Bullshit Science

June 29, 2021 1:22 AM

“We find that those more skilled in producing satisfying and seemingly accurate bullshit score higher on measures of cognitive ability and are perceived by others as more intelligent ... Overall, the ability to produce satisfying bullshit may serve to assist individuals in navigating social systems, both as an energetically efficient strategy for impressing others and as an honest signal of one’s intelligence.” from Bullshitting Is Actually a Sign of Intelligence, Study Finds

Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence [Evolutionary Psychology]
On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt

posted by chavenet (43 comments total)

I remember when my (probably) 2yr old son figured out he could say things that weren't true, he was so adorably transparent, but he kept trying it on, I think because it was simply a new idea to him
posted by mbo at 1:30 AM on June 29, 2021 [9 favorites]

Someone is really trying to snag an Ig Nobel Prize with that title.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 1:49 AM on June 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

'Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence [Evolutionary Psychology]'

This is a Deep Thoughts By Jack Handey-level one liner. Every clause a winner.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 1:58 AM on June 29, 2021 [18 favorites]

Generally speaking I define this as the difference between intelligence - a capacity for perceiving the world and acting on that intelligence that seems to be co-existent with life to hugely varying degrees - and cleverness (the capacity for abstracting imaginary models of the world and manipulating them in the abstract). We have tended to value the latter over the former, and, indeed, mistake the one for the other. Intelligence tests, for example, seem to test mostly for cleverness. If you are curious about the problem with this strategy look around you pretty much anywhere. Ultimately it becomes too easy to mistake the model for reality, act as though it were and then develop an even more abstruse model based on that assumption. And then be all surprised when it comes crashing down because none of it is based on external observation.

Many British politicians studied a subject called PPE at Oxford University. This is how the university describes the course, though I, in my chippy, unacademic resentment, tend to think of it as weapons-grade bullshitting.

And here we are.
posted by Grangousier at 2:11 AM on June 29, 2021 [15 favorites]

For bullshit to be convincing, it has to be internally consistent and coherent. Just spinning up an internally consistent and coherent model of something from thin air, even if it's completely detached from any kind of observed reality, is not an easy thing to do. Not surprising that the people who can do this are generally fairly smart.
posted by Dysk at 2:19 AM on June 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

The eyecatching title is a bit misleading:

To determine the ability to bullshit, a group of 534 of these participants were asked to produce the most convincing and satisfying explanation that they could for each of the above concepts. They were told not to bother about whether they were actually true, but to just be creative and convincing while making up their explanations...

Interestingly, the study also found that those who were good with their BS were not automatically willing to BS more just because they could.

“Smarter individuals were less willing to engage in bullshitting despite their superior skills,” study author Mane Kara-Yakoubian told PsyPost.

Ability to bullshit was linked to intelligence.
But intelligent people were less likely to bullshit even though they are more capable at it.

If you meet a bullshitter, you should not assume they are intelligent.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 2:24 AM on June 29, 2021 [71 favorites]

Feel like this is possibly a high-risk, high-reward deal. If someone bullshits me, or in front of me, and I can tell it's bullshit – it's liable to vaporise any respect and trust I've had for that person. It's weird: the ability to restrain yourself when you don't know enough to hold forth on a topic should really be a basic skill. But I'm finding that it increasingly impresses me.
posted by Panthalassa at 2:29 AM on June 29, 2021 [11 favorites]

As TheophileEscargot points out, people who are good at bullshitting convincingly when asked would be exactly the sort to do their research so as to avoid having to do so under ordinary circumstances. If I was to describe "subjunctive scaling" as "a benchmarking system employed by comparative linguists to score languages in terms of their concision is describing wish states" - then I will have had to not only think about the meaning of some fancy words - but also tried to match the phrasing of somebody who might be writing a real dissertation on the subject. Smart bullshitting is the realm of creative people of all sorts - including con artists, of course.
posted by rongorongo at 4:14 AM on June 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

If someone bullshits me, or in front of me, and I can tell it's bullshit – it's liable to vaporise any respect and trust I've had for that person.

