Corporate jargon sounds like communication. Researchers built a test to find out if it actually is. Real mission statements went up against randomly generated business nonsense, assembled specifically to mean nothing, and participants had to rate the earnestness of each. Some people could not tell them apart.

Those same people scored lower on reasoning, flexibility, and adaptability. When given business school cases with clear solutions, they consistently missed them. The link is not that jargon makes people stupid. It is that leaning on impressive-sounding language is a way of skipping the thinking. Talking fast and confidently with the right vocabulary earns praise in a lot of rooms. So people build a cargo cult of competence around the surface of it and stop doing the work underneath. Pseudo profundities work the same way. A statement that sounds profound but means nothing still gets nodded at by people who never stop to ask what it actually said.

The test is simple and anyone can run it. Ask them to say it again. Most people will rephrase it. Because the second time, they hear it too.

Topics: corporate jargon, techno babble, pseudo profundity, business decision making, buzzword culture

GUEST: Greg Fish | cyberpunksurvivalguide.com

Originally aired on2026-04-08