Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to The New Coffee Room. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bull****
Topic Started: Sep 24 2016, 01:17 AM (118 Views)
Klaus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Abstract:
Although bull**** is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingenuous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bull****, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bull**** statements consisting of buzzwords randomly organized into statements with syntactic structure but no discernible meaning (e.g., “Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena”). Across multiple studies, the propensity to judge bull**** statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables (e.g., intuitive cognitive style, supernatural belief). Parallel associations were less evident among profundity judgments for more conventionally profound (e.g., “A wet person does not fear the rain”) or mundane (e.g., “Newborn babies require constant attention”) statements. These results support the idea that some people are more receptive to this type of bull**** and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims. Our results also suggest that a bias toward accepting statements as true may be an important component of pseudo-profound bull**** receptivity.


Full paper here: HTML PDF

Wow!
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
George K
Member Avatar
Finally
Quote:
 
Ten novel meaningless statements were derived from two websites and used to create a Bull**** Receptivity (BSR) scale. The first, http://wisdomofchopra.com, constructs meaningless statements with appropriate syntactic structure by randomly mashing together a list of words used in Deepak Chopra’s tweets (e.g., “Imagination is inside exponential space time events”). The second, “The New Age Bull**** Generator” (http://sebpearce.com/bull****/), works on the same principle but uses a list of profound-sounding words compiled by its author, Seb Pearce (e.g., “We are in the midst of a self-aware blossoming of being that will align us with the nexus itself”).
:lol2:

Quote:
 
The second mechanism relates to a potential inability to detect bull****, which may cause one to confuse vagueness for profundity. In the words of Sperber (2010): “All too often, what readers do is judge profound what they have failed to grasp” (p. 583). Here, the bull****tee is simply unaware that the relevant stimulus requires special consideration. This mechanism is linked to what has been labelled as “conflict monitoring” failures (e.g., De Neys, 2014; Pennycook, Fugelsang & Koehler, 2015).

I call BS on that.
A guide to GKSR: Click

"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... "
- Mik, 6/14/08


Nothing is as effective as homeopathy.

I'd rather listen to an hour of Abba than an hour of The Beatles.
- Klaus, 4/29/18
Online Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Axtremus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Would like to see samples of peer-reviewers comments.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Klaus
Member Avatar
HOLY CARP!!!
Quote:
 
we have provided evidence that individuals vary in conceptually interpretable ways in their propensity to ascribe profundity to bull**** statements; a tendency we refer to as “bull**** receptivity”. Those more receptive to bull**** are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusions and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.

Sounds about right.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Catseye
Member Avatar
Pisa-Carp
Peg Bracken, a writer of the Erma Bombeckian style, tells this story. A man's father had reached a great age, and it was thought that he did not have long to live. The man was sitting by his father's bedside when the old man opened his eyes, grasped his son's sleeve and beckoned him to come closer. "Always remember, my son," he wheezed, "Wet birds don't fly at night." Shortly thereafter, he died.

As for his son, the poor man went his entire life trying to puzzle out the meaning of this wisdom pearl the old man had passed on to him. He never did.
"How awful a knowledge of the truth can be." -- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
« Previous Topic · The New Coffee Room · Next Topic »
Add Reply