It has been a recurrent experience in my life that big lies and errors - are much more resilient than little ones.
Everyone is pleased, indeed eager, to spot little errors, and little lies. Doing so gets one credit as a shrewd 'sceptic', maybe a wit - but such micro-concern amounts to little more than cynical, self-interested one-upmanship when the little lies are debated in an environment of Living a Big Lie.
I came across this first in science; where there were whole disciplines, whole areas of scientific research, which were wrong, useless, harmful - because they were based upon major errors.
And it was not long before I recognised that major errors pretty soon become major lies - because unrecognised and unrepented errors necessarily lead to the systematic abandonment of honesty - since people are so invested in the dishonesty that they cannot allow themselves to believe in the reality (and resilience of) major errors.
An example in which I was actively-engaged was Evidence-Based Medicine; which was built-upon the fundamental error of assuming that averages of large data sets necessarily provided guidance (and indeed the best guidance) on how to treat individual patients.
Perhaps the best known current example of a Big Error/Lie in 'science' is the hypothesis of human-caused (and human controllable) global warming by carbon dioxide. I don't suppose any error-lie in the history of the world has ever been as big as this one...
Or, at least, not until the birdemic lie of the past few months.
All of these Big Lies turn out to have a common source - which is the assumption that those who are most powerful in our nations and the world are well-motivated: that They want the best for Us.
Once that lie has been swallowed and assimilated, all other Big Lies follow - from EBM, through climate emergency, to the birdemic.
It turns-out (perhaps surprisingly) that despite decades of being lied-to by politicians, lied-to by the mass media, lied-to by all the major bureaucracies - the mass of people remain convinced of the basic good intent and honesty of politicians, the media and bureaucracies - so that lies are explained-away as errors, and evil intent is explained-away as incompetence.
And, apparently, nothing can change this assumption of Establishment Goodness - not even a global totalitarian takeover and the police-state lockdown of billions of people.
As I say, a Big Lie is much easier to believe, but more importantly harder to disbelieve, than a little lie.
