Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
Gregory Benford the novelist, no relation to Frank Benford of the digit law. Nuclear power and dietary fat both illustrate it: the loudest period of debate preceded the settled evidence.
In practice
- A dispute over a drug's efficacy is loudest in the years before the trial reports and nearly silent after.
- Two teams argue hardest about the architecture in the week before anyone has built a prototype.
- Standing
- Gregory Benford the novelist, no relation to Frank Benford.
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- The folk laws of argument and attention