As someone who, some years back,predicted the end of the era of bullshit, which has lasted from when troglodytes invented language until now, I must admit error. I am not ashamed of this—not all theories are supported by facts, and newly-discovered phenomena have laid waste to better ideas than mine before.
Truth will out, and the truth is that people love bullshit. A study from Waterloo University in Canada, our international neighbor to the north and possibly more objective observers of bullshit than US scientists, because Canada is far less of a spewing volcano of bs than our own country, has determined that 1: Many people cling to bullshit, and 2: They tend to be less intelligent than people who are skeptical of it.
“Well who don’t know that?” you may say, and add “These guys deserve to get paid in funny-looking Canadian money,” but knowing something instinctively and proving it scientifically are two different things. This study out of the frozen North may be the most valuable Canadian contribution to science since theinvention of fake poop.
These Waterlooians had a computer generate random, deep-sounding philosophical phrases with no actual meaning. An example is “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.” Participants in the study were asked to rate the profundity quotient of the above phrase on a scale of 1 to 5, and it garnered a 2.6, about the same as a sentence from one of Deepak Chopra’s books.
I can hear you skeptics screaming now. “But Deepak Chopra is all bullshit!” That’s true, but it shows that computers are not capable of generating deeper bullshit than the human mind, and the possibility of the death of mankind at the hands of Terminators recedes further into the future. You can’t beat us if you can’t bullshit us.
The study determined that people who believed in UFO’s, ghosts, conspiracy theories, homeopathic medicine and that Mexico is going to build a wall to keep its citizens at home like the old-school Soviet Union were more likely to assign higher numbers to randomly generated bullshit philosophy. This is because of the natural human tendency to believe that we are too stupid to understand deep things, which is true, but some of us, while knowing we are not bright enough to grasp the general theory of relativity, have enough confidence in our reasoning powers to call bullshit when someone says “Healing is the growth of hope, and of us. We vibrate, we exist, we are reborn.”
And some of us don’t. These people will continue to hoard crystals, drink ionized water, meditate in pyramids, and read tarot cards. And if you can think of something to say to them like “Water is either solid, liquid or gaseous and we humans are basically bags of water, so why don’t you sleep with me?” you’ll probably get laid.
Plus they are easy to buy Christmas presents for. And that’s no bullshit.
Truth will out, and the truth is that people love bullshit. A study from Waterloo University in Canada, our international neighbor to the north and possibly more objective observers of bullshit than US scientists, because Canada is far less of a spewing volcano of bs than our own country, has determined that 1: Many people cling to bullshit, and 2: They tend to be less intelligent than people who are skeptical of it.
“Well who don’t know that?” you may say, and add “These guys deserve to get paid in funny-looking Canadian money,” but knowing something instinctively and proving it scientifically are two different things. This study out of the frozen North may be the most valuable Canadian contribution to science since theinvention of fake poop.
These Waterlooians had a computer generate random, deep-sounding philosophical phrases with no actual meaning. An example is “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.” Participants in the study were asked to rate the profundity quotient of the above phrase on a scale of 1 to 5, and it garnered a 2.6, about the same as a sentence from one of Deepak Chopra’s books.
I can hear you skeptics screaming now. “But Deepak Chopra is all bullshit!” That’s true, but it shows that computers are not capable of generating deeper bullshit than the human mind, and the possibility of the death of mankind at the hands of Terminators recedes further into the future. You can’t beat us if you can’t bullshit us.
The study determined that people who believed in UFO’s, ghosts, conspiracy theories, homeopathic medicine and that Mexico is going to build a wall to keep its citizens at home like the old-school Soviet Union were more likely to assign higher numbers to randomly generated bullshit philosophy. This is because of the natural human tendency to believe that we are too stupid to understand deep things, which is true, but some of us, while knowing we are not bright enough to grasp the general theory of relativity, have enough confidence in our reasoning powers to call bullshit when someone says “Healing is the growth of hope, and of us. We vibrate, we exist, we are reborn.”
And some of us don’t. These people will continue to hoard crystals, drink ionized water, meditate in pyramids, and read tarot cards. And if you can think of something to say to them like “Water is either solid, liquid or gaseous and we humans are basically bags of water, so why don’t you sleep with me?” you’ll probably get laid.
Plus they are easy to buy Christmas presents for. And that’s no bullshit.
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