A non-voter then, I presume?
posted by BWA at 4:26 AM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

A non-voter then, I presume?

I hold my nose. If one had to respect and trust politicians in order to vote for them, you could probably fit entire electoral rolls on a single sheet of A4.
posted by Panthalassa at 4:35 AM on June 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

For bullshit to be convincing, it has to be internally consistent and coherent

That, or just said over and over and over again in short words by old white men. Either works.
posted by flabdablet at 4:41 AM on June 29, 2021 [19 favorites]

If someone bullshits me, or in front of me, and I can tell it's bullshit – it's liable to vaporise any respect and trust I've had for that person.

What if they're using this power for good - bullshitting can be invaluable in haggling and negotiating. Often both sides know the other is bullshitting and it becomes a dance of mutual bullshitting which is kind of amazing in itself.
posted by dazed_one at 4:45 AM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Bullshitting skills can be learned. Ask this autistic elder how they know.

I had to be ENCOURAGED by a mentor to start doing it and now I see it as the circular saw of human interaction. Dangerous but extremely useful in certain limited circumstances.

But I'm in the camp that would call those skills "cleverness." I can't abide it when someone who's likely good at some skill area pats themselves on the head with the word "intelligence." Smells kinda like... bullshit.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 4:49 AM on June 29, 2021 [12 favorites]

On further perusal:

"On Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence [Evolutionary Psychology]"

Note the emphasis.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 4:52 AM on June 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

What if they're using this power for good - bullshitting can be invaluable in haggling and negotiating.

I agree. I don't really think that's the kind of bullshitting the article is talking about though.
posted by Panthalassa at 4:58 AM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Bullshit Ability as an Honest Signal of Intelligence [Evolutionary Psychology]

One awaits the followup, "Ability to Both Consistently and Continuously Generate High Volumes of Bullshit linked to Stability and Genius."
posted by otherchaz at 5:15 AM on June 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

No offence to the OP, but [Evolutionary Psychology] is actually a pretty helpful content warning telling me not to bother clicking through to the article.
posted by EXISTENZ IS PAUSED at 7:04 AM on June 29, 2021 [10 favorites]

I mostly spin bullshit recreationally - I find it very amusing to take a kernel of something that both myself and my conversational partner acknowledge is absolutely false, and then invite them to help me spin a whole bullshit world around it, the more plausible the better.

I try not to do so when working, but occasionally I'll find myself coming up with an explanation for why something is happening which is bullshit, and have to walk it back before it causes any trouble.
posted by Merus at 7:05 AM on June 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

"If someone bullshits me, or in front of me, and I can tell it's bullshit – it's liable to vaporise any respect and trust I've had for that person."

"Haha, the dumb person doesn't know I'm lying to them, I'm incredible." Actually, they're just ignoring you, and your friends probably think you're annoying or embarrassing 🤷

Language is a skill and object honesty isn't always the most valuable reaction, but most of the time no one wants to hire a lawyer/cpa/attorney/whatever or even a client who can't stop lying to them in small social interactions. It just makes the person look like they have some bizarre psych concern. Equally bizarre when a person doing this doesn't notice their audience has been tallying off the nonsense they've been reeling in every conversation. Silly to believe a lack of a response is acceptance or naivety.
posted by firstdaffodils at 7:19 AM on June 29, 2021 [9 favorites]

@ TheophileEscargot To add to your comment; it's easier to bullshit to your friends. Especially if you have developed a baseline trust with them. I use this ability sparingly just to mess with them. Kinda like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine is convinced that Tolstoy wanted to call his masterpiece, "War, What is it good for" ; and gets into trouble.
posted by indianbadger1 at 7:31 AM on June 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

I enjoyed reading this paper Playing the Bullshit Game: How Empty and Misleading Communication Takes Over Organizations over the weekend.

It talks about how bullshit is a social phenomena, to let groups bond, but goes into detail about how that can cause problems.

