Brandolini's law (or the bullshit asymmetry principle) is an Internet adage coined in 2013 by Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini. It compares the considerable effort of debunking misinformation to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. The adage states:

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.[1][2]

The challenge of refuting bullshit does not come just from its time-consuming nature, but also from the challenge of defying and confronting one's community.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

Sure. Charlie Kirk was a fantastic example.

It's not worth the effort to break down their position, and present coherent arguments back to them. They'll just completely miss what you're trying to say, and blast back more incomprehensible BS. It's just raw, blind, ignorant anger, most of the time, we can't refute emotion with logic, they just don't hear it.

I try not to argue with people on the internet. Its a complete waste or time and im actually surprised by how many people do it.

I dont think you can change anyones mind with comments.

Thankfully the fediverse is still small enough that blocking people has a noticable effect. On reddit, for every person you block there's 4 more to take their place.

So far I only really experienced this with two people on the Fediverse. @SmartmanApps@programming.dev (I have no compunction about @ing him, I assume he's blocked me since he stopped replying to me ages ago - does that mean I win??) seems mainly to use the internet to further his incorrect beliefs about maths. He's a maths teacher, but his knowledge seems to run out around the end of high school maths (contradicting some high school maths), and he doesn't have the intellect to understand how maths beyond that point even works: he fundamentally doesn't understand what a mathematical definition is, for example, so when he reads standard sources he doesn't even understand how they contradict him.

Everyone else pales in comparison.

Went to the UK and the director was shitting on vegans. I said, "you can hate them but at least they're good for climate change" (I ignored mentioning I was a vegan in the past). Holy fuck, non stop verbal diarrhea. He said that global warming isn't true because scientists have agendas. Global warming is when seasons change (I think he was being funny or facetious about that). He also said eating meat had some carbon in their bones and that's good for the earth or some shit.

I wasn't able to get a word in. I did eventually say that his definition of climate change would be agreed by no one. Then he came at me again and eventually ended it with "well, you started it".

I said, "yes and let's end it and move on"

He did not and then said more random shit.

No, I've never tried interacting with myself like that.

Me, an intellectual:

I certainly get accused of being that person often enough, but I’m right >95% of the time because I don’t really argue unless I know what I’m talking about.

i feel like this is talking about me.

however it's not bullshit, it's often just another point of view, and people should get more exposed to that. it's not as if i'm being mean or obtuse either. people downvote me because it doesn't (yet) fit their world model

The fact that I'm a 2/10 isn't even the reason I'm so full of shit though.

That's like 5 out of 10 on reddit.. so yeah.

Thing is out here, there is less polarization and if you've got the links and the facts that are verifiable, people can and do go "Ah! I did not know that... thanks!" and mean it.

Which I love.

This reminds me of talking to tankies on Lemmy, which is probably a futile endeavour.

For example, they seem to think that Russia's imperialist invasion of Ukraine is justified. They think that Russia murdering Ukrainians with missiles and drones is justified. I can tell them that these actions are wrong, but they won't listen.