Brandolini's Law

Hi,

This week’s email is about a key problem in responding to misinformation.

Here are the key practical points you should know (mainly from my article):

• Brandolini’s law (also called the bullshit asymmetry principle) states that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

• This denotes that it’s usually much easier to speak without regard for the truth, than to prove that what was said is false.

• Brandolini’s law is a general observation, rather than an empirical fact, so there are situations where it’s wrong. A broader corollary of this principle, which applies in more situations, is “bullshit often takes more energy to refute than to create”.

• Accounting for Brandolini’s law can help you figure out whether bullshit is worth refuting and how to refute it better (for example by addressing only its key points), and help you understand and predict people’s behavior (for instance by understanding why an expert isn’t responding to every piece of bullshit in their field).

• Refuting bullshit doesn’t necessarily make people who believe it accept that it’s wrong or change their associated stance; this often requires additional work, such as using debiasing techniques to address the cognitive biases that led people to believe in the bullshit in the first place.

As always, I’m happy to hear your thoughts.

Have a great week,
Itamar