John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), recently posted this on Facebook:
A FB friend put up a post that deals with the ‘bullshit asymmetry principle.’ This holds that ‘the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.’This got me thinking about how official spokespersons often use correct but dislocated facts to mislead people and justify huge injustices. In my years with OCAP, whenever a person died of the cold on the streets of Toronto, you could be sure that some hack from City Hall would dutifully declare that there were empty shelter beds available that night.To those familiar with the actual situation, it would be immediate clear that:A. The overcrowded and unbearably tense conditions in the shelters ensured that some people would stay outside because they couldn’t face them.B. Under such impossible conditions, the shelter system frequently resorts to administrative measures and significant numbers of people can’t access the shelters because they have been barred from using them.C. The fact that some beds were available in the system as a whole doesn’t mean that they could be accessed by everyone. Some empty beds in the men’s shelters didn’t do anything for women or families.D. If the shelters are operating at full capacity levels, they will fill up early and those seeking a place will be told nothing is available. If a check is made late at night, no doubt some of those who did book a bed won’t have shown up for any number of reasons and there will actually be a few vacant spaces. That, however, doesn’t alter the fact that significant numbers of people were turned away and left on the streets.This is, I think, a compelling example of the bullshit asymmetry principle at work. The points that I set out are entirely true but, in the official discourse arena, they are doomed to fail. Try making them to a group of indifferent if not hostile politicians on a City Council committee or advancing them in a media interview. An official spokesperson with ‘expert’ credentials has stated clearly that beds were available and your efforts to show why this doesn’t settle the matter seem as convoluted as they are unwelcome to those with decision making powers.Sadly, the truth must deal with complexity and contradiction, while the lie can be compellingly simple and straightforward.
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.[1][2]
The rise of easy popularization of ideas through the internet has greatly increased the relevant examples, but the asymmetry principle itself has long been recognize
Given the bullshit asymmetry principle, we can target a number of phrases from the social-democratic or social-reformist left that involve this principle:
- decent wages
- fair wages
- good jobs
- decent work
- decent jobs
- fair contract
- fair collective agreement
- fairness
- free collective bargaining (with the implication that it results in decent or fair wages, good jobs or decent work or decent jobs)
- middle class (which includes all the above categories)
- corporations should pay their fair share of taxes.
- Good public sector or public services vs. bad private sector
- Social justice
These phrases have been created by social reformers or social democrats with little thought behind them, but to refute such phrases that hide the reality of workers’ lives and experiences requires an enormous amount of effort (to which this blog attests).
The Abolitionary 