We live in a world full of bullshit. It's only a matter of time before someone concocts a complex conspiracy theory and publishes it on social media without corroborating the allegations. An Italian software developer discovered one of the most famous laws about bullshit:
Formulated in 2013 by Italian computer programmer Alberto Brandolini, Brandolini's Law is also known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. This law is of course not an empirical law, but rather an observation. By law, the energy expended to refute a nonsense is greater than the energy spent to produce that nonsense.
Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage coined in 2013 that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The law states the following: The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it. The adage was publicly formulated in January 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer. Brandolini stated that he was inspired by reading Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow right before watching an Italian political talk show with former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and journalist Marco Travaglio.
For example, consider a person who publishes articles in the field of education. This person easily composes some aphorisms to support their views. He can then write Albert Einstein underneath to make those words appear as if they are from an authoritative source. The time it takes to do this will probably be minimal. However, it will take a lot of effort to prove that the authority figure in question did not actually say this word. In fact, a claim may sometimes contain issues that cannot be falsified or are very difficult to disprove. This causes more problems for those who want to refute it.
Brandolini Law Examples
An example of Brandolini's law comes when someone fabricates a complex conspiracy theory and shares it on social media without verifying any of the related claims. Making up a theory and posting it on social media requires little effort compared to the massive amount of effort others need to refute that theory with appropriate evidence and arguments.
The Logic Behind Brandolini's Law
There are several reasons for this asymmetry between the ease of creating nonsense and the difficulty of disproving it:
Bullshit is often introduced with little or no emphasis on things like fact, evidence, and logically sound reasoning. However, they must be taken into account in a proper rebuttal. This also means that generating nonsense often involves the use of intuition and heuristics, while refutation often requires analytical reasoning processes that require more cognitive effort.