Von Daniken’s Law

I’ve lately become a fan of the Pharyngula blog on ScienceBlogs.com. It’s an excellent blog on science, biology and related — which is increasingly coming to mean “political” — topics. (The arguments that typically arise between the blog regulars and, well, people who come there to argue, are textbook examples of the difference between reason and irrationality, so the debates are one-sided even though one side doesn’t realize it.) Reading Pharyngula has been an educational experience for me: Previously, I had no idea that there was an anti-vaccine movement, much less what kind of a diffuse misinformation campaign supported it.

What’s even more worrying is that these disputes are examples of the increasing prevalence of irrationality in public discourse today. We aren’t just seeing violent disagreement, we’re seeing complete fabrication of data in support of exotic fantasies and conspiracy theories. 9-11 “Truthers”, Obama “Birthers”, creationists and autism/vaccine fanatics are the most prominent amongst this new wave of irrationality but there are many others. I find their enthusiasm for fabrication and their willingness to lie, deceive and misrepresent in order to support their views more troubling than the views themselves.

Many years ago, in Atlantic Monthly, I believe, I read a short a critique of Erich von Däniken’s “Chariots of the Gods?”, a book based on the premise that aliens had visited earth long ago and were responsible for Stonehenge, the statues of Easter Island, the pyramids of Egypt, etc. “Chariots of the Gods?” was, needless to say, unmitigated rubbish. The author of the Atlantic piece, an actual scientist, selected one paragraph from the book and researched and disproved its claims one by one. He noted that it took him most of a working day to research and debunk Von Däniken’s misinformation. One paragraph of misinformation.

He certainly didn’t get paid as much for that article as he would have in a normal day of work, nor could he expect to get paid for debunking a second paragraph the next day. Furthermore, disproving wondrous claims of extraterrestrial visits is nowhere near as glamorous as making those claims, nor does it get as much media attention: “Chariots of the Gods?” is still widely known, but very few people have heard of “The Space Gods Revealed”, a detailed refutation of that book by Ronald Story (not the author of the Atlantic piece).

What struck me in was the difference in the amount of time it took to disprove fabricated claims compared to the time it takes to make them. Thus we have what I call “Von Däniken’s Law”: It takes just a few seconds to invent a lie, but vastly longer to prove it is a lie.

This fundamental lack of balance is what makes “Von Däniken’s Law” so worrying: It brings the concept of asymmetrical warfare into the information battle being waged for the hearts and minds of the public on important issues of the day. The “Von Däniken Effect”, if you will, is exploited by the Truthers, Birthers, Anti-Vaxxers, etc.  It’s possible to invent evidence for a fantastic “proof” of a threat, conspiracy or outrage in just a few minutes … if you’re willing to lie. It will take those whom you oppose much, much longer to research and disprove your claims; and they’d better be very meticulous in their disproof, because any little slip they make can be seized upon as “evidence” of a cover-up.

The advent if the World Wide Web may have reduced the time necessary to discredit of a particular piece of misinformation, but it has also provided an equivalent decrease in the amount of time required for the dissemination of the lie. Given the great time and effort needed to research verifiable factual information versus the ease and speed of simply making something up, the advantage still falls to the fabricators. It’s easy to provide more evidence than your opponent when you can simply invent the evidence and enjoy the benefits of your opponent’s hands being tied by the time and effort he must expend to prove the falsehood of your evidence. The lie can “win” by sheer volume.

That’s not to say all the conspiracy theorists on line are deliberately using Von Daniken’s Law. In fact, most of them are (unfortunately) sincere in their fantasies as far as I can tell. But I do get the suspicion that a few are at least subconsciously aware of the asymmetry inherent in their conflict and are happy to use it to their advantage.

I can’t say I have a solution to this problem of asymmetry, but “Von Däniken’s Law” is certainly something skeptics and rational thinkers need to be aware of.