[HN Gopher] Research shows that people who BS are more likely to...
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Research shows that people who BS are more likely to fall for BS
(2021)
Author : mgh2
Score : 78 points
Date : 2024-03-16 17:01 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (uwaterloo.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (uwaterloo.ca)
| heisenbit wrote:
| This explains BS bubbles.
| d-z-m wrote:
| > They also identify two types of bullshitting-- persuasive and
| evasive. "Persuasive" uses misleading exaggerations and
| embellishments to impress, persuade, or fit in with others, while
| 'evasive' involves giving irrelevant, evasive responses in
| situations where frankness might result in hurt feelings or
| reputational harm.
|
| > the researchers examined the relations between participants'
| self-reported engagement in both types of BSing and their ratings
| of how profound, truthful, or accurate they found pseudo-profound
| and pseudo-scientific statements and fake news headlines.
|
| By their own definition, it seems like the people most inclined
| to impress and mislead in situations where frankness might result
| in reputational harm(in other words a real BSer) wouldn't admit
| to engaging in BS behavior at a rate above a non-bullshitter.
| Animats wrote:
| That's a useful distinction.
|
| From the press release: _" Ratings of how profound, truthful,
| or accurate they found pseudo-profound and pseudo-scientific
| statements and fake news headlines."_ Does that mean the people
| being tested were just shown the headline? Usually, that's not
| enough information to decide if something is bullshit. So, were
| they basically asking their subjects to guess?
|
| The actual paper [1] is paywalled. US$12.00. The press release
| does not link to the paper, nor does it give a full citation,
| but it does give enough info that the paper can be found. A
| useful metric is that if something makes a strong but unusual
| claim, and the supporting data is hard to access, it's usually
| bullshit.
|
| [1]
| https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/...
| Lalabadie wrote:
| I've been working with my first client who, I've come to
| recognize, is _very_ susceptible to believing exaggerated claims.
| This is someone who would enthusiastically dive into a cult if
| the right person told him it's nicer there, but instead he's tech
| entrepreneurship, so AI is always three weeks away from allowing
| him to replace all his employees.
|
| In the meantime, everyone in the design team keeps sending back
| content that he's requested from ChatGPT instead of an actual
| copywriter. Because everyone here, like everyone on HN, can
| easily tell the difference, but he can't/won't.
|
| What seems to be very difficult with someone like this is, they
| participate in hype cycles because not doing so leaves them
| feeling like _everyone knows something_ and they don't. They
| don't want to be the idiot left behind when something good
| happens, so they dive into every enthusiastic movement or belief
| that comes in range. They don't have the ability or will to suss
| out that each wave is made up of people exactly like them.
|
| TLDR: High energy, low critical thinking.
| cushpush wrote:
| >AI is always three weeks away from allowing him to replace all
| his employees. Well isn't that a temporal
| oddity
| ozymandias1337 wrote:
| They are constantly shifting the goal posts.
| passion__desire wrote:
| the best way to spot a bullshitter is to ask them
|
| A series of 5-7 why drill down questions expanding on a
| particular word you don't understand or do understand.
|
| And if they aren't quick to respond or don't answer don't know
| or aren't out of their depth , you know they are bullshitting.
|
| technique borrowed from Feynman's "why magnets work video"
| gwervc wrote:
| That works with almost every topic. Two-three questions
| you're in the bachelor degree level depth, 4-5 master one,
| 5-6 phd, 7 only God knows.
| antisthenes wrote:
| You can definitely get to the God level if you start with
| the question of why are elementary forces and constants the
| values that they are ;)
| euroderf wrote:
| "Tell me what are your three favorite dimensionless
| constants, and why."
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| I _think_ I can very easily spot BS. That has its
| downsides... I very easily get very annoyed with BS.
|
| I know a few people who as good as constantly BS. It's a
| puzzle to me what drives them, and why it seems like they
| even don't know they are BSing. Is there some psychological
| explanation, I'm curious.
|
| I was thinking about giving examples to state my point, but
| in fact every somewhat sane person must have had those 'WTF
| are they saying' moments.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I think part of it is that BS is commonly quite effective.
| Good BSers are commonly good at getting information out of
| people and feeding it back to them as a kind of echo
| chamber. Most people will not pose adversarial information
| (that is say something purposefully wrong) to see if the
| BSer agrees with it and parrots it back. The BSer confirms
| the other persons worldviews at the same time spouting
| whatever crap it is they are selling. Very common tactic in
| grifters.
| sufficer wrote:
| One example I can easily recall is some guy bsing about his
| arena rank in wow. I wasn't good, but I asked enough
| questions to determine he was absolutely bsing to the point
| of laughter.
|
| Like the kind of kid that says he has a GF that lives in
| another city or state or even Canada lol
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I assume this video: https://youtu.be/MO0r930Sn_8
|
| Even from within the first few seconds you can tell Feynman
| is already annoyed with the interviewer. It's possible that
| there is some history here: there may have already been a
| long run of questions and he's now become tired of it.
| mistermann wrote:
| They can simply counter with "bad faith", "you're being
| pedantic", etc. Wins literally every time.
