Interesting interpretation: People invent and promote elaborate schemes, stories and status games to deceive others and themselves in order to obtain the evolutionary goals of sex and status.
Boring interpretation: Things are often not as good as they seem.
In this case the interesting interpretation is actually true. David's examples were mostly motte-and-bailey statements where the interesting interpretation is false or at least untestable, while the speaker could retreat to the boring interpretation as a defense.
I loved the listicle of “philosophical” deepities towards the end and their unpacking.
An idea- create and circulate a similar list of bullshit deepities from every famous bullshit guru interviewed by Oprah Winfrey from 1996-present. “The Secret” Bullshitter, Ekhart Bullshitter Tolle, Marianne Bullshitting Williamson, etc….on and on….
Something like this would be cathartically delicious.
A type of tautology that's popular these days: "It is what it is," "I like what I like," "Love is love."
Also, I never understood the claim that it's not possible to love others if you can't love yourself. I think that just boils down to: IOT love, you must have the capacity to love.
"Brexit means Brexit" and "Make America great again" are probably some of the most consequential recently.
There is a treasure trove of deepities in corporate lingo reinforced by the "work" of pop social scientists & management gurus like Adam Grant, Brene Brown and Simon Sinek. Also LinkedIn posting and people's "About" have a significant amount of empty air that sounds deep.
Agree. LinkedIn is the central marketplace for performative deepity. Something that gives the impression of maturity and insight without the divisiveness that these things actually entail.
Look up Sperber’s “The guru effect”, it’s very relevant.
In that paper, Sperber points to excessive trust in the source as a key factor. That’s right, but another way to get the same/similar consequence is treating all sources as independent. So then if many people seem to see weight in something, that raises one’s own expectations of relevance to an overly high degree, hence causing deepity effects.
Yea I like that sperber paper. Definitely relevant, but it seems better able to explain why we *assume* bullshit is deep (even if we cannot currently recognize its depth), rather than why we actually *experience* bullshit as deep in the moment we encounter it. I think dual interpretations—with one interpretation that is obviously true—can potentially explain this illusory experience of depth. Though there’s probably more to the story involving social coordination and the rewardingness of converging with others on the same interpretation of something difficult-to-interpret. I plan on continuing to explore this topic in the future and I’m sure I’ll draw on Sperber.
>Darwin’s theory of natural selection is probably the deepest.
Please look up academic philosopher Ruth Millikan. Basically she says if something gets selected for and copied, what it gets selected for and copied for is its proper function. Doesn't matter whether genes, or ideologies, or books, or institutions like the police. Copying is teleological. And everything that matters results from copying.
Thanks. I like Ruth Milikan’s work (I’m a fan of teleosemantic theories of representation) but wasn’t aware of her thoughts on Darwinism. I’ll have to give her work some closer attention.
Yea I think bad or cheesy poetry probably has a lot of deepities, but I think there's such a thing as good poetry that doesn't rely on them--poetry that plays with language in creative ways, or evokes unusual images or combinations of emotions, or that gives an interesting perspective shift on familiar concepts, or that delivers genuine (rather than fake) insights. I occasionally enjoy poetry--or at least, the poetry I take to be good. I especially like that Alan Ginsburg poem that Scott Alexander deconstructs.
That's interesting. I'm glad that you think some of it is insightful and valuable. I think so, but was beginning to wonder if I'd been duped by a load of old deepities. I'll look into the Ginsburg!
I think the bumper sticker "war is never the answer" is hilarious because if a crossword puzzle asked for a three letter word for "large scale battles between nations or rivals," war would definitely be the answer.
The way you characterize deepities sounds like an aesthetic version of the classic "motte-and-bailey" argumentative move. Where instead of moving back and forth between motte and bailey sequentially, it's like gazing at a snapshot in which both of them are blurred together. But this leads me to wonder whether the effect you describe is really a matter of vacillating between the two (like getting in and out of a hot bath), or rather a function of their *simultaneity*.
Another version of specialness to contrast with obviousness, in place of profound and bold, could be mysterious and elusive. Here, I'm thinking of Wittgenstein and some of his aphorisms, where much of the mystique comes from the sense that he's expressing something incredibly important that you nevertheless can't quite get your head around (or there are 100 different interpretations).