It also differentiates bullshit from lying, and seems to provide (I haven't checked the references) a counter-study to the intelligence angle:

Littrell and colleagues (2020) found that bullshitters tend to have lower cognitive ability, be less honest, less open-minded, have lower feelings of self-worth and a higher tendency for self-enhancement. Finally, a recent study of school children found that bullshitters shared demographic characteristics; they were more likely to be males from better-off socio-economic background (Jerrim etal., 2019).

posted by amcewen at 7:33 AM on June 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

I write fiction. You might say bullshit is my game. But I prefer (as a writer friend puts it) "the art of the plausible" (excepting fantasy, of course, and even fantasy must be plausible within the rules of its imagined world). I do think the best (ie: most effective) bullshitters have a well-honed grasp of what's plausible given the available information. It may even end up being true, but that's beside the point. They're taking what is known to be true and extrapolating.

In the context of a good bit of fiction, this can make for gripping, really mind opening stuff. Freed from the constraints of hardcore realism, the plot and its character can really go places (outside of the box and all that). In the context of everyday so-called reality, this can range from the amusing to the annoying to the outright bloody dangerous to the point of criminal.

I do think one of our principle problems right now right here in this particular cultural moment is just how many people couldn't tell you the difference between the possible, the plausible, the probable and the actual. And more to the point -- how many of them don't care.
posted by philip-random at 7:40 AM on June 29, 2021 [7 favorites]

Congratulations, everyone! We're freaking GENIUSES!
posted by Naberius at 8:18 AM on June 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

I'm not so sure that the instruction given to the participants --

... to produce the most convincing and satisfying explanation that they could for each of the above concepts [AND] ... not to bother about whether they were actually true, but to just be creative and convincing while making up their explanations...

is conceptually coherent. It seems to me that true explanations are significantly more satisfying -- and more likely to be internally coherent, plausible, and convincing -- than false ones. So, if I'm really trying to provide a satisfying explanation, I'm trying to provide an explanation that is true or at least close to the truth. Unless I have a further motive that bars me from giving a true explanation, the goal of giving a satisfying explanation has truth baked in as an aim.
posted by Jonathan Livengood at 8:28 AM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

The art of bullshitting for me is to go from borderline plausible bullshit to ever more fantastical ridiculous implausible bullshit and see how far along the ride others will go with you. The important thing is that you must take everyone further than they are willing to go so that in the end they know it was all bullshit and they have to go back and re-examine the credulity like Wile E. Coyote realizing he has run past the edge of the cliff.
posted by srboisvert at 10:32 AM on June 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Bullshit

I'm just amused that this was posted directly after a post titled "Baloney". Eagerly awaiting the following posts:

Poppycock - Roosters getting hooked on opium
Codswallop - People being assaulted with fish is on the rise
Horsefeathers - New trends in equine apparel
Balderdash - Study finds that hairless athletes run faster due to smoother cranial airflow
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:35 AM on June 29, 2021 [14 favorites]

conceptually coherent.

The whole thing is, unsurprisingly, a mess. They don't hold to a clear concept of "bullshitting" for the speakers or the audience judging them, as they almost prompt both groups to act/judge based on entertainment value as much as truth value, which places "bullshit" as a closer equivalent to fiction than potentially consequential falsehood, where there are some stakes involved for the speaker, the listener, or both should the lies be noted or uncovered. The study relies on equally shoddy measures of "intelligence", cites a number of other studies from the field that are also deeply flawed in their conceptual frameworks and experiments, and it all comes to conclusions that say very little even with their thumbs pushing down on the scales.

Whether those in "evo-psych" actually believe in what they are doing and just don't see the flaws, or whether they are in fact bullshitting is hard to judge as fools and scoundrels are common bedfellows in certain fields, but it does show that a considerable portion of academia is okay with the bullshit as they continue to allow it to be taught and published as if it had merit. It does garner attention I guess, and there's always money to be made in that.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:36 AM on June 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

Hey that article by Andrew Spicer linked above by amcewen is interesting.
posted by ovvl at 11:19 AM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

I recall reading a theory (or maybe it was bullshit) that the ability to rationalize our actions to other people is actually one of the primary functions of rational part of our brains. That is, the ability to explain to people "here's why I did it that way, my way is good" is linked with and as important (or maybe even more important) as the ability to reason about how the world works. The explanation being correct is not necessarily the most important part, the most important part might be gaining status by convincing people to listen to you. I don't remember if they presented much evidence but considering how important social standing and transmitting ideas are to a social species like us I found it compelling.

