A Defense of Pseudo-Profound Bullshit

                These are dark times for the literary world, friends. The recent short story, “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit,” published by the distinguished periodical Society for Judgment and Decision Making (which can be found here), represents a daring but ultimately too heavy-handed parody of scientific methodology and scientistic attitudes. In the end, “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit” works far too well as a parody to be entirely credible, for the simple reason that the author never cracks a smile or so much as “winks” at the reader to indicate the story’s difference from the genuine article—as always, the most biting satire is the one that cannot be distinguished from the truth. While the story can (and indeed should) be read as a daring formal experiment, it is ultimately the very cleverness and verisimilitude of its method that undermines the reader’s enjoyment.

                The story, whose author remains anonymous, concerns a group of scientists named Gordon Pennycook, James Allan Cheyne, Nathaniel Barr, Derek J. Koehler, and Jonathan A Fugelsang. According to the fiction of “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit,” these characters were involved in a scientific study by the same name, and the actual text of the story is meant to be read as the results of said study. The study’s ostensible object is to find the characteristics of individuals that make them more or less susceptible to “pseudo-profound bullshit,” as if these characteristics weren’t already known to the world’s marketing departments, governing bodies, and spiritual authorities. One can’t help but admire the author’s dedication to his or her fiction, which hilariously mimics not only the scientist’s typically atrocious prose, constant appeals to authority, and almost endearing propensity to pass off methodological assumptions as ontological facts.

                The appeals to authority begin early and never go away, starting with this little tidbit, “In On Bullshit, the philosopher Frankfurt (2005) defines bullshit as something that is designed to impress but that was constructed absent direct concern for the truth.” By a wonderful little bit of meta-textual sleight of hand, all of these citations of extra-textual authority come from books and articles that actually exist, so that it would be possible to read the story as an actual study taking place within the scientific community. Now, granted, this is an absolute impossibility given the sort of reductio ad absurdum of scientific dogmatism immanent to the story, but nonetheless the possibility tickles the old funny bone, doesn’t it?

                This reduction to absurdity takes place in a manner both subtle and (once noticed) unmistakable. The brilliance of the story lies in the fact that it is the scientists themselves who, all unknowing, give voice to the exact line of thought that undermines their claims to disinterested objectivity. Four groups, variously of students and Amazon workers, were given a group of statements to rate 1 through 5 for profundity, with 1 meaning not profound and 5 meaning extremely profound. (Since all undergraduates and warehouse workers are idiots, a definition of “profundity” was also provided.) Because of the nature of their experiment, the entire thrust of its method depends on the scientists’ ability to objectively distinguish a profound statement from a trivial one... but it’s precisely this that they prove incapable of doing!

                As if the idea of “objectively” telling the difference between meaningful and meaningless statements were not hilarious enough in itself, the scientists’ ineptness in the attempt only heightens the palpable irony of the story. They give the example of one such “obviously” meaningless statement: “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.” Of course they don’t hesitate a moment before dismissing the promised hidden meaning, saying, “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 possibility that it is this very syntactic structure alone that makes possible the experience of meaning does not seem to occur to them. Nor do they question whether meaning is the kind of thing that is “contained” in a statement, and whether it might perhaps be better to think of meaning as something that is elicited from a reader, rather than imposed on them externally.

                The duplicity of pretending to disinterested knowledge while at the same time undergirding that knowledge with all manner of “under the table” assumptions gets a wonderful send-up in section 4: “The current investigation.” The first (largely unfunny) proposal is that analytic thinking might lead to a lower degree of receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit. Assuming that there’s any truth of the matter, it may be true that this is so—I’d rather not think too hard about it. But when the scientists come to the topics of “Ontological confusions” and “Epistemically suspect beliefs,” the jokes just keep on coming. We find that, according to the most cutting-edge scientific methodology, not only are undergraduates and warehouse workers idiots, but also anyone with any sort of religious faith, supernatural beliefs, or in short anyone at all who does not believe in a naively materialist or strict dualist ontology is an idiot as well—or at least, that’s the claim the experiment is formulated to test.

                Though all four studies were largely similar, the third study introduced a little wrinkle that threatens to explode the whole edifice of the purported article in the most hilarious way. We learn that, in addition to the use of “obviously” pseudo-profound bullshit statements, the scientists included a set of statements “that contained clear meaning but that would not be considered conventionally profound.” The author gives the example of the statement, “Most people enjoy some sort of music.”

                What brilliance! What a moment of sublime hilarity! The fact that most people enjoy music, which can lead to the greatest and most meaningful reflections on the experience of all humanity, is presented as “not conventionally profound.” The fact that nearly every human being enjoys the structuring of sound in an aesthetically arranged medium that imitates the experience of meaning—music, after all, is very like language, with its own particular grammar and syntax—while nonetheless not containing meaning in any dogmatic sense… this is not profound.

                Does anyone else begin to suspect that some scientists are constitutionally incapable of recognizing profundity when they encounter it? Even when they produce it themselves?

                Yet then again… this very reflection may be the interpretive key to “On the reception and detection of pseudo-profound bullshit.” The experience of profundity itself may be very closely related to the experience of music. No one would ever say that a symphony “has” meaning, but then again who would deny that the experience of the symphony is itself “meaningful?” The poor scientists miss the point of profundity, not because any of what they say is necessarily wrong, but because they ignore the very musicality of language. Interpreting language as primarily a cognitive phenomenon leads one naturally to emphasize propositional meanings and a clear dichotomy of true/false or meaningful/meaningless statements. Language is above all a performance and an opportunity to experience the sensual pleasure of the voice, and only after that does the dimension of propositional communication arise. Who can seriously doubt that we human beings sang long before we spoke?

                What can I say, in conclusion? Well, isn’t it obvious? “Hidden meaning transforms unparalleled abstract beauty.”