Bad information outcompetes good when community welfare seems to require it

Evidence

Ultimately, Gresham’s law would work in reverse in the circulation of statements about Islam, but it was a long time before the good drove out the bad, and until the end of the seventeenth century a general tendency to prefer false statements persisted. Credulity was all but universal, for as long as the good of the community seemed — however mistakenly — to require it. — Norman Daniel, Islam and the West, 1394

Categorization

• XREF: Reverses Gresham’s law from economics; parallels misinformation literature and why false claims persist when socially functional.