Controversy - Benford's Law of Controversy

Benford's Law of Controversy

Benford's law of controversy, as expressed by science fiction author Gregory Benford in 1980, states: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real (true) information available. In other words, the fewer facts are known to and agreed on by the participants, the more controversy there is, and the more is known the less controversy there is. Thus, for example, controversies in physics are limited to subject-areas where experiments cannot be carried out yet, whereas Benford's Law implies that controversy is inherent to politics, where communities must frequently decide on courses of action based on insufficient information.