The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.
What is Brandolini’s law?
Brandolini’s law, more colorfully known as the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, is the digital age’s version of a David and Goliath battle, except Goliath is an automated bot farm and David has a single, exhausted fact-checking pen. Coined in 2013 by Italian software engineer Alberto Brandolini, it is the ultimate explanation for why a single ten-second deepfake or a catchy, false tweet can travel around the world while the boring, thirty-page scientific rebuttal is still putting on its boots.
The asymmetry at the heart of the law is purely structural. Creating a lie requires zero research, no peer review, and a total disregard for the truth; it is a low-energy activity. However, dismantling that lie requires evidence, logical consistency, and a massive investment of time. Brandolini’s law suggests that in a fair fight between a lie and the truth, the lie wins by exhaustion: not because it is better, but because it is faster and cheaper to manufacture.
To navigate this landscape of informational clutter, turn to Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West. The authors provide a toolkit for spotting the New Bullshit — which often comes wrapped in impressive-looking graphs and big data — and explain how to apply Brandolini’s law to protect your own sanity. For a deeper look at the psychological mechanics of why we fall for these low-energy lies in the first place, The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber argues that our brains evolved for winning arguments, not necessarily for finding the truth, which is exactly the fuel that Brandolini’s law burns.
Sidebar
Weaponising the law: the Gish Gallop
In the world of formal debate, the strategic application of Brandolini’s law is known as the Gish Gallop. Named after creationist Duane Gish, the technique involves overwhelming an opponent with as many arguments as possible in a short time, regardless of their accuracy.
Because the opponent must spend precious minutes debunking each individual point (Brandolini’s law in action), they never get to make their own case. By the time they have cleared the first two lies, the clock has run out, and the Galloper appears to have won simply by virtue of having the last thousand words.
Ultimately, Brandolini’s law is a call for Informational Hygiene. It warns us that once a piece of nonsense is released into the wild, it is nearly impossible to fully un-ring the bell. On a Lex Nunc mug, this law is the perfect badge of honour for the professional skeptic, the scientist, or the lawyer: a cynical reminder that while the truth is expensive, the alternative is a never-ending flood of high-speed garbage.
