Dumb People Think Dumb Stuff is Profound

[driveway]

http://gawker.com/study-dumb-people-...eep-1746288972

An academic study on “pseudo-profound bull####” finds that the people most likely to believe pseudo-profound bull#### are suckers—who are also dumb.
...
The study hypothesizes that some people may have “a potential inability to detect bull####, which may cause one to confuse vagueness for profundity.”
...
“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.”

Yes, the study actually uses the term "bull####"... I know that's going to get caught by the CP censor, but it really is in the study.

From the study itself:
http://journal.sjdm.org/15/15923a/jdm15923a.pdf

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.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines bull#### as, simply,
“rubbish” and “nonsense”, which unfortunately does not get
to the core of bull####. Consider the following statement:
“Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.”

Although this statement may seem to convey some sort of potentially profound meaning, it is merely a collection of buzzwords put together randomly in a sentence that retain syntactic structure.

[puckedoff]

What a profound study

[Looch City]

I'd like to know the demographic of the people they studied haha

[WhiteTiger]

Surprising result is surprising...

[Northendzone]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

I'd like to know the demographic of the people they studied haha

Random people walking into rexall center?

[chummer]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

I'd like to know the demographic of the people they studied haha

Edmonton.

[driveway]

Originally Posted by Iggy City

I'd like to know the demographic of the people they studied haha

Study one was 280 University of Waterloo Undergrads, 58 Male, 222 Female, Study two was 198 participants recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk in return for pay, 100 male, 98 female, all American residents who could speak English. Study three was 125 participants, again English speaking Americans recruited from Mechanical Turk, 52 male, 73 female. Study four was 242 participants from Mechanical Turk again, 146 male, 107 female.

The study also give median ages for their participants, the Mechanical Turk studies all had median ages around 36 years old.

[Fozzie_DeBear]

I love this thread

[Fozzie_DeBear]

I have a copy of a great book on the topic of What is Bullspit

[peter12]

Originally Posted by driveway

Study one was 280 University of Waterloo Undergrads, 58 Male, 222 Female, Study two was 198 participants recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk in return for pay, 100 male, 98 female, all American residents who could speak English. Study three was 125 participants, again English speaking Americans recruited from Mechanical Turk, 52 male, 73 female. Study four was 242 participants from Mechanical Turk again, 146 male, 107 female.

The study also give median ages for their participants, the Mechanical Turk studies all had median ages around 36 years old.

Small samples, pretty narrow populations. Still... probably not BS, but there are always outliers. Steve Jobs, for instance, was clearly someone with a very high IQ, but believed in all sorts of alternative health nonsense.

[Hack&Lube]

Reddit had a very good breakdown of this study:

Originally Posted by Reddit

Lot of speculation here in these comments. For people who are interested, here is the actual paper, which was published in the Journal of Judgment and Decision Making.

The paper is about exploring what makes people more susceptible to believing in bull####. Contrary to the title, it says nothing about low intelligence. In fact, intelligence wasn’t even tested. What they actually tested were other correlates such as some kinds of prior beliefs and analytical thinking, to see what relationship they have with how inclined you are to believe bull####.

For anyone interested, this is what they did. They took 4 classes of statements:

1. Generated via computer, by randomly picking words from lists of buzzwords and jargon. These statements were syntactically correct, but meaningless, e.g. “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.”

2. Picked from Deepak Chopra’s Twitter Feed. These were extremely vague statements that don’t actually say anything, e.g., “Attention and intention are the mechanics of manifestation.”

3. Common sayings and proverbs. These are metaphorical statements that contain some truth, e.g. “A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence.”

4. Regular factual statements, e.g., “Most people enjoy some kind of music.”

Participants were asked to rate these statements on a 1 to 5 scale of how profound they were. Basically, what you’re asking people here is to judge two things: first, is the statement true or not, and second, if it’s true, then is the truth just a trivial observation or is it profound? Based on their answers, each person was assigned a profundity score, which was used to put them on a bull#### receptivity scale (BSR), which measured how readily they classify computer-generated random nonsense as “profound”.

Then they measured a number of things about the participants to see which characteristics were related to high bull#### receptivity. Among them:

Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) a set of problems which have an obvious (intuitive) answer that is wrong. To find the correct answer, you have to put aside your intuition and actually think through the problem. As expected, people with low CRT scored are more receptive to bull####.

Wordsum Test, which measures people’s verbal comprehension. Again, people with low scores will more readily believe bull####.

Numeracy Test, with basic math problems. Low performance in this was also correlated with higher bull#### receptivity, though this correlation was much lower than all the others, which were very strong.

Ontological Confusions Scale (OCS). This is about those prior beliefs mentioned earlier. It’s about being able to differentiate between what’s real (e.g., “Wayne Gretzky was a hockey player”) and what’s metaphorical (e.g., “Friends are the salt of life”). Unsurprisingly, people who are less able to distinguish real from metaphorical are more receptive to bull####.

Religious beliefs asked people about their beliefs about specific topics including heaven, hell, afterlife, miracles, angels and demons, souls, etc. It was found that people who had higher religious beliefs were more susceptible to bull####.

Paranormal beliefs asked about whether people believed in things like mind reading, astrology, spiritualism, psi powers, witchcraft, omens, etc. People with higher paranormal beliefs were more susceptible to bull####.