What I'm getting at is: I wonder if the way your brain works when you are "convincing people that your accurate model of the world is accurate" is all that different from the way it works when you are "convincing people that your inaccurate model of the world is accurate". I'd guess there might be some differences if you know you're lying and expect the lie to hurt the other person, but do the rationalizing parts of the brain care whether the story they've constructed is true or not?
posted by Tehhund at 11:32 AM on June 29, 2021 [5 favorites]

From the fifth link:

...Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

posted by y2karl at 11:40 AM on June 29, 2021 [2 favorites]

although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not

and it's at that point that bullshit morphs into horseshit.

The modern Republican Party is a sad example of the phenomenon at work.

Trump himself always was and still remains a pure bullshitter: if you're as completely incompetent and as completely sheltered from the consequences of your incompetence as he has always been, then it would simply never occur to you that truth is even a thing, and an endless stream of ego-preserving bullshit would simply be what always comes out every time you open your mouth to speak. Trump doesn't actually have beliefs. He just says shit.

But then there are the dignity wraiths who did at one point in their lives have the ability to distinguish truth from lies but have by now spent years echoing Trump's bullshit because they saw doing so as their only path to remaining in office. A disturbing number of those people now act as if they actually believe that the election was stolen, and that's Grade-A horseshit.
posted by flabdablet at 12:17 PM on June 29, 2021 [4 favorites]

do the rationalizing parts of the brain care whether the story they've constructed is true or not?

No they don't. The rationalizing parts of the brain are completely capable of generating the feeling of truth even when what they've just been rationalizing is completely and utterly without merit. I know this from personal experience, having some decades ago had to find my way back out of psychosis.
posted by flabdablet at 12:26 PM on June 29, 2021 [6 favorites]

I recall reading a theory (or maybe it was bullshit) that the ability to rationalize our actions to other people is actually one of the primary functions of rational part of our brains.

I think that is very interesting. Also, making up stories about why other people are doing what they do ("theory of mind") occupies a good chunk of our thinking, it seems to me. What amazes me about that is how over-interpreted it often is. I mean, we think "X is doing this because they want A, and they also want Y to think B" but X's mental life is the same inchoate stew as anyone's, and they are sort of just doing things, maybe with some thought or purpose, but maybe just reacting to the moment. And we tend to assume that everything is about us but, in actuality, people probably are mostly thinking about themselves or their family, not about you.
posted by thelonius at 12:59 PM on June 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

Maybe the authors have postmodernists in mind
posted by polymodus at 4:02 PM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

amcewen, that's not a contradiction: the study in the fpp article notes that:

Interestingly, the study also found that those who were good with their BS were not automatically willing to BS more just because they could.

“Smarter individuals were less willing to engage in bullshitting despite their superior skills,” study author Mane Kara-Yakoubian told PsyPost. “This might be explained by their greater capacity to attribute mental states to others (i.e., theory of mind), enabling them to be more cognisant of when bullshitting will work and when it won’t.”

In fact, researchers found that people who were more willing to bullshit were also more receptive to pseudo-profound bullshit. This was in keeping with another study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology, which found that people who engaged in bullshitting more frequently tended to also be more susceptible to misleading information like fake news.

In other words, the propositions "intelligence => greater skill at bullshitting" and "greater frequency of bullshitting => (relatively) lower intelligence" are kind of independent of each other, and could both be true simultaneously.

