Bullshit sentences The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty. The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person. Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future. Your movement transforms universal observations. The whole silence infinite phenomena. The invisible is beyond all new immutability. The unexplainable touches on the inherent experiences of the universe.
The 'genuinely profound': A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence. You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the things you do not say. We have others flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back. Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in. The person who never made a mistake never tried something new. Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined. It is one thing to be tempted but quite another to fall for the temptation
A researcher named Laura Rittenhouse analyzer CEO annual letters for clarity vs jargon, and then correlated the clarity index with the subsequent performance of the companies. There was indeed a correlation.
In light of recent "anti-racism" efforts, I'm putting "You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the things you do not say." into the BS category... and I'm wondering about the profundity of the imagined pain sentence.
I've also changed my pro-social behavior AKA charitable giving. I no longer give to large national organizations but to smaller, more local ones. My favorite this year has been ShowerUp.
Another thing I like is that giving to some very deserving groups isn't always tax deductible, so I don't feel a need to keep track of what I give. An example of that is what happened after a single comment made during a PTA teacher appreciation project -- "It's so sad that some schools don't have a PTA to help their teachers." From that, 20 or so people put together a "teacher appreciation" package for an elementary school that doesn't have a PTA.
I think I'm with Donna: the list of things I do not say is infinite. You have to pare that down to the things I _ought_ to have said and didn't. And then who defines _ought_? I haven't said word one about the Rohingya--am I supposed to?
I'd have been interested in subdividing the report's religiosity into different aspects. The "spiritual but not religious" types have seemed, anecdotally, to be more attracted to koan-like stuff, which would go towards explaining another of their findings: "we found that religiosity correlated positively with a tendency to perceive meaningfulness in bullshit sentences."
FWIW, at the bottom of the page is a link to another article, and from the abstract: "this paper investigates how religiosity associates with environmental philanthropy" .... "The effect of religious attendance is, however, negative for monetary contribution and positive for volunteerism." So the more religious (as measured by attendance) a person was, the more likely he was to give himself, and the less likely to give impersonal money. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320986127_Which_is_greener_secularity_or_religiosity_Environmental_philanthropy_along_religiosity_spectrum
A young French Army captain was appointed to a General Staff position in the late 1930s:
"I saw very quickly that our seniors were primarily concerned with forms of drafting. Every memorandum had to be perfect, written in a concise, impersonal style, and conforming to a logical and faultless plan–but so abstract that it had to be read several times before one could find out what it was about…”I have the honour to inform you that I have decided…I envisage…I attach some importance to the fact that…” Actually no one decided more than the barest minimum, and what indeed was decided was pretty trivial."
So, these bullshit translations might actually be important:
"The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty."
"Your movement transforms universal observations."
The second one is potentially a restatement of the facts of special relativity; it turns out, movement to a different perspective does show us that what we took to be a universal observation is in fact perspectival. (E.g., the 'relativity train' https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~scidemos/QuantumRelativity/RelativityTrain/RelativityTrain.html).
The first one sounds esoteric, and there is something to be said for the esoteric. But I think it may trend on the religious, as James suggests; it may be that our Scandinavians aren't able to see it, because they lack the key themselves. If it is true that you must first believe in order to see, then the first statement is just another way of saying that very fact.
I don't want to disparage Douglas2's translations but I have to ask if they are literal word for word translations, or translations of meaning? None of them seem to be bullshit in terms of a buzzword sentence like "I'm going to optimize the maintenance of our tactical platforms to orchestrate our access to niche markets." (generated with some help from https://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html)
What I'm getting from the comments is that context is important, and the difference between profound and bullshit can often be the addition of context by the reader.
"Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined."
I'm guessing that this was mistranslated... perhaps a better translation would be: "Mental pain does not hurt less because it is mental." You might even go further and say, all suffering is ultimately mental, in that it only "matters" because a human psyche is enduring it. So, the suffering due to depression, loneliness, grief, etc. is exactly as "real" as the suffering due to physical pain. We have all had personal experience of some physical pains (say, a twisted ankle) causing far less suffering than some psychological pains (say, grief over loss of a loved one). Since we all know this in our own experience, the phrase is not BS; how profound it is, is a personal rating I guess.
And, none of this says anything about whether the person suffering bears any responsibility for the pain, nor yet whether any of the rest of us have a duty to try and resolve the issue, of course.
Re: imagined pain, one might raise a pertinent point about whether pain is ever otherwise than imagined. It's not something one usually discusses outside philosophy class, because pain has the sense of being both very immediate and specifically located. That is, you're immediately aware of being in pain, and you can usually say exactly what hurts ("my hand!").
In fact, though, the pain really exists in your mind, not in your hand; and if something should draw your attention away from it sufficiently that you stop being aware of it, there's a good question about whether your hand is still in pain at all.
When one sees how animals deal with things that are painful- that it doesn't seem to bother them but at times when it must be most acute- tells us a lot about how humans see pain differently, and how much of that is in our consciousness of pain *and its implications* than just the physical pain itself.
10 comments:
The BS sentences (translated to English):
Bullshit sentences
The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty.
The future elucidates irrational facts for the seeking person.
