3 ms·
I'm reminded once more of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, although it's interesting to think about how this plays out when viral social media gets involved. http
by mattnewport 8y ago
I'm reminded once more of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, although it's interesting to think about how this plays out when viral social media gets involved.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
"Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."
- lainga 8y agoOne wonders what sources Mayer (author of the New Yorker article) had, or thought she had.
- losteric 8y agoDon't forget the Dunning-Kruger effect - sometimes the reader scoffs because they reversed cause and effect, or saw a correlation that doesn't exist ("vaccines cause autism!") Additionally, quality on one subject by one author says little about overall quality. Maybe the author was forced to fill in for a sick subject matter expert, or rush re-writing the article after a hard drive failure, or just don't care because layoffs are coming... maybe the paper poorly interviewed their sports writer because sports is a filler for that paper. Maybe lots of things. If you're trying to avoid Gell-Mann Amnesia, you need to trends of quality not single data-points.
- starpilot 8y agoThe Gell-Mann Dunning Kruger Betteridge Godwin Effect. Did I miss any?
- Intermernet 8y agoHeadline: "Did The Nazis Cause Hitler?"