There may be yet another kind of deepity where the duality is reflected in the language structure, more than the meaning. A good example would be Yogi Berra ("Deja vu all over again"), where the circularity and/or paradox serves to draw apparent profundity out of non-statement by virtue of the semblance of meaning that still inexplicably manages to emerge. And then of course parodies, like Jack Handy's "Deep Thoughts" from SNL (or Yoda, where he mangles the language to sound Zen).
Someone else cited your title (and you pointed out most titles work as deepities), but I would put it differently, as a three-way:
Profound: Everything Is Bullshit (Nothing is as you assumed, your world is shattered, nothing matters)
Profounder: Bullshit is Everything (Counterintuitively, bullshit is all we have, and all that can save us)
Trivial: Pinsof is Bullshit (if everything is BS, Pinsof is full of BS, so just disregard everything he says).
“The present moment is all there is.” is an example of a phrase whose power is as an incantation, not as a propositional claim; by the former, I mostly mean a bid to re-orient your attention
Yea I suppose it can work as a meditation mantra or something, in which case it wouldn’t be bullshit. I was thinking of it more in the context of someone saying it to others to sound deep.
There also seems to be a cheap emotional effect. Stumbling on something truly inspiring evokes a grand joy in you - probably some evolutionary design to make us explore and appreciate a great discovery that can benefit us. A deepity is a cheap fast-food way to evoke and feel that feeling like social media is a cheap way to get the feeling of human interaction.
"Everything Is Bullshit"
Interesting interpretation: People invent and promote elaborate schemes, stories and status games to deceive others and themselves in order to obtain the evolutionary goals of sex and status.
Boring interpretation: Things are often not as good as they seem.
A lot of the best titles are deepities.
In this case the interesting interpretation is actually true. David's examples were mostly motte-and-bailey statements where the interesting interpretation is false or at least untestable, while the speaker could retreat to the boring interpretation as a defense.
Touché
I loved the listicle of “philosophical” deepities towards the end and their unpacking.
An idea- create and circulate a similar list of bullshit deepities from every famous bullshit guru interviewed by Oprah Winfrey from 1996-present. “The Secret” Bullshitter, Ekhart Bullshitter Tolle, Marianne Bullshitting Williamson, etc….on and on….
Something like this would be cathartically delicious.
So much bullshit, so little time...
So, so, so, much 😅
"The medium is the message."
Nice, good one!
A type of tautology that's popular these days: "It is what it is," "I like what I like," "Love is love."
Also, I never understood the claim that it's not possible to love others if you can't love yourself. I think that just boils down to: IOT love, you must have the capacity to love.
Ooh yea, good examples.
"Brexit means Brexit" and "Make America great again" are probably some of the most consequential recently.
There is a treasure trove of deepities in corporate lingo reinforced by the "work" of pop social scientists & management gurus like Adam Grant, Brene Brown and Simon Sinek. Also LinkedIn posting and people's "About" have a significant amount of empty air that sounds deep.
Agree. LinkedIn is the central marketplace for performative deepity. Something that gives the impression of maturity and insight without the divisiveness that these things actually entail.
Let’s not even get started on corporate value statements: https://tempo.substack.com/p/un-hommage
Look up Sperber’s “The guru effect”, it’s very relevant.
In that paper, Sperber points to excessive trust in the source as a key factor. That’s right, but another way to get the same/similar consequence is treating all sources as independent. So then if many people seem to see weight in something, that raises one’s own expectations of relevance to an overly high degree, hence causing deepity effects.
Yea I like that sperber paper. Definitely relevant, but it seems better able to explain why we *assume* bullshit is deep (even if we cannot currently recognize its depth), rather than why we actually *experience* bullshit as deep in the moment we encounter it. I think dual interpretations—with one interpretation that is obviously true—can potentially explain this illusory experience of depth. Though there’s probably more to the story involving social coordination and the rewardingness of converging with others on the same interpretation of something difficult-to-interpret. I plan on continuing to explore this topic in the future and I’m sure I’ll draw on Sperber.
