bullshit asymmetry principle

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle

If only some sort of engine could be built to harness that energy...

To infinity and beyond!

Here's an image of that for you:



Yes, how to harvest that energy....though actually, I want to better learn how to deflect the bullshit in the first place. Some kind of mental martial arts deflection, where an artful dodge just lets the crazy fly right by, harmless.

It is called having thick skin.

My Grandfather told me a long time ago, "People talk about you anyway, so you minds well just do what you feel is right, and let them talk."

The best way to rebuke someone is to be succesful.

I simply ignore the idiocy, they are not worth the time an answer would take, and they probably would want to continue to waste my time.

I don't know that I agree with the premise.

There are whole fields of Medicine and pseudo medicine and other things that I consider to be complete bullshit. All I have to do is tell people that. People who don't know me will shrug it off and those who do, will investigate for themselves, to see why I say it's bullshit. My kids will call me up, "Dad I just read such and such, is that bullshit.?" Then I give them an answer, with a very brief explanation. This sort of quick refuting only works with people who trust your opinion.

There are some people whose opinion I trust enough, that if they tell me a particular thing is bullshit, I may not investigate further.

I have a young brother who disputes things like gravity and the Earth being round. The whole family assumes that whatever comes out of him is bullshit, but sometimes we are surprised.

Travis Johnson wrote:The best way to rebuke someone is to be succesful.

Good one.   Something I made up a few decades ago:  productivity always trumps office politics.

paul wheaton wrote:The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

I very much agree with this.  And I think the observation is reinforced when I reflect that the first couple of most-obvious examples that come to my mind are cider press topics.  Doh!

There is very much a permies corollary that refuting bullshit here at permies is (a) likely to be "not nice" or (b) if it is possible to be done at all in a nice way, it will be two orders of magnitude more difficult instead of merely one.  

This is not a complaint!  Refuting bullshit is expressly not what Permies is for.  In particular, gentle souls talking about permaculture are hard to hear over the noise of bullshit refutation, nor do they tend to like that kind of noise.