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| Feynman did not bulshit the answer as the interviewer does
| not have a capacity to understand the phenomena any deeper
| and he gives all valid reasons why. If instead he would have
| jumped to writing down a Hamiltonian and constructing a
| partition function from which magnetization could be derived
| for a magnet it would have killed the interviewer in
| obscurity.
| asdff wrote:
| There are enough people like this where for better or worse,
| keeping up with these hype trains has become a solid investment
| strategy. Imagine getting in early enough on BTC, or DOGE, or
| AMC, or GME, or NVDA, or whatever comes next instead of
| cynically scoffing it off (for valid reasons) on its
| fundamental merits. You'd be singing a different tune I'm sure
| after it explodes and you've cashed out leaving the zealots on
| whatever subreddit holding the bag.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've wondered from time to time why I never could find it
| within myself to become a street preacher.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Surely you could find it within yourself to become the
| _Life of Brian_ boring prophet?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqaQ_Bhgmrc
| 10000truths wrote:
| Relying on the greater fool theory to make your money only
| works until it doesn't.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The boom/bust cycle. As they say, the hardest part of the
| market is timing.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I don't know, if you get out early enough and only invest a
| portion of your previous winnings into the next cycle, it
| only has to work long enough for you to build a decent nest
| egg. But I suppose the average cycle chaser doesn't think
| like that...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It could be that their agenda is different from yours. Their
| agenda, as leader, is to keep all the balls in the air, keep
| everyone energized, everyone feeling trusted, the whole
| enterprise moving fast. A way to do that is to just keep
| charging forward with enthusiasm, at any target that's
| available. The movement and energy and trust is the thing.
|
| The what and how is not for your client; it's not for the CEO
| (or not for a certain kind of CEO). That's for you and the
| employees. The CEO's job is to lead, inspire, motivate, provide
| resources.
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| I am yet to find a highly skilled person who gets excited by
| "moving fast" aka charging towards bullshit targets backed by
| unrealistic time/quality expectations. And getting highly
| skilled people bored or demotivated is the best way to drop
| all the balls that "leader" tries to juggle.
|
| Seriously, I think this whole Marvel movie style leadership
| will be seen as a huge red flag and anti-pattern in 10-15
| years, just like we now look down on those Henry Ford style
| managers of the 20th century.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Isn't this some sort of Dunning-Kruger effect?
|
| I.e. BS:ers don't think the listeners understand they are full of
| BS, so they are more likely to push BS.
| Rury wrote:
| More like, people who are incompetent cannot determine BS from
| non BS as well as someone who is competent. People who are
| incompetent are also more likely to engage in bluffing
| strategies (ie BS) in order to gain status than someone that
| can simply rely on their competence.
| bicijay wrote:
| Maybe its ignorance then...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Wouldn't it be ironic if this research turned out to be BS?
| foobarbecue wrote:
| There's certainly precendent! See Francesca Gino.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I feel like it follows because they had first to overvalue
| "impressive sounding information" in order to decide it was worth
| lying about. Like someone being star struck by a snake oil
| salesman.
| robocat wrote:
| Associated problem: salespeople seem to be gullible when buying -
| they get taken in by slick salespeople. Given their skills you
| would think they could spot someone pulling the wool over their
| eyes. I haven't yet worked out whether it is just admiration for
| a good snow job or falling for some status game.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Possible that they are unable to distinguish between bullshit
| and reality? It would somewhat excuse their own bullshit: they
| may not _know_ they are bullshitting.
| MenhirMike wrote:
| That's the problem with some of the best sales people: They
| are technically not lying because they _actually believe the
| bs they're telling you_.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Holy shit, salespeople are hallucinating LLMs.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Well, can we really ascribe belief to the machine? And
| they don't usually have a bias in hallucination other
| than what you're feeding, salespeople absolutely do have
| a bias
| Arun2009 wrote:
| I've often seen this phenomenon at play in religions. They
| are not intentionally lying even when they put forward
| outrageous claims; they genuinely believe what they say.
| Fnoord wrote:
| I once went to a conference about a company selling MLM
| products (I didn't know they were selling MLM products
| and I was young enough to not know about MLM). They were
| eating their own dogfood there, and lunch was free. It
| was at an expensive hotel in my country. There were loads
| of yuppies there. Everyone wore a suit.
|
| Despite that, the conference felt as if I was at a cult.
| And the CEO knew I had a couple of questions about his
| products. He gave me the death gaze / cold stare during a
| speech. I was in my early 20s, scared shitless.
