Brandolini's law is an Internet adage coined in 2013 by Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini. It contrasts the considerable effort of debunking misinformation with the relative ease of creating it in the first place.
My thots: I've experienced many times when the latest information is accepted and replaced the old. This happens when the newest is trusted as a correction of the status quo. As the old proverb goes,"The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him."
However, as the wikipedia article continues quoting others...
In a 1710 article in The Examiner, Jonathan Swift said:
"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it."
Variations on the adage,
"A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
appeared in publication as early as 1820, when an article in the Portland Gazette stated that,
"Falsehood will fly from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling her boots on."
In 1845, economist Frédéric Bastiat explained:
We must confess that our adversaries have a marked advantage over us in the discussion. In very few words they can announce a half-truth; and in order to demonstrate that it is incomplete, we are obliged to have recourse to long and dry dissertations.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
[ My thots:
Attempts to stop what is considered "disinformation" can result in the the Streisand effect.
The Streisand effect is the phenomenon in which an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information.
At the bottom, the problem is one of trust and who decides what is "disinformation". The same evidence presented to different people can result in differences of opinion. Our believes tend to align with our community. A necessary short-cut to making decisions.
Suggested reading: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
Permit me to pick at this example from wikipedia's article.
The persistent false claim that vaccines cause autism is sometimes cited as an example of Brandolini's law. In 1998, British anti-vaccine activist Andrew Wakefield wrote a fraudulent research paper which claimed to find a relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism. The article was retracted, and Wakefield's medical license was revoked. Despite extensive investigation showing no such relationship, the false assertion has had a disastrous effect on public health, contributing to vaccine hesitancy. Decades of research, and attempts to educate the public, have failed to eradicate the misinformation.
First, the author expresses their bias at the very beginning. "The persistent false claim..." This is a red flag warning that the evidence about to be presented is intended to align your opinion with the author's. The reader is not to arrive at their own conclusion, but to adopt the author's. The author continues to attempt to convince the reader using assertions: "wrote a fraudulent research paper". The author states "The article was retracted, and Wakefield's medical license was revoked.", which appears factual and is likely true. The unasked question is "Why?". Is it because the article truly was intentionally or negligently fraudulent or because of external pressure from vaccine producers (money) or political public health leaders (power) are trying to mitigate the "disastrous effect on public health"? The author ends that way they started, with an assertion of "misinformation" in spite of the concern parents have who have personally witnessed the correlation of the timing of vaccines with surfacing of autistic symptoms.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."
]
A related term is Gish gallop, a debate tactic where one person overwhelms an opponent with a rapid-fire stream of many weak, false, or misleading arguments. Because it takes much more time to disprove a claim than to make one, the opponent cannot answer everything in the time allowed.
The term "Gish gallop" was coined in 1994 by Eugenie Scott who named it after Duane Gish.
My thots: Sometimes the "galloper" is intentionally making weak, false, or misleading arguments in order to overwhelm their verbal opponent. Sometimes the "galloper" has weak thinking or logic or has based their arguments on misinformation given them. Lastly, and I think this is most common, both debaters stand on significantly different worldviews and fundamental principles and assumptions that even the meaning of the words are different resulting in each speaking past each other.
I've been taught the way to learn a topic is to listen to two people debate both sides of the topic. My experience of debaters with opposing perspectives don't understand the other's perspective and therefore cannot effectively shed light on the subject but, instead, generate heat and try to win allies and defeat their opponent. I'd rather listen to one moderate debate with himself because that person is interested in gaining a more accurate and deeper, nuanced understanding.
Related TWOTW articles
- Trusted Source
- Dunning-Kreuger Effect (cognitive bias)
- Quod tegitur (Secrecy breeds Suspicion)
