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The irony of the Leave campaign's 'big lie' is that they could have painted the *actual* amount we send to the EU every week on the side of their bus and it would have had exactly the same effect. 1/
Human beings are really bad at big numbers. This is due to the fact that our cognitive functions are limited by perception. We have great intuition for small numbers because we see them all the time. Big numbers all look the same. 2/
In other words "We send the EU £170 million a week" - close to the actual amount (correct me if I'm wrong) - has the same power as "We send the EU £350 million a week" because all we hear is "We send the EU SHIT TONNES OF MONEY every week". 3/
The evil genius of getting a big number out there first is that it anchors the debate. Even if you argue with it - "It's not £350 million, it's £170 million" - all this does is reinforce the idea that an incomprehensibly large amount of money is paid every week. 4/
If anything, an accurate figure might have been more powerful on account of it being true. There's a lesson there. 5/
