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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.
I think that someone who doesn't understand the difference between i.e. and e.g. has no business criticising others.
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.
Well, remember, what exactly is considered profound is up to each person. For some people, they may not consider the statement itself to hold any wisdom, but the vagueness might prompt themselves into a philosophical state, and so they associate that with the phrase itself. And honestly, at the end of the day, this whole article is really talking about imagination, is it not? Look at children, for those of you who have any: they can go on adventures with nothing but a few sticks and a rock. Likewise, I am sure that for some people, their minds can evolve meaning even out of nonsensical words. I don't think having an active imagination is really all that much of a vice, as they tend to be people who can come up with some very creative solutions and answers that most would dismiss as impossible.
That being said, going with the article's thesis, I agree. I could totally see them being more likely to believe in a religion for precisely the reason stated above, to see a pattern out of unrelated events, and once you believe there's an all powerful god, it becomes much easier to believe in the others listed. Ultimately though, we all have our vices, and I don't think naivety is all that bad of one to have in the grand scheme.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
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....
Thick people are less intelligent, claims report. Film at 11.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
n/t
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.
From The not-very-proFound Article:
The precise reasons that people see profundity in vague buzzwords or syntactic but completely random sentences are unknown.
I think a large reason for the phenomenon (accepting the premise of around a quarter uncritical test subjects uncritically for the sake of the argument) is for the same reason that a whole city, save one child, all said how nice the emperor's new clothes are (despite all seeing his imperial nakedness): not wanting to look foolish/out-of-fashion/contrary to society in the eyes of their peers.
In other words: I read a random phrase that is touted as being (at least mildly, score 1) profound. It contains some multi-syllable words. I don't really understand it, but I guess it must be somewhat profound - philosophy have for ages given new meanings to existing words and fixed combinations thereof (heck, the media does so every day these days), so maybe this is another example where those words mean something that I haven't encountered yet in my academically undistinguished career - so just to be safe and not the laughing stock of all those ivory tower dwellers, I give it a score of 3 or 4.
And voilà!
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
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.
It makes sense that people who don't require empirical evidence would be more likely to believe in dogmas/supernatural/paranormal/gods, and alternative medicine. However I object to the term 'ontological confusions', some people's philosophies aren't founded on logic; if logic is cast aside, then internal/external consistency aren't necessarily valid ways to judge a philosophy's validity. As a metaphor, someone might say "I do not recognize the validity of this court."
If confronted with facts contradictory to your beliefs, you might believe that the facts were fabricated as part of a conspiracy to suppress The Truth. If given supporting facts, then the conspiracy must be even larger. This proves your beliefs must be true, and is the source of True Believer Syndrome.
Understanding of the psychological root of religiosity is worth pursuing, particularly to priests. If it turns out to be dimwittedness and cognitive disorders, they can just say that their flock has been "blessed by god to see the truth." Most people suffer from several minor cognitive distortions; I wonder what would happen if all the sub-clinical cases were cured...
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Haha, you fell for ickleberry's obvious bullshit test!
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It's not nonsense, it's deep. Seriously deep.
Seriously deep bullshit.
If this is what his doctorate is on his PHD thesis should be about the stupid things people get qualified in!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
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.
I think that someone who doesn't understand the difference between i.e. and e.g. has no business criticising others.
Good catch! ;-)
I call bullshit on Pennycook's characterization of randomly generated nonsense as B.S, which he uses as a pivot of his 'study'. Here we have a generalization and judgement, an i.e. if you will, of something that can only be evaluated on an e.g. basis.
Identifying a scrap of apparent nonsense as profound is NOT a final judgement. It is a declaration that something is worthy to remember and consider, a state of unresolved investigation. We strive to find pattern and meaning and when we glimpse something --- a wordless sense on the level of intuition gives us a tug, saying in effect, file that one for later. Now whether we do in fact remember it and get around to pondering it later... depends on the amount of mental discipline and organization.
Sadly, we know how to write and are surrounded by paper but few of us actually write interesting things down anywhere and ponder on them. The hippies who followed Maharishi around in the 60s hanging on his every word mostly didn't keep journals, they had became addicted to the rush of hearing the words being spoken to them, and were sure that somehow somewhen something would click and it would all magically drop into place. Some pretended it did merely so they could leave and get on with their lives.
