In a 3QuarksDaily post about Bullshit and Cons: Alberto Brandolini and Mark Twain Issue a Warning About Trump I came across Brandolini’s law of Refutation which states:
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.
This law or principle goes a long way to explaining why bullshit, conspiracy theories, and disinformation are so hard to refute. The very act of refutation becomes suspect as if you are protesting too much. The refuter is made to look like the person with an agenda that we should be skeptical of.
The corollary is that it is less work to lie about someone before they have accused you of lying than to try to refute the accusation. Better to accuse the media of purveying fake news early than to wait until they publish news about you.
As for AI hallucinations, which I believe should be called AI bullshit, we can imagine Rockwell’s corollary:
The amount of energy needed to correct for AI hallucinations in a prompted essay is an order of magnitude bigger than the work of just writing it yourself.