According to this article, it's scientifically official: Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html
Cool research.
TLDR: Students were given a story to read, and then an implicit learning task. Students that read the nonsensical Kafka story performed 30% better than students that got a coherent story to read.
very interesting, but it sounds like they only tested it with two stories?
how do they know that "nonsense" is the distinctive attribute between the two stories?
the 30% performance difference seems quite significant. VERY significant, even.
It's official- We ARE a slightly more evolved species. By about 30%.
Imma send this to my boss and demand a raise.
So this is why the NYT readership have such a high opinion of themselves, despite the paper continually running nonsense stories.