Bullshitters. Who Are They and What Do We Know about Their Lives?

http://ftp.iza.org/dp12282.pdf

‘Bullshitters’ are individuals who claim knowledge or expertise in an area where they actually have little experience or skill. Despite this being a well-known and widespread social phenomenon, relatively few large-scale empirical studies have been conducted into this issue. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature by examining teenagers’ propensity to claim expertise in three mathematics constructs that do not really exist. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from nine Anglophone countries and over 40,000 young people, we find substantial differences in young people’s tendency to bullshit across countries, genders and socio-economic groups. Bullshitters are also found to exhibit high levels of overconfidence and believe they work hard, persevere at tasks, and are popular amongst their peers. Together this provides important new insight into who bullshitters are and the type of survey responses that they provide.

Who Goes Bullshit?

hey whats up ama

Need a bullshitter / mansplainer Venn diagram

At the top of the rankings are the two North American countries of the United States and Canada. With average scale scores of 0.25 and 0.3, these two countries have significantly higher bullshit scores than any other country.

lol, Canada. That sounds about right.

Everybody in middle management and upwards basically

Nowadays everybody wanna talk like they got something to say
But nothing comes out when they move their lips
Just a bunch of gibberish

At the top of the rankings are the two North American countries of the United States and Canada. With average scale scores of 0.25 and 0.3, these two countries have significantly higher bullshit scores than any other country.

On the plus side, it goes hand in hand with the classic 'everything is possible, you can do it' mentality that I think a lot of Europeans sorely need in their lives. Balance is key, of course.

i'm not much given to think highly of bullshitters - bullshitting is something i most strongly associate with salesmanship. in theory believing in oneself is a good thing, but i don't see a benefit to _unlimited_ belief in oneself.

I don’t think claiming familiarity with three nonexistent areas of mathematics is really enough to detect a true bullshitter at 15. The high prevalence among immigrants also makes me wonder about the replicability and validity of this result.

I want a survey that identifies real died-in-the-wool six-term-senator bullshitters, the kind that are so OTT you just let everything slide because you just hope everyone else has also realized they are in the presence of a fabulist and you don’t have to engage in a pointless confrontation (“dude, ‘subjunctive scaling’ isn’t a thing”)

is this the backlash against imposter syndrome TED talks?

The Hill: Obama told friends Trump is a ‘bulls----er’

Ars with the TL;DR edition

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/which-students-talk-the-most-bs-researchers-say-canadians/

Did the researchers check to make sure proper numbers and declarative fractions aren’t actually taught in Canada, is my other question

the classic 'everything is possible, you can do it' mentality that I think a lot of Europeans sorely need in their lives

whenever I get a bit worn down by the tall-poppy syndromic, wallowing pessimism of my fellow europeans I read something like this and feel much better

LOL'd at this:

Although this concept often has negative connotations, being able to bullshit convincingly may be useful in certain situations (e.g., job interviews, negotiations, grant applications)

Generous definition of 'useful'. "While murder often has negative connotations, it may have useful applications, such as eliminating romantic or professional rivals, acquiring items of value, etc."

"really useful being able to bullshit myself into this position i'm unqualified to do"

Feel like the choice of bullshit in this study - nonexistent mathematical concepts - is kind of a fatal flaw, resulting in some conclusions that dont ring true at all to me, such as: "Signs of teenage angst, like feeling lonely and not belonging, showed no correlation with tendency to bullshit."

Like my personal experience is that among the many bullshiters I encountered as a teen (and since as an adult, tbh), the most reliable common trait was that they were all obviously painfully lonely people wracked by crippling self doubt and transparently trying to BS their way into feeling like they belong. It's just that they bullshitted about things that are actually known to impress other teenagers, such as sex, money, meeting celebrities, etc, rather than mastering advanced mathematical concepts.

If anything, in my HS it was probably more common to bullshit about being worse at math than you were, to avoid being seen as a nerd.

(ftr, I'm not a nerd, am very wealthy, have had sex, and am close personal friends with lots of celebrities.)

As an aside, isn't there a problem of informed consent here? Presumably the subjects of the survey didn't know that they were being tested for bullshit.

"really useful being able to bullshit myself into this position i'm unqualified to do"

Frankly, the whole idea of being "unqualified" to do 80% of modern jobs is itself bullshit. If you can button your own shirt, you're qualified to fill almost any role in a typical corporate office.

oh sure yes, but i don't really work in corporate stuff and from an education/social care perspective i've had some bosses whose bullshit was really unhelpful to be working under, and their cluelessness was a big part of the problem

NB i barely skimmed the article at the start of this thread i'm just old and bitter

As an aside, isn't there a problem of informed consent here? Presumably the subjects of the survey didn't know that they were being tested for bullshit.

I think this is the way many studies are done and produces superior results. If the subjects all know what is being studied, they are more likely to provide answers that are untruthful or at least biased by their perceptions of themselves.

My dad is literally the biggest bullshitter I've ever met. One of his favorite sayings is "never bullshit a bullshit artist".

Maybe it came from being a chef/restaurant owner and having to be "on" so much for work but I've never met anyone as convincing a bullshitter either. It's pretty remarkable and no I don't think it's always a good thing. It can be hilarious though I will say that.

Has there ever been a thread for anything like 'obvious lies kids in school tried to convince you of'? I find those stories endlessly hilarious.

"really useful being able to bullshit myself into this position i'm unqualified to do"

― After Cease to Brexist (Noodle Vague), Monday, 29 April 2019 13:57 (two hours ago) Permalink

Well... yeah. Don't think I've ever had a job I didn't think of as a total blag where my days were numbered. Even the one I was in for more than a decade lol

There’s a great synergy happening right now between this thread, the NYT quiddities thread, and the godforsaken “ws of shame” thread - and it’s amazing to see, actually. I went to high school with Anna Sorokin. Yeah. Do you guys wanna know something? Let me tell you about Anna Sorokin.

I had to shut a bullshitter down today. They were just talking garbage on a subject they knew nothing about and which also happens to be a large part of my day job. So I had to tell them.

there's a guy at my work who seems to spend much of his day just wandering around and talking to/at people. sometimes this can get annoying, because he's pretty loud and ends most of his sentences with 'you know what i'm saying?'

he -- a 35yo man who does not *seem* particularly athletic -- also insists that he could beat tom brady in a 40-yard dash. it's the sort of thing that makes anything else he says difficult to believe

See? I don’t think this test detects that guy! But he is exactly a bullshitter.

there's a difference between bullshitters who say plausible things that are not true and "lie guys" who tell obvious whoppers despite the fact that nobody believes them imo

I need a lie guy/ the kinda guy/ who always tells lies

ah bullshit its just another social lubricant isnt it

theres a scale between narrow-eyed insistent experts and flagrant shitehawks and most of the craic is in the middle of it ime