Brandolini’s law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage which emphasizes the difficulty of debunking false, facetious, or otherwise misleading information: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.”
This same article quotes Mark Twain (from his 1906 autobiography:
The glory which is built upon a lie soon becomes a most unpleasant incumbrance. … How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!
The super-charged version of this phenomenon is the Gish Gallop:
The Gish gallop is a term for an eristic technique in which a debater attempts to overwhelm an opponent by excessive number of arguments, without regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. The term was coined by Eugenie Scott; it is named after the creationist Duane Gish, who used the technique frequently against proponents of evolution.[1][2] It is similar to a method used in formal debate called spreading.
Some of my posts are simply to record an idea so that I have a quick way to track it down later. This is one of those posts.
