This theory was exposed in two stages, in 2010 and 2014 by the Italian blogger known under the pseudonym of Uriel Fanelli, who I followed with interest in the narrative style.
I hope it won't hurt if I bring it back here because, in addition to finding it interesting and quite spot on, it came back to my mind when I took care of dismantling some hoaxes / fake news / inaccuracies on the alleged damage from exposure to electromagnetic waves, article that you find here.
This theory has been expressed in a similar and certainly more concise way, by the Italian programmer Alberto Brandolini, under the name of "Bullshit asymmetric principle", and whose statement is more or less this: The amount of energy necessary to refute a bullshit is at least an order of magnitude higher than that needed to produce it.
If you think about it, and as I have experienced on my skin, this is absolutely true. Fighting to refute some wrong information, posted on youtube and facebook, I found myself spending a lot of time and energy, looking for every SCIENTIFIC article, every opinion, every study, which were both equal and contrary to what I knew, and then examine them all, to check what feedback they had had in the scientific community and what criticisms ... a big job, in short.
After replying to my virtual interlocutors, bringing links or information in some way verified (by me, with the expenditure of my energy), I received (IN A FEW MINUTES) answers containing other links or topics, now identical to the previous ones, now completely disconnected from these, based on different evidence, on different concepts, which they wanted to pass as related to the starting assumption.
With this I perceived the absolute asymmetry between the time I spent on the topic and what the others dedicated to it. It should be added that my scientific training gives me a much higher than average information analysis capacity
Here I report the 2014 formulation of Uriel Fanelli's Theory, hoping (although I don't believe it very much) that someone will recognize their behavior in it. If even one of the people affected by the known cognitive bias of believing ONLY the information that confirms their ideas, then these will not have been wasted bytes ... ?
Shit Mountain Theory © Uriel Fanelli (translated by me)
I receive, on a regular basis, emails asking me what happened to the "mountain of shit theory" that I wrote years ago to suggest a liveable approach to all the junkies like "seigniorage", "schietti's engine", and all the other bullshits grillini's style that are met on the Internet today. I do not remember it by heart, but having the concepts, I can re-enunciate it today, for those who continue to request it.
So let's start with a working hypothesis.
One hundred thousand million monkeys typing randomly on a keyboard will end up writing the best novel in history if they beat for enough time. The absolute work.
This seems comforting, almost an invitation to allow millions of monkeys to type on a keyboard. The trouble is that the statement does not talk about side effects. One hundred thousand million monkeys typing at random on a keyboard will produce the best novel in history, but they will also produce a catastrophic, cataclysmic, gigantic, endless, MOUNTAIN OF SHIT.
And this is what is happening today, in the democratic world, directed by the "people". By the time they were limited and could only read the mass media, or could only listen to them, everything was fine, or almost. There were, however, elites who hit the keys, and even if you were not sure that they would write the best novel in history, a certain quality was still guaranteed.
When the monkeys started tapping the keys, and the problem seemed almost approachable, there were people, called "debunkers", who started to challenge them. People like Attivissimo, Piero Angela or others, who came to mind that, by rolling up their sleeves, anyone could be properly informed about everything.
There was a basic mistake in this idea of debunking, and it was very simple: those who proposed to inform better had studied. Who was to inform, however, no. And the optimistic hypothesis of the debunkers was that information was enough to understand. Which is the same idea of the charlatans, who always say the same thing: "inquire yourself". Without anyone to tell them: no, getting information is not worth a shit, what you need is to study.
But especially, without anyone to point out to them that inquiring inside a mountain of shit produced by monkeys who beat at random serves only to read shit. That is, to nothing.
This is the reason why I NEVER start debunking the bullshit of chemtrails, seigniorage, aliens, and all the other bullshit, and if you prefer, more analytically:
The economic factor, that is: to beat a charlatan you need an expert.
When all the monkeys beat bullshit, if you want to deny them you have to call an expert. The trouble is that millions of monkeys who write bullshit do it voluntarily and for free. The expert instead has a cost. Even if you had a qualified expert for each monkey, the difference in cost would make it cheaper to fill the internet with shit than it is cheaper to clean it up.
As if that were not enough, the incompetent monkey does not accept being denied by an ape his equal. No: he wants an expert, (and if the expert denies then the expert is discussed), and the reason he does it is that he knows that an expert costs much more than he does. The fool who is softening the Italian internet with chemtrails does not accept that any person says "bullshit", he claims that very expensive parliamentary commissions are created, he demands the best experts in aviation, chemistry, physics, meteorology.
This is obvious: he, who is dedicated to bullshit 24/7, can appear on TV at the simple attendance token, while an expert, besides being more expensive, also has other things to do in life. For example, go to work.
The a-disciplinarity of the charlatan.
If a charlatan talks to you about chemtrails, and you bring up an aviation expert, he replies with the percentage of barium. And then you need an expert in chemical measurements of the atmosphere. If you also pointed out that worldwide production of barium is not enough to put all that barium in that atmosphere, they will bring up numbers that multiply it by a thousand. And then you will have to bring an expert in mineralogy and commodities market to the field. But as soon as the charlatan is disgraced, he will bring out the osmosis and the nuclear fusion that produces barium. Then you will need a nuclear physicist, who will tell you that barium is used in fission for reactors but not in fusion. Then - always the same person - he will bring up Tesla and free energy, and you will have to bring to the field a historian of science who knows the work of tesla.
But it is always and only ONE person to talk about all these subjects. This means that, while ALWAYS asks for the greatest expert in the world to be proven wrong, the charlatan - without being an expert on anything - easily ranges between dozens and dozens of fields of knowledge. This multiplies the amount of costs needed for debunking out of all proportion.
The cost asymmetry is evident: you need a whole team of experts to debunk a single guy who is not an expert in any of the fields he cites. And he will jump from pole to branch continuously, from quantum physics to tesla to atmospheric physics to black holes to neurology, without setting any limits.
The inner push.
why do these monkeys hit the keys? Why are they convinced they are being spied on by aliens? Why do they buy "diamond water"? Why do they believe in the conspiracy against humanity? Simple. Because their life has gone to hell.
These are what can be called "underachiever", people whose existence has concluded nothing. Unhappy people for an existence that has no satisfaction, frustrating, poor, empty outlets. The reason why they adhere to these theories, the reason why they make themselves the bearers, is that if you take away the big plot, if you take away the evil multinationals, if you take away the aliens, the chemtrails, the seigniorage, the 'euro, these poor people can no longer justify, first of all with themselves, their own failure, economic and existential.
They cannot justify the wife who fled with someone except with the gay conspiracy against the family, because it is the only excuse that does not say "you are a man of little value". They cannot explain their own economic failure to themselves except with the big world order of Bildberg, because otherwise they would have to say "because I can't do anything for which someone would pay me".
The strength that drives them to believe in these things is the need to live with their own failure.
The strength that drives them to become apostles of these theories is the desire to make others believe the same justification given to them.
So do not delude yourself: they will always come to the attack. They will never stop. Nothing pushes a man forward as much as a failure behind him. You will run out of energies long before them.
Here Uriel goes on to explain that - according to him - the best way to combat this fact is simply to admit that such a "conspiracy" exists, that you are part of it and that the new order that will result from it is a good and right thing. And these are his conclusions, if you do this:
And the mountain of shit deflates.
If you have them around and you have to get them off, it's the best way. Also because, as soon as they realize they have a real conspiracy representative in front of them, they realize that they have always taken it for granted that they would never meet one in person.
And they will realize that they don't know what to do in the case.
That is, they are only screaming in the wind.
Uriel Fanelli, Saturday 1st November 2014