Any sufficiently advanced wisdom is indistinguishable from bullshit

I'm unable to distinguish Shalmanese's 3rd law from bullshit. If it is true then it may in fact be advanced wisdom. I still think it's bullshit.

Being a science and maths geek, I've tended to dismiss a lot of philosophy as bullshit, and have only recently begun to realise that (some of) what I've dismissed is actually valid and interesting. Of course, one place where this effect is incredibly strong is when a parent is arguing with a child, i.e. the "teenagers think they know everything" syndrome.

If this were true, it would mean that any advanced wisdom distinguishable from bullshit is insufficiently advanced. I don't think that's true.

I would be at a loss for words in addressing my 10-years-past self. In fact, all my life I've been able to look back at my earlier selves and think, "how could I possibly have lived in something so small?" And yet I can't think of anything I could tell them that they could use to change the course of their life. At the most I might be able to put myself in contact with sources of ideas that were available before I happened to come across them, but beyond that I don't know what I could say.

I'd prefer to reserve the word "bullshit" for "arguments made to advance an agenda with no regard for the truth of the matter", per Frankfurt. I think you're using the term to mean "crazy stuff that is just wrongheaded, even if sincerely believed by the idiot in question"; to capture this concept I propose "horseshit". Thus, one can be a bullshitter, but not a horseshitter (or rather, we're all horseshitters to one extent or another).

I can't readily think of something I used to strongly believe but later strongly disbelieved. Taking what I can, here's my compressed pellet of wisdom:

"Graduate students often tell Michael Wilson they think they know how to create smarter-than-human artificial intelligence that won't fail to care about us. They are probably always wrong, as Eliezer Yudkowsky could tell you. Don't bite off more than you can chew; you're prone to this. By the way, the interlibrary loan system is awesome."

I hope all of those are statements that I would understand and agree with well enough. If I remember correctly, my reaction to the whole Friendly AI idea was, "Oh yeah. Heh."

I would be extremely suspicious of any new "wisdom" I've acquired in the past 10 years that I found myself unable to explain to my past self in the course of six hours. Any sufficiently incommunicable wisdom is, in fact, bullshit.

Work on better calibration. Make sure to not term "impossible" what will turn out to be true. Be aware of the inferential distances: maybe you just don't get the intended meaning (but this is also a problem with presentation).

The advanced wisdom you describe is basically just experiential knowledge that has not been well described or quantified. It seems like bullshit because: (1) it's not described specifically enough to be applicable (\what exactly does 'be yourself' mean?), and (2) scope insensitivity of anecdotes (there may well be a vast sea of evidence for how 'being yourself' is useful, but there is certainly some evidence as to how it can be damaging, and the two are not quantified for comparison). In general we should give such experiential anecdotes some weight, especially when many people describe similar experiences, but we should not assume such reports are representative of anything more than the singular experiences of individuals.

I think that statement is true only for time-constrained arguments. It takes time to research and understand the prerequisites to any "advanced wisdom," so to speak. Likewise, it takes time to understand the flaws in untrue things, and to notice your own biases. Finally, even if you understand the evidence and arguments leading up to some great insight, it takes time to fully understand the ramifications of the idea. If you're time-constrained like in your example, your past self simply can't process everything fast enough and the absurdity heuristic wins.

The one positive thing this law has lead me to is a much higher tolerance for bullshit. I'm no longer so quick to dismiss ideas which, to me, seem obvious bullshit.

This is where I have to disagree with you. There are plenty of ways to quickly and accurately rule out most incorrect beliefs without accidentally ruling out correct beliefs. Many of them are mentioned on this site.

No matter how silly a piece of BS is, someone will call it wisdom.

No matter how well reasoned and well supported factually something is, someone will call it BS.

Neither matters particularly, unless you are trying to convince the other, what matters now is "Is this useful to me?"

I don't quite understand what this post is trying to say, but it reads like incredibly deep wisdom. +1.

But does this hold up if you broaden the question: Could I (if I spoke ancient Greek) convince Plato of quantum mechanics and general relativity? Yes, but not in six hours. After all, it took me more than a decade of schooling to get there, and that was with generations of scientists pre-digesting it for me. On the other hand, if I spent weeks or months explaining algebra and calculus in geometric terms, doing simple experiments to demonstrate Newton's laws and the concept of a mathematical natural law, and then a historical overview of nineteenth century chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, and astronomical observations, then yes, I could probably communicate this advanced wisdom. I suspect that this depends on this constituting knowledge which is Truly Part Of Me.

I agree with mattnewport (to a degree)... I happen to think that this law is indistinguishable from Bullshit, yet I also happen to believe that it is not bullshit (where we diverge).

I had thought something similar when I was about 16, when I was accused of being able to BS with someone 3 times my age... I asked them... "How do you know that what I am saying is BS? It could just be so alien to your life experience as to have no basis for comparison."

Addendum: The same could be said for wisdom given us from alien life forms. It could be so alien to us that we would have no basis for a comparison, yet it could be the secret to happiness... We also might not have any way to identify their real excrement from magical technology. It might be the case that some aliens have feces that opens up wormholes into other dimensions, where said feces them moves (in order to have this universe be rid of it)... Yet, imagine what said aliens would think if they saw us playing with their shit in order to try to create and manipulate wormholes... Huh???? Huh?!

Circular: "I call (enlightened future self's) beliefs that seem like bullshit Advanced Wisdom"; "sufficiently advanced wisdom is indistinguishable from bullshit".

So, this amounts to a definition.

The question is (to be addressed in your next post?): how many important things does it describe? Will anything I encounter falling into the category (Advanced Wisdom), and how's the uility*probability of that vs. the cost to consider and reject, and the possibility to mistakenly accept, some real bullshit?

The only defense of the imperial system against the metric (not just "it would be a hassle to change") I'm aware of is Lloyd Mintern's.

I'm undecided on the message of this post.

Bullshit!

It sounds as though this manual recalibration did not take much account of the traditional role of the bullshitometer - namely insulating you from bullshit.