In political and corporate communication, vacuity is often rewarded over insight. Research in media studies demonstrates that message repetition, even without substantive content, significantly increases perceived credibility and importance (Hasher et al. 1977). Political scientists have shown that rhetorical confidence is often taken as a proxy for expertise, regardless of factual accuracy (Petty and Cacioppo 1986). Studies of bureaucratic systems reveal that environments which privilege risk avoidance and consensus allow those who “speak much but say little” to rise disproportionately, since the noise of speech itself acts as evidence of participation and engagement (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Graeber 2015). The consequence is a systemic amplification of communicative emptiness: words circulate not to convey meaning but to reproduce authority.
The philosophy behind this is clear. Attention does not flow to depth but to continuity. A signal that keeps going—even when it says nothing—is easier to track than one that pauses, hesitates, or acknowledges uncertainty. In this way, silence becomes dangerous: it leaves space for doubt. Those who endlessly say nothing fill that space, drawing power from noise alone. It is a perverse logic of communication systems: transmissibility selects for emptiness because emptiness is flexible, repeatable, and difficult to challenge without revealing the futility of the entire exchange.
The systemic consequence is degradation of decision-making and erosion of trust. Institutions populated by those who master the art of saying nothing become increasingly fragile, sustained only by the circulation of noise that conceals the absence of substance. Over time, such systems lose adaptive capacity, as meaningful signals are drowned out by repetitive patterns of empty speech. The result is not only inefficiency but a dangerous brittleness: a culture in which authority is maintained through noise while truth and understanding are progressively excluded.
References
- Graeber, D. (2015). The Utopia of Rules: On Technology, Stupidity, and the Secret Joys of Bureaucracy. Melville House.
- Hasher, L., Goldstein, D., & Toppino, T. (1977). “Frequency and the Conference of Referential Validity.” Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 16(1), 107–112.
- Meyer, J.W. & Rowan, B. (1977). “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363.
- Petty, R.E. & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). Communication and Persuasion: Central and Peripheral Routes to Attitude Change. Springer.
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