Sunday, May 15, 2016

More on Bullshit...Pseudo-profound and Classical

Another article on Pseudo-profound Bullshit - Misperceiving Bullshit as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism has been published and I wrote this response - after which I had a really nice exchange with the lead author Stefan Pfattheicher.   What was funny was the PLoS profanity filter blocked submission of any letter/response with the word "bullshit" in it and all responders had to write "B.S, or "bullsh_t" to get past the filter as they responded to an article on bullshit - thats bullshit isn't it?  The liberal press in the US lit up with this article and the headlines singled out Trump supporters as being the most susceptible to bullshit whereas supporters of Ted Cruz were most strongly susceptible to pseudo-profound bullshit (as defined by the Bullshit Receptivity Scale - which I question). How could this get weirder  - the previous letter I wrote on this issue  has been combined with the original article by a small French publisher, translated to French, and is about to be published as a booklet!  Thats bullshit isn' it?