If you're clever enough and work at it you can eventually find a context where any nonsense makes sense. We see this as a challenge, a game.
In this paragraph imagine that I said something profound about our dreams are a journey along the dividing line between sense and nonsense, and how it is essential for us to do this 'perimeter walk' on a regular basis to shore up the specific neuron pathways along this 'border' and drop breadcrumbs that we use to know when we are crossing the line. Having these marked perimeters being essential to maintaining sanity, something like that. But yet, peoples' reactions to encountering these crumbs in the waking state varies: some may simply turn back, some may feel encouraged to cross over, some may even feel threatened.
Not all Goo Goo Goo Joob is either scripture or blather. That one's purpose was to deliberately confound those who were deeply analyzing Beatles lyrics for hidden meaning. Even Horse ebooks is not 'nonsense'. Though it was mechanically produced it is not the result of monkeys and typewriters. Its coder gathered volumes of text in which people were expressing ideas and sentiment, so the result makes new connections. Like round blue tailights on a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
What this has to do with gullibility I have not a clue.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
There is a long list of cognitive biases to which ALL humans with biological brains and nervous systems are susceptible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Many of them come down to nonsense and noise appearing to make sense.
Because that is the primary function of our brains - making sense and information out of completely random stimuli generated by the world around us.
It's not a game.
It's a necessity for a crushable biological entity to quickly make sense of those vibrations it's sensors are picking up.
Is it thunder, wind or is something heavy coming down on it from above?
Quick! Milliseconds mean life or... too late.
We get pareidolia cause those who didn't recognize that bear-shaped object in the distance didn't make it through the evolutionary process.
Not cause we adapted to think that teddy bears are cute or so that we could interpret smileys and emoji.
And when we can't make sense of some stimuli - we start getting anxious and afraid. And that makes us stupid. And then we get hurt and then we die.
Which is why we'll jump on any quick and easy explanation like "ghosts" or "aliens" or conspiracy theories.
Cause they can provide easy and simple solutions to ANY unsolvable problem. And they provide it quickly.
Why am I poor? Because secret world government keeps me that way.
Why am I ugly? Because aliens made me so.
Why did I get an incurable disease when I'm really a nice person? Because chemtrails.
Why will I and everyone else I love eventually have to die? So we can live forever in a much better place.
Why did my tire blow out? Bad luck. Or gremlins.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
There IS a biological root for FAITH.
Or as call it when not talking about magical creatures and forces - instinct.
When we "feel" something is a certain way but can't quite put our finger onto why we think it is so.
When we have faith that something is a certain way.
Some stimuli has triggered something somewhere in our evolutionary and personal memories and our brain is telling us that... just not in precise terms.
Will the rope hold? It feels like it might. Will it rain? It feels like it might. Will this hurt? It feels like it should.
There is another word we use much more often for that describes that feeling of certainty about unknown. Maybe.
That's what "faith" is. Taking an "I don't know" and making it into a "Maybe."
Religion is taking those feelings that come with built-in uncertainties and putting them into rigid frames of dogma in order to "explain" and control them.
It's telling, and often forcing, people to not only think - but to feel a certain way. Or else...
And that's abuse.
Most people don't have a psychological or any other kind of propensity towards being abused.
Those who do... we consider them mentally ill.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
I came across this gem recently : http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet.
Cynical, but undeniably true. In my opinion, the day that the vast majority of human beings alive on Earth look at things like religion and superstitions and say "That doesn't make any sense!", will be the day that the Human race will start truly becoming what I consider to be 'sentient' and 'civilized'.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I don’t know about some people, but I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from bullshit. Yeah, I know what I’m reading is poppycock, but for bullshit to be believable by ANYONE, it has to have some plausibility. So if you run with some of the plausible parts, you can come up with a wholly different idea that isn’t bullshit. Some people feel that their creativity is enhanced when they listen to white noise or the sounds of the ocean or rain. With bullshit, there is not just meaningless noise but some actual information content, even if it’s mostly wrong.
When I was in grad school, I was not smarter than my classmates. But having industry experience, I could code rings around them. My secret to success was not that I could come up with better ideas. In fact, they were mostly worse. However, I could implement and fully rule out the bad ideas a lot faster, and what was left over were ideas that were not only good but already provably good with some of the experimentation already done. So in this case, I was my own bullshit generator, and I used empirical analysis as the bullshit filter, and I had tiger blood and won.