Though the correlation with perceived intelligence and bullshitting seems to be sadly borne out over multiple studies, from what I recall reading in the past and what effects people's perceptions of others' intelligence and "leadership" qualities.
posted by eviemath at 4:25 PM on June 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

In defence of Bullshit, I could say that I have some grudging sympathy for the Sales Staff back when I was a lower/middle manager in a dysfunctional workplace/factory. Their role was to generate rhetoric for clients to convince them to collaborate with us in keeping the wheels on the entire enterprise turning. Their job was incredibly stressful, and I often felt sorry for them. (The factory floor really disliked them because they only saw them when shit was going big wrong).
posted by ovvl at 4:28 PM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Meanwhile, in the bullshitting thread .. "Congratulations, everyone! We're freaking GENIUSES!"
posted by firstdaffodils at 10:23 PM on June 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Though the correlation with perceived intelligence and bullshitting seems to be sadly borne out over multiple studies

I have to question those studies for some of the same reasons as this one, though there are so many problems with the evo-psych version its difficult to narrow the problems down to a few. Bullshitting is clearly contextual, while perceived "intelligence" may play a part, it is as much a difficulty in quantifying what "intelligence" means as it is any belief in that attribute playing a function. If Poindexter P. Penpusher throws out some fancy looking bullshit equations "proving" the earth is hollow, the method of support for his claims might seem like it references intelligence, but unless the listener is actually able to assess the equations, it's just show based on arche/stereotype.

In the same way Pointdexter may well not be perceived as reliable were he to claim he once killed a man in Reno just to watch him die, because Poindexter does not fit that archetype while a less "intelligent" appearing person might be better convincing in the second claim for being a burly he man looking tough. It isn't intelligence that's the measure so much as conviction in making claims matched to the listeners set of references as to possible validity of them. The studies I've seen are all deeply flawed for treating a contextual or relative measure like intelligence as a fixed attribute that people are using to judge rather than a justification after the fact in their choice of acceptance or rejection of claims.

The linked study starts by making some unsupported assumptions about what intelligence is, and grotesquely then links those assumptions to a narrative over social evolutionary worth, then arranges their study based on exceptionally weak support and cherry picks the data to fit their claims, intelligent people bullshit better so therefore appreciation of bullshit is appreciation of intelligence, even though the study doesn't actually show intelligent people, by their own fucked up method of rating, use bullshit to win social status, just that they potentially could, you know, in theory, and that the ability to bullshit, again by their method, is a sign of intelligence, but the inability to bullshit isn't a sign of lack of intelligence, so the judgement of intelligence is inherently flawed by being limited to a certain domain of speaking convincingly, which should be evident to anyone who had to make a speech in front of a class or group, not a very reliable indicator of smarts as much as it is ease and situation.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:03 AM on June 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

The study isn't really all that different than claiming we've evolved a social appreciation of athletes because they are perceived as being more able to kill with their bare hands, you know, for defense or whatever, due to their fitness. That most athletes aren't in fact killers and that killing, even with one's bare hands, isn't something that is a reliable measure of fitness doesn't matter as the study is based on circular logic and self confirmation of biases.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:19 AM on June 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Well, indeed. A much more effective way to kill someone would be to wait in a tree near their house where you know they'll be walking with a rock or other heavy object and then wait for them to come home from work and drop it on their head. You could probably use a pulley system to get the rock into the tree. You don't see that in the Olympics, though, do you? I'd probably watch if it was, it sounds funny in an evil slapstick sort of way.
posted by Grangousier at 12:28 PM on June 30, 2021

subjunctive scaling

🎵 If I were a fish man, yubba dubba dubba dubba dubba deibel diebel dum 🎵
posted by condour75 at 3:54 PM on June 30, 2021

"I had to be ENCOURAGED by a mentor to start doing it and now I see it as the circular saw of human interaction. Dangerous but extremely useful in certain limited circumstances."

So.. it's actually important to take educated guesses that enable a person to further create planning or events. I think it becomes bullshit after a certain point of inaccuracy (Or one too many, "This person keeps mentioning subjects they don't actually understand," instances. It's a subjective point, but yeah, language is beyond our face value conversations.
posted by firstdaffodils at 12:16 PM on July 1, 2021

No offence to the OP, but [Evolutionary Psychology] is actually a pretty helpful content warning telling me not to bother clicking through to the article.

Indeed... it is an ur-example of the very genre of content we happen to be discussing on this thread. Really puts the Meta in MetaFilter!
posted by MiraK at 6:23 PM on July 2, 2021