Right on! Tell it on the mountain!
(deflating sound…)
“On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit”
That’s the title of this new study in the journal Judgement and Decision Making. Abstract:
Although bullshit is common in everyday life and has attracted attention from philosophers, its reception (critical or ingen- uous) has not, to our knowledge, been subject to empirical investigation. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullshit, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bullshit 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- shit 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 bullshit and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims.
Let me here invoke British everybloke Karl Pilkington:
For the Artsy Left, Scars > Obesity
From a Facebook post by super chic NOWNESS, we get a glimpse of high art fans’ feelings about a photo collection all about scars:
32 people like it. OK, no biggie. But witness the same crowd’s reaction to obesity-themed photography:
Not feelin’ it.
If there’s anything the art school crowd can’t abide, it’s fatness. Talk about bourgeois decadence at its worst, amiright? (Other kinds of decadence are just fine, though.)
High/Low Status Leftism: A Taxonomical Sketch
LOW: Fukushima, ecological catastrophe, astrology, 9/11-as-conspiracy, amorphous ideological boundaries, alternative weeklies, legalize drugs, anti-GMO, Edward Snwoden rocks!, “I don’t subscribe to labels,” Damn those Republicrats!, Django Unchained, Uber is whatever, FEMEN is truly outrageous, atheism is cool, Mountain West, expanding consciousness, nurses union, pit bulls, Noam Chomsky, Free Tibet, Yes to Burning Man, punk aesthetics
HIGH: Hurricane Katrina, climate change, therapy, 9/11-as-product-of-imperialism, rigid ideological boundaries, Mother Jones, legalize some drugs, anti-anti-vaxxer, Edward Snowden is meh, “Hell yes I’m a feminist,” Damn those Republicans, 12 Years a Slave, Uber sucks, FEMEN is embarrassing, atheism is problematic, Urban Northeast, expanding social consciousness, teachers union, cats, Slavoj Zizek, Free Palestine, No to Burning Man, hipster aesthetics
Update: As if on cue, high status leftist outlet Salon publishes an exclusive Q&A with Slavoj Zizek. Read it.
Interesting quote: “If Europe totally opens its borders, you would have in half a year a populist anti-immigrant revolution.”
Update II: In a Facebook convo with a friend, it was brought to my attention that Cosby Show child star Raven-Symoné – now all growed up – has expressed a low status opinion re: the recent South Carolina brouhaha involving a white cop and a black school girl. Sure enough, on Wikipedia I see this about the longtime actress/songstress:
Raven-Symoné explained that she rejects labels in all aspects of her life. Despite her racial origin and her same-sex relationship, she refuses to self-identify as either African-American or gay, but as an “American” and as a “human who loves humans.”
It seems Raven-Symoné subscribes to a passé 90s-style individualism, and comes off like a humanist, not an identity politics sectarian.
An Homage to George Miller
Effectively, that’s what this is. Enjoy:
Telling Lines
That’s lines, not “lies.”
A Christian Science Monitor piece on Bernie Sanders’ race “problem” inadvertently hints at why left libertarianism’s hoped-for inroads with the black community – and with the ascendent progressives more broadly – will face obstacles:
“This [Black Lives Matter movement] is fueled in large measure by young people and it is a particular development in the civil rights movement that deserves our support,” Clinton said. “By that I mean, there are some who say, ‘Well racism is a result of economic inequality.’ I don’t believe that.”
Mainstream leftism is so far from orthodox Marxism at this point, it’s not even funny. (Do kids still say that, “it’s not even funny”?) Race issues have completely replaced class concerns, at least as a gut-level motivating factor in politics. It’s a shame too, because the former is an inherently uglier and more intractable issue.
Anyway, this doesn’t bode well for libertarians because like the class-oriented left, they want to reduce everything to economics, or more specifically the government getting in the way of it. But ala Clinton and the youthful progressives, if the root of black impoverishment can’t be found in the government stifling entrepreneurship or something, what does that leave for libertarians to kvetch about?
Like the (old) left, libertarians are fundamentally oriented around class war, albeit of the dated, John Locke-ean sort. Sure, that’s kind of a strawman, but it’s all relative in politics; and relative to race-conscious progressives, libertarians have a “transactional anthropology” that believes green trumps black, brown, or white. (I heard James Poulos use that term on HuffPo live once. Can’t find a link.)
