As the Sicilian proverb says:
“A word is like an arrow: once it has been shot, it cannot be taken back.”
“A parola è comu ‘a freccia: una vota scacciata, nun si po’ cchiù ripigghiari”
Brandolini’s Law and fake news
Formulated in a tweet by the Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini in 2013:
“The bullshit asymmetry: the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
it states that refuting nonsense requires at least ten times the energy needed to create it: a falsehood can be invented in seconds, exploiting prejudices and emotional triggers; disproving it demands research, evidence, and careful reasoning.
Why it happens
- Speed vs. rigour – inventing is quick, verifying is slow.
- Emotional appeal vs. accuracy – falsehoods capture attention instantly; truths often do not.
- Cognitive bias – an attractive falsehood is more easily accepted than a complex truth.
- Information entropy – falsehoods fragment into many variants, multiplying the work needed to correct them.
The three asymmetries
- Impact – dissemination amplifies the false more than any subsequent correction.
- Memory – the first piece of information sticks more than the correction.
- Perception – the originator of the falsehood often appears more convincing than the person who disproves it.
Concrete examples
Politics
A single speech may contain dozens of dubious claims that take days to fact-check.
Business
An unfounded rumour can destroy trust, and it may take months to rebuild it.
Online
Trolls can spread falsehoods rapidly across multiple platforms, while experts must dismantle them one by one.
Leadership and prevention
In business, an erroneous idea that becomes embedded in a team’s narrative can stall decisions, erode trust, and drain resources.
A leader must prevent this by setting high standards, fostering a culture of verification, and training people to recognise weak reasoning:
- Embed – firmly integrate the truth into official channels.
- Monitor – detect suspicious claims immediately.
- Observe – assess the source.
- Respond – correct with clear, verifiable data.