Scientists find a link between low intelligence and acceptance of 'pseudo-profound bulls***'

[rahli]

A new scientific study has found that those who are receptive to pseudo-profound, intellectual-sounding 'bulls***' 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, tested hundreds of participants to make the link, detailing their findings in a paper entitled 'On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bulls***', which mentions the word 'bulls***' exactly 200 times (surely some sort of record).

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Defining bulls*** is a tricky task, but Pennycook and his team tried their best in the paper.

As an example, they gave the following 'pseudo-profound' statement: "Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty."

The paper says: "Although this statement may seem to convey some sort of potentially profound meaning, it is merely a collection of buzzwords put together randomly in a sentence that retains syntactic structure."

Link to entire article - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-find-a-link-between-low-intelligence-and-acceptance-of-pseudo-profound-bulls-a6757731.html

[rahli]

Bugger - already posted here -

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=42500#entry522334

[ace1928]

Its awesome to see that there is an interest in this type of stuff from multiple people here. Definitely good to see