Self-Reported Questionnaire where people were asked whether they have a more intuitive style of thinking versus a more analytical style. The self-reported intuitive types were more ready to believe bull####.

These are just some findings of how various things measured on the tests listed above correlate with bull#### receptivity. However, the bulk of the paper isn’t about this, it’s about asking why some people are more receptive to bull#### than others. Is it because they are generally uncritical (i.e., reflexively “open minded” in that they will accept almost anything uncritically), or is it because of a specific failure in being able to detect bull#### from reasonable statements.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by peter12

Small samples, pretty narrow populations. Still... probably not BS, but there are always outliers. Steve Jobs, for instance, was clearly someone with a very high IQ, but believed in all sorts of alternative health nonsense.

Which ultimately prevented him from pursuing the early surgery which could have saved his life. Jobs had a lot of mystical beliefs based on time spent studying under Yogis, etc. in India but he also came of age during the whole psychedelic era and was a big proponent of LSD and naturopathy.

[To Be Quite Honest]

Spoiler!

[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Which ultimately prevented him from pursuing the early surgery which could have saved his life. Jobs had a lot of mystical beliefs based on time spent studying under Yogis, etc. in India but he also came of age during the whole psychedelic era and was a big proponent of LSD and naturopathy.

Yeah, during that time there was a lot of bull.... going on from the supposedly older generation, so we challenged their beliefs. Some of the conclusions we reached were out there but challenging old ideas is a good thing in my books.

A lot of what is going on is because people want to believe so their reasoning gets warped, like Jobs. My niece was facing breast cancer and became a proponent of "The Secret" while she faced this crises. Luckily she still went through the normal treatments and has since recovered but in a crises people like to grab onto any hope.

[VladtheImpaler]

Reading the reddit summary, sure sounds like your standard aptitude test, such as a GRE or GMAT, which are essentially IQ tests. So, I think the conclusion is - dumber people are more susceptible to BS, which most would have assumed as a given...

[peter12]

I wonder what qualifies as a dumb IQ in current society? Sadly, I think it is "average." Ie. 95-105. Maybe the low-end of undergraduate students, and below to the marginal white-collar worker. I have trouble believing that these people are that dumb though.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by peter12

I wonder what qualifies as a dumb IQ in current society? Sadly, I think it is "average." Ie. 95-105. Maybe the low-end of undergraduate students, and below to the marginal white-collar worker. I have trouble believing that these people are that dumb though.

What does that mean? It's all relative to the frame of reference. You all seen dumb to me. Seriously, though, to you, as a well-rounded professional, 100 would seem dumb because that's probably 2 standard deviations below you.

[peter12]

Originally Posted by VladtheImpaler

What does that mean? It's all relative to the frame of reference. You all seen dumb to me. Seriously, though, to you, as a well-rounded professional, 100 would seem dumb because that's probably 2 standard deviations below you.

I meant more in the sense that it seems to be harder than ever to be "average."

IQ is a funny thing. It exists, and the higher you go, the more it seems to exist.

I had a few professors in grad school who were 3, maybe 4, S.D.s above average, and you could just sense the brainpower, the speed with which they made connections or inferred possibilities.

The Dunning-Krueger effect explains that people with higher cognitive abilities tend to more critical of their capabilities given their increased awareness, and overall sense of detail. Average people tend not to know they are making mistakes. In today's world, with highly cognitive skills the most in demand, those with average abilities tend to stick out more as average skill jobs lose prestige.

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by peter12

I meant more in the sense that it seems to be harder than ever to be "average."

IQ is a funny thing. It exists, and the higher you go, the more it seems to exist.

I had a few professors in grad school who were 3, maybe 4, S.D.s above average, and you could just sense the brainpower, the speed with which they made connections or inferred possibilities.

The Dunning-Krueger effect explains that people with higher cognitive abilities tend to more critical of their capabilities given their increased awareness, and overall sense of detail. Average people tend not to know they are making mistakes. In today's world, with highly cognitive skills the most in demand, those with average abilities tend to stick out more as average skill jobs lose prestige.

I have started a few different responses to your post and each time have deleted them. Simplest response would be "yes".

[AcGold]

Originally Posted by peter12

I meant more in the sense that it seems to be harder than ever to be "average."

IQ is a funny thing. It exists, and the higher you go, the more it seems to exist.

I had a few professors in grad school who were 3, maybe 4, S.D.s above average, and you could just sense the brainpower, the speed with which they made connections or inferred possibilities.

The Dunning-Krueger effect explains that people with higher cognitive abilities tend to more critical of their capabilities given their increased awareness, and overall sense of detail. Average people tend not to know they are making mistakes. In today's world, with highly cognitive skills the most in demand, those with average abilities tend to stick out more as average skill jobs lose prestige.

Well IQ is important on the extreme sides, developmentally if you are projecting below 80 it's cause for concern. Below 100 is still problematic but below 80 is a severe handicap and indicative of need for help or disabilities.

IQ is far from perfect but it's most useful for helping detect potential learning disabilities as there are IQ tests designed for children that project to future adult IQ scores. It can help demonstrate any glaring deficiencies in any of the major cognitive abilities and help to correct errors in teaching.