|
| Now, remember I wrote the conference was as if I was at a
| cult? I got invited _to_ this conference via a brother of
| an aunt (cold side). He used to be in a cult. Now he was
| a hardcore Christian. He got very rich from these MLM
| products because he was high up in the chain. As they
| say: the apple doesn 't fall far from the tree.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Sounds like cognitive dissonance. It's easy to believe that
| BS is bad, but hard to recognize BS in others without also
| recognizing it in yourself. When those beliefs are in
| conflict the easiest resolution is to stop recognizing BS.
|
| As they say: it's hard for a man to understand something when
| his paycheck depends on not understanding it.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| This is so true. My ex's dad was a successful medical device
| salesman, and a complete rube when it came to buying cars or
| whatever.
| camhart wrote:
| Good sales people are genuine. Its easier to genuinely believe
| in the product you're selling if you're gullible.
| advael wrote:
| Sales is a great example of how moralizing about tools rather
| than uses of them creates incoherent beliefs which lead to
| dysfunctional policy. Most sales people I've met generally
| believe they're not bullshitting people. Now, their profession
| selects for persuasion and exerting frame control over social
| reality, and teaches it, but they use this skillset in a more
| "legitimate" context than the central examples that get the
| mean names, so the notion that they are using a skill for good
| purposes quickly morphs into the belief that it's in fact a
| different toolkit, because this is the only way we can
| coherently tell them that they are legitimate but continue
| attacking grifters not just on their actions but on their
| competencies and methods
| time4tea wrote:
| And hilarious that the article about BS is behind a BS, illegal
| in the EU, cookie banner.
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Obligatory: Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit" [0] is a must-read
| for everyone interested in some stronger definitions. The full
| essay is easily found online.
|
| Long as short: BS has not got a lot to do with depth of knowledge
| or truth value so much as the attitude of the bullshitter.
|
| It's a moral not a knowldge defect.
|
| The Bullshitter is neither a liar nor self-aggrandising as we
| commonly think, but simply has contempt for the very concept of
| truth and falsehood. It's like epistemological sociopathy.
|
| Some bullshitters can be very knowledgable too. They pass the
| five-why questioning but then defect and talk absolute rubbish as
| it suits them.
|
| I think all LLMs are in essence bullshitters, and I hope
| something good to help us understand not just consciousness but
| morality too, will probably come of studying why LLMs are not
| really "thinking" and holding an interlocutor "in mind".
|
| Not Frankfurt now, but my own observation, if you wire that to
| the idea that power is the capacity to paint social reality in
| ones own interests, then unsurprisingly bullshitters are much
| more common in traditional power roles. LLMs are therefore
| (rather obviously) dangerous in any role that involves power or
| decision making.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit
| pcloadletter_ wrote:
| It is cutesy to use the word "bullshit" but it seems too
| colloquial to glean any real information from. What do they mean
| by "bullshitting?" Any sort of misleading? Pretending you know
| something when you don't? I guess I'm just tired of reverse-
| engineering your information to make a good clickbaity headline.
| puzzledobserver wrote:
| From a cursory glance at the article, they appear to use the
| word bullshit in the same sense as Frankfurt's essay on
| bullshit.
|
| Frankfurt's essay goes into a lot of detail about what is and
| isn't bullshit. If I remember correctly, he differentiates
| between deception / fraud and bullshit, which he characterizes
| as lack of concern for the truth. A liar has an untruth they
| want you to believe, a bullshitter wants you to believe
| something, they just don't care whether it is an untruth or
| not.
|
| Now of course, one might complain that Frankfurt hijacked a
| colloquial word for his idea, but he does spend a lot of time
| trying to understand the everyday use of the word bullshit.
| ls612 wrote:
| People who BS (researchers in psychology) are more likely to fall
| for BS (this sort of social psych research).
| lelanthran wrote:
| Could be the other way around.
|
| "People who are more gullible are more likely to try a bluff"
| makes more sense: they aren't aware enough to read the situation
| and react accordingly. That makes them more gullible as well as
| more likely to attempt a bluff.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| I think it's more likely that people judge if there is an
| opportunity to lie by thinking if they would themselves fall
| for it. So, morals aside, somebody gullible sees the
| opportunity to lie all the time, while somebody very skeptical
| may think that they would only embarrass themselves by trying
| to lie. Or possibly lie unintentionally, giving an evasive
| reply, incorrectly believing it will be understood that they
| don't want to answer.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I call BS.
| droptablemain wrote:
| The way they've defined "persuasive bullshitting" sounds like
| would capture 90% of human-to-human interaction.
|
| People almost always have an angle.
|
| I suspect this research itself has an angle as well, making it
| meta persuasive bullshitting.
| Fnoord wrote:
| [delayed]
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