Human and artificial intelligence observe the environment. Observations are interpreted and used for finding trends and experiences are processed and result in learning experiences. Humans learn social behavior by observing their fellow humans; animals learn where food is, how to behave in a herd, and where dangers are present. Learning can be dangerous. If the underlying relationships are not understood, false conclusions are drawn. In the US state of Maine, for example, margarine consumption and the divorce rate developed in parallel. So, is stopping eating margarine doing anything for your marriage?
People seeking orientation in this confusing world look for guides and signposts. That’s why they tend to see trends where there are none. And some sellers of products of dubious utility for the customer load their products with predictions about the future. They say: “This is the current trend” or “soon everyone will be doing it this way” or simply “this is the future.” And some indicators, such as sales figures, support this theory. So what is genuine, well-founded trend analysis, and what is bullshit? With bullshit, the speaker usually doesn’t understand what he or she is saying, or they are simply lying. Unlike genuine digestive products from male cattle, like the beautiful Charolais bull on the right, Bœuf
charolais, taureau, with linguistic bullshit, you can’t tell by smell or appearance whether it’s phrases, inventions, or facts. Those who are intellectually ahead of the linguistic bullshit manufacturer notice contradictions and missing evidence. In this way, well-sounding inventions can be distinguished from reality. Difference between good arguments and facts There are three levels of content in a linguistic expression: the truth, which is understandable at least to a specialist audience, bullshit, and lies. Lies are criminalized and usually lead to the termination of the business relationship. Bullshit was elevated to academic honors by Harry Frankfurt. He, in turn, refers to Socrates: there are two ways to convince people. The first is to overwhelm the audience with pleasant-sounding but not really convincing arguments, thus creating a positive atmosphere. The second approach is clear, well-thought-out, and logical philosophical argumentation. See also here. The bullshit speaker doesn’t lie. He says sentences that, in his own opinion and experience, make a particularly strong impression on the unreflective listener. Many bullshit speakers don’t even notice the lack of connection to reality in their claims.
Use in Sales – Inventing
Trends In software sales and on the internet, new trends are often invented. This creates particularly thick piles of bullshit. I keep reading about the impending complete predictability of human behavior through big data. Anyone can check for themselves whether this is possible using contextual advertising on Google. A second industry susceptible to meaningless messages is health and nutrition. You can have texts tested for the bullshit factor at Blablameter. The result for this one: Your text: 3677 characters, 533 words Bullshit Index: 0.18 Your text shows only slight evidence of “bullshit” German. Another text on this blog about the Cournot point only achieved a bullshit index of 0.19. Texts with a lot of math, which may not be understood by everyone, have a better bullshit index.
