Slashdot Mirror
Why Some People Think Total Nonsense Is Really Deep (washingtonpost.com)
Earthquake Retrofit writes: The Washington Post has a story about Gordon Pennycook, a doctorate student at the University of Waterloo who studies why some people are more easily duped than others. "Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena" was one of many randomly generated sentences Pennycook, along with a team of researchers at the University of Waterloo, used in a new, four-part study (PDF) put together to gauge how receptive people are to nonsense.
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 [beliefs in things for which there is no empirical evidence (i.e. that prayers have the ability to heal)] and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.
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 [beliefs in things for which there is no empirical evidence (i.e. that prayers have the ability to heal)] and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.
Ever look at a curriculum for a non-STEM degree?
"Wholeness quiets infinite phenomena" sounds like it belongs there.
But hey, we make them feel "safe".
Make them think? No so much.
I could never figure out how the movie Inception has such high ratings on IMDB when I thought it was really a bunch of more than stupid nonsense layered and slammed together. This explains it perfectly!
means our insides are overlooked? wmd on credit zionic nazi psychopath religious abuse training leaves participants both suicidal & homocidal at once...? truth + mercy = justice unchallenged universal spiritual axioms,,, in the moms we trust... ask ed snowden your questions here on /. continues........ give until it stops hurting... see you there....
n/t
The biggest problem in religious belief is unconditional acceptance of dogma and a tendency not to question what one is told. Modern atheists often have their own dogmas, and all the same problems.
John_Chalisque
Its supposed to be something that gives you a deep insight into some area of knowledge that you didn't possess before. Its NOT supposed to be anything that you don't really understand but is grammatically correct and uses a lot of impressive multisyllable new age/religious buzzwords and phrases.
Open YouTube. Search for "Flat Earth". Wonder how some people can breathe without aid.
The world is a vastly complex place. Too complex to grasp for even the most learned and intelligent people on our planet, how much more overwhelming does it have to be for someone with, let's put it kindly, limited mental resources? It's dwarfing and people don't like that. So what they are looking for is easy answers for complex problems. And of course they will get them. Usually such answers involve some scapegoat, some big and nebulous enemy and a huge conspiracy around it all.
Fuck, I'm in the wrong business. I should start writing books for those idiots and get rich off them, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Modern atheists often have their own dogmas, and all the same problems.
falls either in the bullshit or in the dogma category.
First, most atheists I know are quite undogmatic. They just don't have a religion, and they don't miss it. They've grown up without every being challenged about their (non-)religiousness. Being without religion is just some kind of natural state for them, the same as for instance being 5'10" or born in 1972. There is just nothing to be questioned about it, it is to them as it is. (Full disclosure: I am neither 5'10" nor born in 1972).
Second, it might be different in an environment where the majority of the population is religious and thus the minority constantly has to explain that they aren't, and that to them it's fine, and there are valid reasons for not being religious. If you don't stop questioning people about why exactly they (don't) believe what they (don't) believe, sooner or later everyone will sound dogmatic to you, but all they really are is being angry at you for continuously bothering them and not knowing when to stop.
Unlike most of the movies (see the second Mission Impossible and compare it to the first), it doesn't assume it has to PANDER to you and assume the lowest common denominator because you're too dumb or lazy to understand anything that isn't kindergarden level explained.
Even those whose capacity or instinct is insufficient to make them a target demographic of "high brow" entertainment can manage to stretch their goals and the stretch, like any exercise, is both healthy and enjoyable, and like actual exercise it is a strain, tiring and damaging if you do too much too far and too often.
There's a difference between being so unfit you are winded walking to the shops and being chauffeured to the corner shop 200 yards away by a "well meaning" individual who thinks that if you don't WANT to exercise, you should NEVER be able to exercise.
Matrix, the first one, the others were clearly the result of some people who had a surprise success and didn't know what the fuck they were going to do and so fucked it up and listened to "marketing" on what appeals to the broad public, something that without the success and broad appeal for the first one to be of interest to the marketing hawks, they were not barraged with messages to follow, did not have a deep or meaningful story, but it didn't think anyone watching needed to be told every little detail nor did they need to have Cartesian duality and the philosophy therefrom removed from the movie because it was "too highbrow" for the knuckledraggers marketing know the public to be.
MI 2 told you who the baddy was BEFORE THE OPENING CREDITS, because you are all obviously too dumb to go two thirds of a movie before finding out who the bad guy was (and even worse, be misled into thinking they were dead. Sorry for the spoilers), because a movie that does that can't be successful, therefore after the success of the first movie, making it simpler and more explicit and holding your hand every second MUST make it TEN TIMES MORE SUCCESSFUL!
