a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by goobster
goobster  ·  3271 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why people think total nonsense is really deep.

I wonder if this also relates to humans being "pattern-seeking animals."

We first assume there is a pattern to be discerned, and then work to make a pattern appear. That pattern might be, "This sentence reads like BS, but it's probably because I didn't understand it. So let's turn off the BS filter, and see what I can make of it in a more broadly accepting frame of mind."





TheSkeward  ·  3271 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You know, I think you're absolutely correct here. I think this is related to the availability heuristic, in which people associate topics with the first example to come to mind. So, when you think of something like "awareness" or similarly deep-sounding words, they think about deep-sounding concepts whether the actual message is deep or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

goobster  ·  3270 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thank you!

I would never have remembered the "availability heuristic" on my own. Bookmarked that shit so when I forget it again, I'll just... umm... paw through hundreds of thousands of bookmarks to... well... hm.