Health and tolerance provides creativity for the future.
Your movement transforms universal observations.
The whole silence infinite phenomena.
The invisible is beyond all new immutability.
The unexplainable touches on the inherent experiences of the universe.
The 'genuinely profound':
A river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistence.
You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the things you do not say.
We have others flaws before our eyes, but our own flaws behind our back.
Your teacher can open the door, but you have to step in.
The person who never made a mistake never tried something new.
Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined.
It is one thing to be tempted but quite another to fall for the temptation
A researcher named Laura Rittenhouse analyzer CEO annual letters for clarity vs jargon, and then correlated the clarity index with the subsequent performance of the companies. There was indeed a correlation.
In light of recent "anti-racism" efforts, I'm putting "You are not only responsible for the things you say, but also for the things you do not say." into the BS category... and I'm wondering about the profundity of the imagined pain sentence.
I've also changed my pro-social behavior AKA charitable giving. I no longer give to large national organizations but to smaller, more local ones. My favorite this year has been ShowerUp.
Another thing I like is that giving to some very deserving groups isn't always tax deductible, so I don't feel a need to keep track of what I give. An example of that is what happened after a single comment made during a PTA teacher appreciation project -- "It's so sad that some schools don't have a PTA to help their teachers." From that, 20 or so people put together a "teacher appreciation" package for an elementary school that doesn't have a PTA.
I think I'm with Donna: the list of things I do not say is infinite. You have to pare that down to the things I _ought_ to have said and didn't. And then who defines _ought_? I haven't said word one about the Rohingya--am I supposed to?
I'd have been interested in subdividing the report's religiosity into different aspects. The "spiritual but not religious" types have seemed, anecdotally, to be more attracted to koan-like stuff, which would go towards explaining another of their findings: "we found that religiosity correlated positively with a tendency to perceive meaningfulness in bullshit sentences."
FWIW, at the bottom of the page is a link to another article, and from the abstract: "this paper investigates how religiosity associates with environmental philanthropy" .... "The effect of religious attendance is, however, negative for monetary contribution and positive for volunteerism." So the more religious (as measured by attendance) a person was, the more likely he was to give himself, and the less likely to give impersonal money. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320986127_Which_is_greener_secularity_or_religiosity_Environmental_philanthropy_along_religiosity_spectrum
A young French Army captain was appointed to a General Staff position in the late 1930s:
"I saw very quickly that our seniors were primarily concerned with forms of drafting. Every memorandum had to be perfect, written in a concise, impersonal style, and conforming to a logical and faultless plan–but so abstract that it had to be read several times before one could find out what it was about…”I have the honour to inform you that I have decided…I envisage…I attach some importance to the fact that…” Actually no one decided more than the barest minimum, and what indeed was decided was pretty trivial."
So, these bullshit translations might actually be important:
"The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty."
"Your movement transforms universal observations."
The second one is potentially a restatement of the facts of special relativity; it turns out, movement to a different perspective does show us that what we took to be a universal observation is in fact perspectival. (E.g., the 'relativity train' https://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~scidemos/QuantumRelativity/RelativityTrain/RelativityTrain.html).
The first one sounds esoteric, and there is something to be said for the esoteric. But I think it may trend on the religious, as James suggests; it may be that our Scandinavians aren't able to see it, because they lack the key themselves. If it is true that you must first believe in order to see, then the first statement is just another way of saying that very fact.
I don't want to disparage Douglas2's translations but I have to ask if they are literal word for word translations, or translations of meaning? None of them seem to be bullshit in terms of a buzzword sentence like "I'm going to optimize the maintenance of our tactical platforms to orchestrate our access to niche markets." (generated with some help from https://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html)
What I'm getting from the comments is that context is important, and the difference between profound and bullshit can often be the addition of context by the reader.
"Imagined pain does not hurt less because it is imagined."
I'm guessing that this was mistranslated... perhaps a better translation would be: "Mental pain does not hurt less because it is mental." You might even go further and say, all suffering is ultimately mental, in that it only "matters" because a human psyche is enduring it. So, the suffering due to depression, loneliness, grief, etc. is exactly as "real" as the suffering due to physical pain. We have all had personal experience of some physical pains (say, a twisted ankle) causing far less suffering than some psychological pains (say, grief over loss of a loved one). Since we all know this in our own experience, the phrase is not BS; how profound it is, is a personal rating I guess.
And, none of this says anything about whether the person suffering bears any responsibility for the pain, nor yet whether any of the rest of us have a duty to try and resolve the issue, of course.
Re: imagined pain, one might raise a pertinent point about whether pain is ever otherwise than imagined. It's not something one usually discusses outside philosophy class, because pain has the sense of being both very immediate and specifically located. That is, you're immediately aware of being in pain, and you can usually say exactly what hurts ("my hand!").
In fact, though, the pain really exists in your mind, not in your hand; and if something should draw your attention away from it sufficiently that you stop being aware of it, there's a good question about whether your hand is still in pain at all.
When one sees how animals deal with things that are painful- that it doesn't seem to bother them but at times when it must be most acute- tells us a lot about how humans see pain differently, and how much of that is in our consciousness of pain *and its implications* than just the physical pain itself.
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