failures, low confidence, and low ability of critical
| examination.
|
| Ah, nice combination :) Purely anecdotal, I once had very low
| confidence, but could be very critical to myself. This broke
| me down quite bad, this was not a good combination. Only
| after 30 I would learn to not be so negative in my criticism,
| but be more nice to myself, and I thought I had learned a
| lot. Just the last few years I learned to just observe
| situations and myself, and not judge so much, not negative
| and not positive. Just like I learned from meditation.
|
| I can imagine when having low confidence, it might be so much
| easier to avoid being critical to yourself. Ofcourse you
| might then also learn to avoid observing yourself, it feels
| almost the same. So then you are stuck in some path where you
| might never get out, you just keep on doing what you did.
| specialist wrote:
| How you talk changes how you think.
|
| The scary part: Most won't remember the change.
| vsareto wrote:
| I guess, but that seems weird because then it'd be your
| brain wanting to change how it thinks itself through speech
| EGreg wrote:
| To all the company founders here... sometimes the difference
| between bullshit and amazing prescience is just success.
|
| I don't mean lying about the data when communicating, but
| prioritizing some signals while downplaying, dismissing or
| overriding many others. Did pg says founders need to be
| somewhat delusional or they'd give up?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The two may be related. I think it's hard to convincingly
| bullshit yourself - your brain knows what you're doing. But
| if you successfully bullshit other people, some of them will
| start to reflect your bullshit back at you - providing
| external validation for it. At some point your brain may
| forget that the only reason people around you believe
| something is because you tricked them into it, and you start
| truly believing it yourself.
| austincheney wrote:
| > I think it's hard to convincingly bullshit yourself
|
| That is entirely dependent upon the personality and goal of
| a given person.
|
| For some people the brain knows what it wants to know, such
| as selective data necessary for group conformance. For some
| other people the brain knows only what it sees and hears.
| For some different people will doubt what they see and hear
| until after several iterations as to meld conflicting
| reports.
|
| There is a common expression for people who commonly and
| easily lie to themselves: _Talking a big game_. In that
| case everybody knows its bullshit except for the person
| talking.
| lukeasrodgers wrote:
| An argument of Elephant in the Brain
| (https://www.elephantinthebrain.com/) is that a key
| component of bullshitting others (paraphrasing, somewhat)
| is that you must also bullshit yourself, in order to be
| convincing.
| nitrogen wrote:
| This is used in various belief systems to instill and
| reinforce deeply held beliefs in the absence of any
| evidence apart from the manufactured social proof. If one
| is experiencing doubts, they are told to try telling others
| that what they doubt is actually true. One example of the
| phrasing that might be used: "You have to share your
| testimony to strengthen it."
|
| No doubt the technique of manufacturing consent through
| reflected BS is pervasive elsewhere too, in marketing,
| politics, etc.
| AZ-X wrote:
| The team notes.'The team found. The team wondered.' The team
| explains.How wonderful the team is.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I might even go to say that persuasive bullshitters have
| something to gain from believing and taking in and joining the
| other persuasive bullshit. There is likely also lot of group
| dynamics in play here.
|
| While evasive bullshit and outright lying is much more goal
| driven cover oneself and others bullshit is likely be harmful...
| paganel wrote:
| > I might even go to say that persuasive bullshitters have
| something to gain from believing and taking in and joining the
| other persuasive bullshit.
|
| To bring the conversation closer to what's usually on this
| website, AI in cars has been a bullshit discourse for at least
| five years now (since I've started to more closely follow the
| conversation), and what you're saying is correct, many of the
| people that spat out said bullshit had direct financial gains
| from it via investors' money who wanted to trust that bullshit.
| Teever wrote:
| "People are full of shit man, really. But I don't mind people
| being full of shit I just don't like when people bring their
| full of shitness to me, right? And try to make me feel
| uncomfortable about how I'm full of shit to make me full of
| shit like them so that they feel more comfortable about how
| full of shit they are. you understand what I'm saying? I didn't
| really understand it myself but I know someone understood what
| I'm talking about." -- Patrice O'Neal
| [deleted]
| magwa101 wrote:
| Liars are susceptible to lies, recent activity in the US proves
| this out.
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