A descent into fractal wrongness, where every denial of evidence demands a deeper denial of reality itself
Fractal Wrongness
noun
- A condition in which a belief or claim is not merely incorrect, but structured such that each attempt to examine or correct it reveals deeper layers of misunderstanding beneath the original error, recursively extending into further distortions of knowledge.
- An epistemic pattern where error propagates across scales of reasoning, producing a self-similar cascade of falsehoods.
DSM (Provisional, not recognized):
Fractal Wrongness Syndrome (FWS)
Diagnostic Criteria:
A. Persistent adherence to claims demonstrably contradicted by established empirical evidence.
B. When confronted with corrective information, the subject generates additional claims that are independently false and structurally dependent on the initial error.
C. The pattern repeats across multiple explanatory layers, forming a recursive system of belief maintenance.
D. Marked resistance to falsification, often accompanied by appeals to conspiracy, personal intuition, or selective interpretation of data.
E. Significant impairment in reasoning across scientific, historical, or logical domains.
I first encountered the phrase in passing, almost tossed off. AronRa, in one of his long dismantlings of bad ideas, described certain arguments as not just wrong but wrong in a way that compounds, that multiplies (AronRa, Various Lectures on Science Denial, 2018, AronRa, Not Even Wrong, YouTube, 2026). And I remember thinking, sitting there with a mug going cold beside me, why not run with this. Why not name the shape of it. Because it has a shape. It repeats.
Time for another Americano.
Fractal wrongness is not a simple mistake. A simple mistake is a wrong turn on a clear road. Fractal wrongness is a map drawn incorrectly, then defended, then elaborated, until every road leads somewhere that cannot exist. It is turtles all the way down, except the turtles themselves are misidentified, mismeasured, and misunderstood, and beneath them there are more turtles that refuse taxonomy entirely. Pratchett would have appreciated the absurd persistence of it (Pratchett, Small Gods, 1992).
Let’s take a YEC (young-earth creationist) I know as an example.
Bent Covid starts, as they often do, with something that sounds almost reasonable if you squint at it sideways. Radiometric dating is unreliable. It lands with a kind of practiced weariness, as if they are pointing out a crack everyone else has politely ignored. But almost immediately the ground shifts. Why is it unreliable? Because decay rates may have changed dramatically in the past. And there it is, the first descent. You can hear the confidence in it, the sense that this solves something, closes a loop. It does not. It opens several more. Because if decay rates changed, then the constants that govern them cannot be stable. So the argument moves again, down a layer, now claiming that physical constants themselves are not fixed over time. That is not a small adjustment. That is the floor coming loose.
From there, the argument does not slow down. If constants are unstable, then the natural laws they produce cannot be relied upon. Gravity, electromagnetism, nuclear forces, all become provisional, subject to unknown shifts. Bent does not usually linger here. It is an uncomfortable place, even within the argument. Instead, it slides one layer deeper into abstraction. Natural laws can vary unpredictably. And if that is true, what remains? No consistent framework governing physical reality. At that point the claim eats itself. The original complaint about radiometric dating requires stable relationships to even register as a complaint. Without a consistent framework, there is nothing left to measure, nothing left to distrust. I find myself pausing here, almost hoping the chain stops, but it never does. Because beneath that final claim there is always another justification waiting, another quiet invention to keep the structure upright. The pattern recurs, smaller and stranger each time. The argument does not end. It just keeps finding new ground to be wrong on.
I have seen this pattern enough times that I instinctively brace for the second layer. The first layer is almost polite. Flat Earth, for example. The planet is flat. That claim is already in conflict with centuries of observation, navigation, physics. But the second layer arrives almost instantly. Photographs of Earth are fake. Satellites are lies. Gravity is reinterpreted or discarded. By the third layer, the structure warps further. A global conspiracy must exist, coordinating scientists, governments, engineers, airline pilots, all maintaining a shared deception across decades. Each step down requires more machinery, more denial, more invention. Each step feels, to the believer, like reinforcement. To everyone else, it reads as collapse (West & Bergstrom, Calling Bullshit, 2020).
