The Reception and Detection of Pseudo-Profound BS

An interesting piece of research on PPBS, which is defined as "seemingly impressive assertions that are presented as true and meaningful but are actually vacuous."

On the Reception and Detection of Pseudo Profound BS

Consider the following statement:

(a) “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.”

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. The bullshit statement is not merely nonsense, as would also be true of the following, which is not bullshit:

(b) “Unparalleled transforms meaning beauty hidden abstract”.

The syntactic structure of a), unlike b), implies that it was constructed to communicate something. Thus, bullshit, in contrast to mere nonsense, is something that implies but does not contain adequate meaning or truth.

This sort of phenomenon is similar to what Buekens and Boudry (2015) referred to as obscurantism (p. 1):

“[when] the speaker... [sets] up a game of verbal smoke and mirrors to suggest depth and insight where none exists.”