Atomic Knowledge #12: Bullshit Asymmetry Principle
Why Debunking Lies Is a Losing Game: The Costly Battle Against Bullshit Overload
⏱️ Reading Time ≈ 1 min
The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle (aka Teoria della Montagna di Merda) explains why disinformation spreads like wildfire and why debunking it is an exhausting, uphill battle. Falsehoods have a cost advantage—they are quick to create, effortless to spread, and cost virtually nothing. Truth, on the other hand, is expensive. Dismantling a single lie demands time, expertise, and resources, often orders of magnitude greater than what it took to create. An expert might spend days refuting a claim that took seconds to tweet. By then, the fabricator has already moved on, flooding the discourse with new nonsense—again, at zero cost. And even when a falsehood is disproven, it doesn’t disappear—ten more take its place, and the stench lingers. First formalized by Uriel Fanelli in 2010 (and later, in a slightly different form, by Alberto Brandolini in 2013), the concept ties into the gish gallop, a rhetorical tactic that buries opponents under a barrage of misleading claims, making it impossible to refute them all. This is the core strategy of conspiracy theorists, propagandists, and trolls: winning the argument doesn’t matter—drowning the conversation does. In the digital age, the asymmetry has become even more brutal. Social media turbocharges misinformation at near-zero cost, while debunking requires rigorous analysis, institutional funding, and relentless effort. The mountain keeps growing, fact-checkers get buried, and audiences, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of conflicting claims, start to believe that maybe—just maybe—there’s bullshit on both sides.
Make the most of it! Until next time, S.
Deepen Your Knowledge
La Teoria della Montagna di Merda (article, ITA)
La Teoria della Montagna di Merda 2 (article, ITA)
The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle (Wikipedia)
Gish gallop (Wikipedia)
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