Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intelligence

Scientific challenges to the beliefs promoted by the Brahma Kumaris so called "World Spiritual University"
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ex-l

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Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intelligence

Post06 Dec 2015

At last ... Scientists find link between people impressed by wise-sounding, 'profound' quotes and low intelligence.

Oh, boy, wait until the BKs reads this one.
A new study has shown that people who believe in psuedo-profound, intellectual-sounding quotes are less intelligent.

It found that those who are receptive to pseudo-profound, intellectual-sounding 'bullsh**' are less intelligent, less reflective, and more likely to be believe in conspiracy theories, the paranormal and alternative medicine.

PhD candidate Gordon Pennycook and a team of researchers from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, published a study entitled "On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullsh**"
Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2015, pp. 549–563

On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullsh**

Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek J. Koehler, Jonathan A. Fugelsang

Abstract

Although bullsh** 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. Here we focus on pseudo-profound bullsh**, which consists of seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous. We presented participants with bullsh** 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 bullsh** 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 bullsh** and that detecting it is not merely a matter of indiscriminate skepticism but rather a discernment of deceptive vagueness in otherwise impressive sounding claims. Our results also suggest that a bias toward accepting statements as true may be an important component of pseudo-profound bullsh** receptivity.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intellige

Post06 Dec 2015

Across multiple studies, the propensity to judge bullsh** statements as profound was associated with a variety of conceptually relevant variables

It is human nature to invest meaning or see patterns. Intelligence is the ability to make connections, see relationships and discern implicated meanings. I suppose, in this context, intelligence is the ability to tell the difference between ”apparent” meaning and actual.

Many people "read between the lines" before they have even understood the lines!
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ex-l

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Re: Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intellige

Post06 Dec 2015

What the study did not do, was got the step further, to identify the class of individual who consciously or sub-consciously recognise that "some people are more receptive to bullsh**" and wilfully feeds them it to them, in order to make money selling courses and books.

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Mr Green

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Re: Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intellige

Post06 Dec 2015

what a funny man he was
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ex-l

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Re: Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intellige

Post06 Dec 2015

I was going to publish a link to one of Mike George's publicity programmes for the BKs, at their "Peace in the Park Festival", as he is one of their "Wise souls" and published authors.

Around 25:00 to 30:00 minutes, they start misleading the audience about the nature of God and their god spirit, to whom they refer to obliquely in code as "The Source".

What they are basically doing is getting to the audience to give up their preconceptions of what their god might so that they can seed their minds with the BK god spirit being it and Lekhraj Kirpalani as being the older wise elder they should follow. Mike, of course, has met both "God", and the deceased Lekhraj Kirpalani, in personal at Mount Abu many times but does not mention this.

It looks like he has developed a "facial tic". Strange. Adult onset facial tics are generally thought to be caused by; stress, fatigue, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), or obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Qr89Sz_JVM

Basically neither of them, or what they are teaching, have moved on in the last 30 years.
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Pink Panther

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Re: Impressed by "wise-sounding" quotes? Shows low intellige

Post07 Dec 2015

”God is a word with too much baggage”, says Mike George, ”that gets in between believing and knowing”.

The next question is not asked - what about the difference between knowing and believing you know?

Or believing that you have no baggage that affects your knowing when you do?

Any intellect worth anything understands that ”knowing” of any kind is provisional, and as soon as you buy in to the arrogance of definitive knowing, especially in matters ”indefinite” you are lost in Maya (to use the term in its original sense, i.e. befuddled by the measures or matrices of the mind).

The analogy in this, not just 'wise-sounding’ but actually wise, quote below is not directly relating to Mike G’s pseudo-rationalising but it is of the same type when applied more broadly to the whole Gyan. The title of the essay from which it comes definitely covers it. Not only sounding wise, Bertrand Russell was sharper than Dada Lekhraj’s best razor ...
"I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious. For instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: "Oh, but you forget the good God." Apparently they conceive of the Deity as a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. This view strikes me as curious."

Bertrand Russelll, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)

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