It can't be that people, even the "Omega" class moviegoer, can handle some mystery or intrigue or complexity in story. Because if they were THAT smart, they'd be in marketing, manipulating the choices of those mouthbreathers who aren't in marketing!
And that is why Inception did very very well. Even Omega class humans were hungry for something with more meat in it, something tougher to exercise themselves over, and the complete and utter lack of anything like that on TV or the movie screen meant that the pent up demand being serviced by the very very few times that this sort of need is supplied means you get a very high and surprising positive turnout.
Which is then fucked up because it's assumed that those who can't comfortably handle complexity CANNOT handle any complexity and if you dumb down, you get those "more numerous" (a presumption entirely) viewers. The fact that they were already going, because the presumption made is WRONG, is NEVER thought of, and the complexity left in to service the same need.
Mind you, if they did, because some are OK with a mental workout every few years, the turnout would be lower, because *a very small proportion* of the viewers have been at least temporarily satiated and won't go, or wait until it's out on DVD. A very small number, but marketing and sales this time, would see ANY drop as "proof" that it should have been dumbed down. Of course, by the third one, those who liked the first but were put off by the dumbing down of the second will not go. Mind you, THAT will be construed by marketing as why they needed to dumb it down even further to recapture the numbers of the surprise success of the first.
People are smarter than even they believe. The difference is how much special effort they need to put in to it, not the capacity to think that high. Granted, some things require a high level of thought for a large proportion of time, for which reason, some people would never manage to be professional engineers, scientists, teachers, whatever. But that doesn't mean that that level of thought cannot be attained, just that it's an effort, and in a life busy with a struggle to live, there's not much energy left to put effort in to REACH that level of thought.
It is not a lack of belief. It is a belief that there is no god. It's as much a dogma as those who do believe in a god. It is certainly a belief system.
Incorrect. It is the lack of belief. Saying atheism is a belief system is no less ridiculous than saying not collecting stamps is your favorite hobby.
Atheists certainly do hold belief systems. Some believe religion is harmful. Some believe killing animals is wrong. Some believe bacon is the best food ever. But being atheist is not a belief system by any sensible definition of the term.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Atheism seems to have it's own type of religion.
And abstinence is a sexual position.
A cult with an agenda.
You've cracked the conspiracy! In the atheist world domination conspiracy, atheists:
get together in a building every week in (nowhere) on the atheist sabbath day (none) as prescribed in the book of (nothing) to pray to (no one) in order to (not) save their (non) eternal souls.
What you are doing is confusing the anger of some atheists as they are slowly being released from under the heels of the religious. And in getting confused, the religious - say for example the woman in Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses to gays - consider that an attack on them, rather than extension of basic rights to others.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
1. the doctrine or belief that there is no God.
What a terrible definition. God isn't a well defined concept. How do you know which one it's referring to? Without bigotry to mandate what "God" is, the "definition" doesn't definite anything. It can only makes sense to someone who's a theist. For example: "the doctrine or belief that there is no Invisible Pink Unicorn". It's absolute nonsense to anyone else.
Who ordered that?
Man, when your journalists are worse at grammar even than scientists, it may be time to turn out the lights. It's not just that they picked the wrong Latin abbreviation. They should never have been trying to insert editorial marks into a quote that was already grammatically complicated.
The original sentence is a bit over-long, but not out of place in a scientific journal. It is much too long for a newspaper article, and adding multiple levels of parentheses to it makes it worse.
I've come to think of science journalists as generally worthless at the science, but I thought they were at least getting grammar lessons in j-school. Apparently the author's degree is in "applied mathematics and economics", according to his bio, but he doesn't seem to have worked as an academic. But his editor should have fixed that and given him some writing homework.
actually I do think, and I liked this comment:
"Being without religion is just some kind of natural state for them..."
Which reminds me of a similar statement- 'a man without religion is like a fish who has lost his bicycle'. Is this a serious dilemma?
I, for one, am often the subject of well meaning concern from (mostly christian) religious people. They pray for my soul, of course, and gently try to convert me by quoting from their holy books. I would happily quote Nietzsche in return but that would create an interminable discussion which leads to no good end.
A blind person can be dependent upon his cane, a cripple on his crutches, and an emotionally confused individual on his god. But the first two don't try to encourage others to have the same dependence.
...omphaloskepsis often...