[HN Gopher] Bullshit ability as an honest signal of intelligence
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Bullshit ability as an honest signal of intelligence
Author : hirundo
Score : 27 points
Date : 2021-07-03 12:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (journals.sagepub.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (journals.sagepub.com)
| starkd wrote:
| To be successful at bullshitting, you need remember the maxim ,
| "Know thy audience". The biggest thing the bullshitter fears is
| being found out by others who are equally or more intelligent
| than they are.
| okareaman wrote:
| Harold Bloom in "How to Read and Why" cautions us against
| bullshit thinking (cant)
|
| Bloom quotes Samuel Johnson pg 23: _"My dear friend, clear your
| mind of cant [excessive thought]. You may talk as other people
| do: you may say to a man, "Sir, I am your most humble servant."
| You are not his most humble servant. You may say, "These are bad
| times; it is a melancholy thing to be reserved to such times."
| You don't mind the times ... You may talk in this manner; it is a
| mode of talking in Society; but don't think foolishly."_
|
| pg 159 _There is no misandry in Jane Austen or George Eliot or
| Emily Dickinson. Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse are not
| concerned either with upholding or undermining patriarchy. Being
| vastly intelligent persons, like Rosalind, they do not think
| ideologically. To read their stories well, you need to acquire a
| touch of Austen 's own wisdom, because she was as wise as Dr.
| Samuel John-son. Like Johnson, though far more implicitly, Austen
| urges us to clear our mind of "cant." "Cant," in the Johnsonian
| sense, means platitudes, pious expressions, group-think. Austen
| has no use for it, and neither should we. Those who now read
| Austen "politically" are not reading her at all._
| mjklin wrote:
| A great description from the 3rd century BCE:
|
| Now Dissembling would seem, to define it generally, to be an
| affectation of the worst in word and deed and the Dissembler
| will be disposed rather to go up to an enemy and talk with him
| than to show his hatred; he will praise to his face one he has
| girded at behind his back; he will commiserate even his
| adversary's ill-fortune in losing his case to him. More, he
| will forget his vilifiers, and will laugh in approval of what
| is said against him; to such as are put upon and resent it he
| will speak blandly; any that are in haste to see him are bidden
| go back home. He never admits he is doing it; and makes
| pretenses, as that he's but now come upon the scene, or joined
| the company late, or was ill abed. If you are borrowing of your
| friend and put him under contribution, he will tell you he is
| but a poor man; when he would sell you anything, no, it is not
| for sale; when he would not, why then it is. He pretends he has
| not heard when he hears, and says he has not seen when he sees;
| and when he has admitted you right he avers he has no
| remembrance of it. He'll look into this, doesn't know that, is
| surprised at the other; this again is just the conclusion he
| once came to himself. He is forever saying such things as "I
| don't believe it"; "If so, he must have changed"; "I never
| expected this"; "Don't tell _me_ "; "Whether to disbelieve you
| or make a liar of him is more than I can tell"; "Don't you be
| too credulous."
|
| - Theophrastus (c. 371 - c. 287 BCE)
| failwhaleshark wrote:
| Maybe this is a bullshit troll paper or was written by an up-and-
| coming comedian GPT3.
|
| There are different kinds of intelligence: fluid, crystalized,
| mechanical, verbal, sensory, data, intuition, social, emotional,
| and so on.
|
| Maybe it's _______ that's a signal... (body symmetry, comedy,
| spoken cadence, anxiety, economy of speech, economy of motion,
| anticipation, etc.)
| thujlife wrote:
| This post reads like GPT3 to me.
| _Microft wrote:
| There was a lot of discussion about this a year ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23145433
| smitty1e wrote:
| Correct Frankfurt link => https://www.amazon.com/Bullshit-Harry-
| G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122...
|
| The referenced monograph is far less positive about BS, seeing it
| as an attack on the concept of truth as such.
|
| "It can't be helped, but there's a lot of it about."--Pink Floyd
| transitivebs wrote:
| This is why I go by the name https://transitivebullsh.it
| bartread wrote:
| Pfft. It doesn't matter how honest a signal of intelligence
| bullshit generation is because if you apply a substantial amount
| of your supposed intelligence toward creating bullshit on a
| regular basis then, at best, you are not useful. At worst you're
| actually harmful. You certainly don't deserve respect or praise
| for it.
| uyt wrote:
| Most real time conversations I have is complete bullshit, so
| that's plenty of practice. The problem is that when chatting I
| don't have time to put any deep thought into my words, I just
| say whatever is heuristically true. The alternative is to
| constantly add disclaimers about how much I believe the words I
| am spouting which kills convo very quickly.
|
| If you have smart friends who are willing to challenge your
| bullshit occasionally, your bullshitting skill should improve
| and converge into simply "good intuition". Which is a great
| skill to have when dealing with actual hard problems.
| _Microft wrote:
| That's not what they found. The ones that are better at
| bullshitting are actually the ones that are less inclined to do
| so.
|
| Here is the results and discussion of the first experiment
| almost in entirety. I only removed the actual numbers to make
| the paragraph more readable. You can find the full paragraph in
| the submitted article.
|
| _" Additionally, we find that participants' bullshit ability
| was uncorrelated with their willingness to bullshit (i.e.,
| feign knowledge of fake concepts) and their receptivity to
| pseudo-profound bullshit (i.e., endorse meaningless pseudo-
| profound statements as profound). Furthermore, participants'
| willingness to bullshit was negatively associated with scores
| on the Wordsum, suggesting that those scoring higher on our
| measures of cognitive ability were less willing to bullshit.
| Finally, we find that those more willing to bullshit were also
| more likely to be receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit (i.e.,
| rate pseudo-profound bullshit items higher on profoundness), as
| well as were less likely to distinguish between meaningless
| pseudo-profound bullshit and meaningful motivational quotations
| (bullshit sensitivity: calculated as the difference between
| pseudo-profound bullshit ratings and ratings of motivational
| quotations for their profoundness)."_
| koolba wrote:
| It is true but by my anecdata it's a local maxima.
| Animats wrote:
| _We find that bullshit ability is associated with an individual's
| intelligence and individuals capable of producing more satisfying
| bullshit are judged by second-hand observers to be more
| intelligent._
|
| Oh, that explains a lot.
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