It takes far more energy to refute nonsense than to produce it.
Brandolini stated it in 2013: the energy needed to refute nonsense is an order of magnitude greater than to produce it. It is the structural reason fact-checking loses on volume.
In practice
- A single mis-stated figure in a public meeting takes one sentence to assert and a fortnight of freedom-of-information requests to correct.
- A support forum post with a plausible wrong fix outlives four correct answers, because correcting it takes longer than reading it.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- The folk laws of argument and attention