But one contributor drew attention to Brandolini's Law. Here are some snippets from Wikipedia:
Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
Origins
It was publicly formulated the first time in January 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer. Brandolini stated that he was inspired by reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" right before watching an Italian political talk show with former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and journalist Marco Travaglio.
Burden of proof
When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo. This is also stated in Hitchens's razor, which declares that "what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence." Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion – "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" – which is known as the Sagan standard.
ECREE
The Sagan standard is a neologism abbreviating the aphorism that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (ECREE). It is named after science communicator Carl Sagan who used the exact phrase on his television program Cosmos.
The Sagan standard, according to Tressoldi (2011), "is at the heart of the scientific method, and a model for critical thinking, rational thought and skepticism everywhere".
ECREE is related to Occam's razor in the sense that according to such a heuristic, simpler explanations are preferred to more complicated ones. Only in situations where extraordinary evidence exists would an extraordinary claim be the simplest explanation.
Brandolini's Law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaBrandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
Origins
It was publicly formulated the first time in January 2013 by Alberto Brandolini, an Italian programmer. Brandolini stated that he was inspired by reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" right before watching an Italian political talk show with former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and journalist Marco Travaglio.
Similar concepts
In Economic Sophisms (1845, 1867), Bastiat expresses an early notion of this law:
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.
Other notable thinkers and philosophers have noted similar truths throughout history. In his 1786 Letters on Infidelity, George Horne writes that:
Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.
Mark Twain is sometimes erroneously quoted as saying that:
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
The yoga scholar-practitioners Mark Singleton and Borayin Larios write that several of their colleagues have "privately" described their "aversion to public debate" with non-scholars because of Brandolini's law.
In Economic Sophisms (1845, 1867), Bastiat expresses an early notion of this law:
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.
Other notable thinkers and philosophers have noted similar truths throughout history. In his 1786 Letters on Infidelity, George Horne writes that:
Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.
Mark Twain is sometimes erroneously quoted as saying that:
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
The yoga scholar-practitioners Mark Singleton and Borayin Larios write that several of their colleagues have "privately" described their "aversion to public debate" with non-scholars because of Brandolini's law.
When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo. This is also stated in Hitchens's razor, which declares that "what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence." Carl Sagan proposed a related criterion – "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" – which is known as the Sagan standard.
ECREE
The Sagan standard is a neologism abbreviating the aphorism that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" (ECREE). It is named after science communicator Carl Sagan who used the exact phrase on his television program Cosmos.
The Sagan standard, according to Tressoldi (2011), "is at the heart of the scientific method, and a model for critical thinking, rational thought and skepticism everywhere".
ECREE is related to Occam's razor in the sense that according to such a heuristic, simpler explanations are preferred to more complicated ones. Only in situations where extraordinary evidence exists would an extraordinary claim be the simplest explanation.
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I have written a lot on this blog in the past about Occam's Razor, Hitchens's Razor, Carl Sagan, scientific scepticism, the scientific method and the subversive appeal of the ruling hypothesis.
So what has all this got to do with Archaeological Myth-making and the creation of the extraordinary narrative developed by MPP of bluestone quarrying and transport, lost circles, Stonehenge aggrindizement, tribal relationships and power centres?
Quite a lot, actually. Just think about it.
1 comment:
Quite so, Brian.
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