>Darwin’s theory of natural selection is probably the deepest.
Please look up academic philosopher Ruth Millikan. Basically she says if something gets selected for and copied, what it gets selected for and copied for is its proper function. Doesn't matter whether genes, or ideologies, or books, or institutions like the police. Copying is teleological. And everything that matters results from copying.
Thanks. I like Ruth Milikan’s work (I’m a fan of teleosemantic theories of representation) but wasn’t aware of her thoughts on Darwinism. I’ll have to give her work some closer attention.
Brilliant. As usual. Great bullshit
Great article, David!
You might be interested in this - I believe it applies to other types of deep bullshit too: https://hagioptasia.wordpress.com/2024/06/23/hagioptasia-the-evolutionary-foundation-of-spiritual-experience/
My biggest fear is that I am a deepity-doer. On the other hand, deepity is just a word.
Thanks for another interesting post.
Great stuff. An obvious culprit here is poetry. Would it be fair to assume you're no poetry fan?
Yea I think bad or cheesy poetry probably has a lot of deepities, but I think there's such a thing as good poetry that doesn't rely on them--poetry that plays with language in creative ways, or evokes unusual images or combinations of emotions, or that gives an interesting perspective shift on familiar concepts, or that delivers genuine (rather than fake) insights. I occasionally enjoy poetry--or at least, the poetry I take to be good. I especially like that Alan Ginsburg poem that Scott Alexander deconstructs.
That's interesting. I'm glad that you think some of it is insightful and valuable. I think so, but was beginning to wonder if I'd been duped by a load of old deepities. I'll look into the Ginsburg!
I think the bumper sticker "war is never the answer" is hilarious because if a crossword puzzle asked for a three letter word for "large scale battles between nations or rivals," war would definitely be the answer.
The way you characterize deepities sounds like an aesthetic version of the classic "motte-and-bailey" argumentative move. Where instead of moving back and forth between motte and bailey sequentially, it's like gazing at a snapshot in which both of them are blurred together. But this leads me to wonder whether the effect you describe is really a matter of vacillating between the two (like getting in and out of a hot bath), or rather a function of their *simultaneity*.
Another version of specialness to contrast with obviousness, in place of profound and bold, could be mysterious and elusive. Here, I'm thinking of Wittgenstein and some of his aphorisms, where much of the mystique comes from the sense that he's expressing something incredibly important that you nevertheless can't quite get your head around (or there are 100 different interpretations).
There may be yet another kind of deepity where the duality is reflected in the language structure, more than the meaning. A good example would be Yogi Berra ("Deja vu all over again"), where the circularity and/or paradox serves to draw apparent profundity out of non-statement by virtue of the semblance of meaning that still inexplicably manages to emerge. And then of course parodies, like Jack Handy's "Deep Thoughts" from SNL (or Yoda, where he mangles the language to sound Zen).
Someone else cited your title (and you pointed out most titles work as deepities), but I would put it differently, as a three-way:
Profound: Everything Is Bullshit (Nothing is as you assumed, your world is shattered, nothing matters)
Profounder: Bullshit is Everything (Counterintuitively, bullshit is all we have, and all that can save us)
Trivial: Pinsof is Bullshit (if everything is BS, Pinsof is full of BS, so just disregard everything he says).
“The present moment is all there is.” is an example of a phrase whose power is as an incantation, not as a propositional claim; by the former, I mostly mean a bid to re-orient your attention
Yea I suppose it can work as a meditation mantra or something, in which case it wouldn’t be bullshit. I was thinking of it more in the context of someone saying it to others to sound deep.
Some of these are non-trivial. I'll add my own deepity:
**Language is a system of communication**
Interesting (and wrong) interptetation: Language was evolutionarily designed for communication, and its story and structure reflect that.
Boring interpretation: people use language to communicate.
There also seems to be a cheap emotional effect. Stumbling on something truly inspiring evokes a grand joy in you - probably some evolutionary design to make us explore and appreciate a great discovery that can benefit us. A deepity is a cheap fast-food way to evoke and feel that feeling like social media is a cheap way to get the feeling of human interaction.