“The secret of the universe unfolds through the expansion of chaos.”
Mind. Blown. Not.
The above profound-sounding statement is actually randomly generated by the website wisdomofchopra.com.
Compare that to an actual Deepak Chopra tweet: “Attention and inattention are the mechanics of manifestation.”
Now, a paper by researchers at the University of Waterloo published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, attempts to quantify the hypothesis that andomly generated nonsense is indistinguishable from the actual nonsense of new-age charlatans such as Chopra.
The paper is entitled: “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit” (BS).
In this study, BS is distinguished from everyday nonsense by intent, i.e., the person constructs the BS in order to impress, or “to suggest depth and insight where none exists.”
The authors demonstrate the difference with the statement: “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.” The syntactic structure of that phrase implies it has meaning, unlike “Unparalleled transforms meaning beauty hidden abstract,” which is simply gobbledygook.
The researchers conducted four studies to measure the receptivity of people to BS. Each presented the participants with syntactically coherent statements consisting of random vague buzzwords. They were asked to rate the profundity of each statement on a scale of one to five.
The participants also completed various cognitive and intelligence tests and filled out questionnaires regarding things such as religious and paranormal beliefs.
Across all four groups, the BS statements were judged to be at least somewhat profound.
In the three other studies, participants were also presented with actual tweets from Deepak Chopra’s Twitter feed. Profundity ratings for the random and actual statements were almost identical.
In the last two studies, participants were also asked to rate motivational quotations considered to be profound in a more conventional sense such as “A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power, but because of its persistence.”
In the last study, the researchers also added mundane statements such as “Most people enjoy some kind of music.”
The last two additions were designed to measure sensitivity to pseudo-profound BS by computing a difference score between profundity ratings for BS and legitimately meaningful motivational aphorisms and mundane statements.
Ultimately, the researchers conclude that, “the tendency to rate vague, meaningless statements as profound is a legitimate psychological phenomenon.”
We probably didn’t really need a study to prove that humans are gullible. The real question, of course, is why.
Results of the ancillary tests and questionnaires revealed a predictable correlation:
“Those more receptive to [BS] are less reflective, lower in cognitive ability (i.e., verbal and fluid intelligence, numeracy), are more prone to ontological confusion and conspiratorial ideation, are more likely to hold religious and paranormal beliefs, and are more likely to endorse complementary and alternative medicine.”
This, I believe, is a failure of our education system. Yes, people have varying levels of cognitive ability and intelligence, but critical, analytical or reflective thinking skills can and should be learned by most people.
We are born with a bias to believe what we are told, probably an evolutionary development to keep us safe during the long process of growing up. Unfortunately, once we learn to accept BS as truth, it is very difficult to undo that bias.
Not all biases are bad, of course. I have a journalistic bias. I question everything. When I see something like, “Attention and inattention are the mechanics of manifestation,” my bias is to ask, “What does it mean?” When you start digging, it usually means someone like Deepak Chopra is laughing all the way to the bank.