Creationism offers another geometry of the same condition. The Earth is a few thousand years old. That is the initial statement. It collides with geology, with radiometric dating, with astrophysics. So further layers form. Radiometric decay rates must be unreliable. Fossil records must be misinterpreted. Light from distant galaxies must have been created in transit, already traveling. Each of these is not just wrong but demands further wrongness underneath it. A young Earth requires a rewritten universe. Not one fix, but countless patches, none holding for long (Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, 2009).
I sometimes think of geocentrism here, not the historical model which had coherence in its time, but the revived insistence that Earth sits fixed at the center of the cosmos. It carries the same recursive burden. Observations of planetary motion must be explained away. Relativity must be rejected or selectively misread. Entire frameworks of physics become optional suggestions. The cost of maintaining the initial claim grows, but that cost is never paid all at once. It accrues in layers, quietly, almost expertly.
Hollow Earth is even more illustrative because it leans into imagination. The Earth is hollow, containing interior landscapes, perhaps civilizations. To sustain this, gravity must behave differently within a spherical shell. Seismic data must be dismissed. Satellite measurements of mass and density must be recast as fabrications. Each explanatory attempt reveals another gap, another adjustment. It becomes a kind of narrative carpentry. Patch over here. Reinforce there. The structure holds, if you never step back and look at the whole thing.
I can feel my own impatience in this. That is part of the problem too. Fractal wrongness is exhausting to engage because it is not linear. You do not correct one point and move on. You fall downward with it. You respond to a claim and find three more waiting beneath it. How do you argue with an idea that sheds skins faster than you can peel them back? Do you pick a layer and stay there? Do you map the whole descent?
This is where willful ignorance enters, not as an insult but as a mechanism. At some point the errors are not incidental. They are chosen. Information is filtered, sources curated, contradictions avoided. There is a quiet decision to not know. Or to know differently. Willful blindness is less about lack of access and more about selective attention. You can see it in how evidence is handled. Accept what confirms. Reframe what challenges. Ignore what cannot be bent.
I have an essay in the works (may already be published) this is something adjacent to this once, circling the idea that people do not just hold beliefs, they build structures to protect them. The structure then takes on a life of its own, requiring maintenance, expansion, constant defense. When the structure is fractal, maintenance becomes expansion. Every challenge adds another layer.
There is a rhetorical question that keeps landing in my head. At what point does the effort to remain wrong exceed the effort it would take to reconsider? I do not have a clean answer. I suspect the boundary moves.
The Pacific Northwest breeds a certain patience. Long rain, long conversations, a tendency to let ideas sit before reacting. Even here, I find that patience tested. Not because I cannot grasp the claims, but because I can see how far down they go. The recursion is the point. It allows belief to survive by constantly moving the target, redefining the ground beneath it.
So I want to turn outward a little. Not tidy, not resolved.
Where have you seen this? Not just obvious examples like flat Earth or young Earth, but smaller, quieter instances. Workplace myths. Family lore. Things that unravel the moment you tug on them, yet somehow persist. How do you deal with it when it shows up across the table from you? Do you pick one layer and anchor there? Do you follow it down until both of you are lost? Do you step away?
I do not think there is a single strategy that works. I do think naming the pattern helps. Fractal wrongness. A shape to recognize. A warning sign, maybe.
Or maybe just a way of saying, gently, that this is not one mistake. It is many, stacked, repeating, self-similar. And if you are not careful, you will be arguing with turtles for the rest of the evening.
References
- AronRa, Various Lectures on Science Denial, 2018
- AronRa, Not Even Wrong, YouTube, 2026.
- Pratchett, T., Small Gods, 1992
- West, J. D., & Bergstrom, C. T., Calling Bullshit, 2020
- Coyne, J., Why Evolution Is True, 2009
- CeleryKills, Willful Blindness: The Quiet Mechanics of Deliberate Ignorance, n.d.
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