Bulldust assymetry factor, in fake news

Fake news has been around for thousands of years. Nero was falsely accused of playing the fiddle while Rome burned. But today, thanks to the internet and social media, a lie can travel around the world before the truth has even got out of bed.

Fake news has two advantages – it spreads very quickly, and the time taken to set the record straight is much greater than it took to tell the original lie.

Back in 2013, an Italian programmer, Alberto Brandolini, watched an Italian political talk show where a journalist was sparring with an Italian ex-Prime Minister.

Brandolini quickly saw how easy it was to make incorrect claims, but how hard they were to debunk. On the spot, he invented Brandolini’s Law, also known as the (to put it politely) the Bulldust Asymmetry Factor, or the BAF.

One of his early versions runs, “The amount of energy needed to refute bulldust is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it”. (An “order of magnitude” is scientific talk for “ten times more”).

It’s much easier to spread lies, than truth. That’s why the middle word in BAF is “asymmetry”.

Here’s three lies for you – “climate change isn’t real, NASA/BOM have been faking the temperature readings, and how the heck can a tiny amount of carbon dioxide affect anything?” I can say those lies in under 7 seconds, but it takes about 15 minutes to carefully explain just how and why they are wrong. In this case, the BAF, or Bulldust Asymmetry Factor, is about 120.

When somebody strings together a whole bunch of bulldust into a single outburst, they already have a few advantages.

First, they have the so-called “first-mover advantage”. Yep, a lot of people will accept the first thing they read.

Second, in many cases, it’s easier to tell lies than the truth, because for each single truth, there are a thousand lies.

Third, people who spread bulldust are often quite happy to fudge the facts, to quote data out of context, and to never admit that they make mistakes. This means they can generate enormous amounts of bulldust very quickly.

To spread fake news, it helps to eloquently deliver torrents of words, which are impressive because of their sheer volume. They can overwhelm their opponent by an enormous number of claims, regardless of the fact they are wrong. It also helps the spreading of fake news to quote scientific concepts totally out of context.

For example, it is often claimed that the Second Law of Thermodynamics proves that Evolution is wrong, when in reality it has nothing to do with Evolution – but you might not know that if you hadn’t studied Physics.

In 1931, a book entitled “100 Authors Against Einstein” was published. Einstein’s response was succinct, “If I were wrong, then one (author) would have been enough!”

Getting back to the asymmetry, an old proverb runs, “a fool throws a stone into a well, but it takes 100 wise people to get it out again”.

In today’s world, the bottomless well of social media and the internet, is making the task of the wise people even more unrelenting.