Gresham's Law Quotes

Bad politics tends to drive out good politics, just as bad money drives out good money.

Historically, bad money always drives out good. Accordingly, if a central bank anywhere in the world sets up its currency to be backed by any kind of hard currency, it would cause people all around the world to desire that currency for their savings, rather than dollars.

Bad money drives out good money.

As has been the case with almost every new technology, from the telegraph to television, the rise of the Internet fed false expectations that it would create a new, more democratic, interactive politics. But blogging’s harsh, unfettered nature has coarsened politics. The fact that so many bloggers are essentially anonymous allows them to spew rancor, rumor, lies, and obscenities. Increasingly, the ­MSM (mainstream ­media) ­appear by contrast staid, centrist, boring, even responsible. ­Deadlines—­once daily, now without limit in the age of the Internet—­demand a constant stream of stories, diluting the quality and upping the rhetorical ante in the effort to grab ­attention, In an ­ever-­escalating rhetorical spiral, political discussion in the media and the blogosphere becomes harsher, sleazier. At the same time, the stories that stand out are the sensational and polarizing ones rather than the constructive, ­bridge-­building ones. A variation of Gresham’s law applies: Just as bad money drives out the good, bad rhetoric and sleazy politics drive ­out—­or at least eclipse and ­obscure—­the ­good.

When I first prepared this particular talk... I realized that my usual approach is usually critical. That is, a lot of the things that I do, that most people do, are because they hate something somebody else has done, or they hate that something hasn't been done. And I realized that informed criticism has completely been done in by the web. Because the web has produced so much uninformed criticism. It's kind of a Gresham's Law-bad money drives the good money out of circulation. Bad criticism drives good criticism out of circulation. You just can't criticize anything.

Debunking bad science should be constant obligation of the science community, even if it takes time away from serious research or seems to be a losing battle. One takes comfort from the fact there is no Gresham's laws in science. In the long run, good science drives out bad.