7 ms·

I'd be curious if everyone is also experiencing the so called "the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" in the same way Crichton describes. In my own areas of expertise -

by cjlars 7y ago

I'd be curious if everyone is also experiencing the so called "the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" in the same way Crichton describes. In my own areas of expertise -- data analysis and economics -- the answer is "Yes, very much so". Certainly there are pockets of high quality writing, but that mostly comes from experts writing on their own blogs in their own areas of expertise, or from periodic guest articles by the same experts. Mainstream economics writing is, as a rule, terrible. Statistical literacy is arguably even worse. What's it like for everyone else? What's your area of expertise and is this endemic to your field?

arthurjj 7y ago
Yes I had this exact experience. Since the news can't report correctly the things I do understand I have to assume they are misreporting the things I don't understand. Generally this means if I want to learn about a new subject I need to find the experts in the fields blog or read a book.
yellowapple 7y ago
I experience it all the time when reading / watching / listening to news reports about technology, often rather visibly rolling my eyes at their nonsensical depictions of how things work. I don't, however, feel like that automatically invalidates the articles on other subjects. It's possible (probable, even) that different news outlets will have different specializations - different strong and weak categories - and that tech might be a weak spot while, say, local events might be a strong spot. After all, I certainly ain't an expert on, say, politics or medicine or economics, so why should I expect journalists to be experts in technology? The answer to that rhetorical question, of course, is that it's the job of a news publication to hire people who can competently report on the topics they cover, or else to not attempt to cover those topics. But that still doesn't invalidate the other articles automatically; it just means I should get a second opinion :)
snowwrestler 7y ago
IMO the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect” maybe should be titled the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Affect” in many cases since the people complaining about it are often in the position to fix, but don’t. Instead they complain about it. To be more specific, if you think reporters are getting things wrong, you can call them and tell them what the real scoop is; most reporters are very easy to get ahold of, and would to get the real scoop. The reality is that most people who really know what they are talking about, don’t like talking to the press. They either consider it a waste of their time, or have an agenda and are only interested in talking to reporters to advance that agenda. In fact I think a lot of the times people think reporters are “getting it wrong,” it is at least partially because the reporting doesn’t comport with their view on things. Economics would be a classic example of a discipline full of differing theories and schools about how to interpret the basic measurable facts (or even how facts should be measured).
vpribish 7y ago
my goodness, yes. My background is aerospace engineering, software engineering, and finance. Here on hacker news, the software discussion is good, aerospace is terrible, and finance/investing is teeth-gnashingly, garment-rendingly hopeless. Despite this I do read lots of the health and wellness discussions - and have no idea whether they are really any good.
- rayiner 7y ago
  As an AE major, what aerospace discussion do you think is terrible?
  - NikolaeVarius 7y ago
    AE myself. Reading the discussion on the 737Max incident generally is extremely painful. Also anything involving electric airplanes
    - NoodleIncident 7y ago
      It would be a lot quicker for you to have posted your own interpretation of the incident, so that everyone could compare their own views with it at once. But, I'll post the version of events I gathered anyway: * Boeing wants to make a new plane, by pretending it's a "small" modification of their existing plane. (don't have to get certified; the old plane designs wouldn't get certified today; costs a lot to certify and re-train; take your pick) * One of the regulations they have to stay within is that the plane shouldn't pitch its nose up without any pilot input in that direction. (Maybe it was more specific than that; something about requiring more force to pitch higher up?) * Some airplanes comply with this requirement because they comply with the laws of physics. (Including presumably the original 737; otherwise this system wouldn't be new, right?) Not so the 737Max. * The system that caused the crash was meant to comply with the above. If the aircraft was pitched up, it applied a force on the controls down. (every 10 seconds or so?) * One of the problems was that there were only 2 sensors feeding into this system. If you have 3 sensors, a single failure can be outvoted; if you have only 2 that disagree, no matter what you try, you'll get it wrong in some cases * Something something software. We've already established we're working with too few sensors to be safe, and the system applies force intermittently every 10 seconds, so it's hard to even tell that it's a problem. Who cares how the software works? * Because of the original desire to pass through this new plane under the same certification, there was no new pilot training that mentioned this system. There was some sort of optional indicator, I think, too? The output of the broken system was also intermittent, so it was hard for pilots to quickly realize what was happening.
craigkilgo 7y ago
I feel like I have noticed this for years and never realized it had a name. I honestly think it happens in almost every field.
mikedilger 7y ago
I've only been in the newspaper once regarding a finance company collapse (I was a customer) and I remember two problems. First, I was motivated by the questioning to couch my story as one of hardship (it wasn't really, but clearly that is what they wanted) and I complied. Second, when it was in print they quoted me almost correctly but framed the quote entirely wrongly giving it a different meaning. I suspect that the reporter understood at the time what I had meant, but when reading her notes later on didn't remember the context and recreated a wrong context to save the quote.
oppositelock 7y ago
It's impossible to avoid the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect across all possible topics - at some point we will defer to a perceived expert, since we simply don't have the time or energy to vet everything ourselves, and that's totally ok and normal. However, when we open our mouths about something to other people, we better have put in that due diligence, or we'll propagate that misinformation. I've been working in tech for a long time, and have several areas of expertise; distributed systems, realtime systems, visual simulation, etc, and I've also been studying economics for a long time. My bullshit detector goes off frequently, but much more so when reading things about "soft sciences", like economics, where there is much more room for opinion. In areas where you can run repeatable experiments, you prove your statements that way, but when no proof is possible, and all evidence is observational, the BS spews much more freely.
base698 7y ago
Yes, starting with my youth in computing and video games. Following my hobbies in aviation and skydiving. It's routine to find accidents that are 100% inaccurate when reporting the cause.
asdff 7y ago
I'm in biology, and articles routinely overstate findings or misunderstand the significance. I get it though. A lot of people are enthusiastic about biology, but it takes years of study to get a handle on the foundational knowledge make sense of the field, longer still to actually gauge significance of things. If you don't have that background, you are going to whiff on your summary story. I don't mind that so much (aside from the anti-vax anti-gmo etc. etc. loony articles, those I detest of course), because that sort of ignorant enthusiasm is what got me into the field in the first place.

by cjlars 7y ago

arthurjj 7y ago

Yes I had this exact experience. Since the news can't report correctly the things I do understand I have to assume they are misreporting the things I don't understand. Generally this means if I want to learn about a new subject I need to find the experts in the fields blog or read a book.

yellowapple 7y ago

I experience it all the time when reading / watching / listening to news reports about technology, often rather visibly rolling my eyes at their nonsensical depictions of how things work. I don't, however, feel like that automatically invalidates the articles on other subjects. It's possible (probable, even) that different news outlets will have different specializations - different strong and weak categories - and that tech might be a weak spot while, say, local events might be a strong spot. After all, I certainly ain't an expert on, say, politics or medicine or economics, so why should I expect journalists to be experts in technology? The answer to that rhetorical question, of course, is that it's the job of a news publication to hire people who can competently report on the topics they cover, or else to not attempt to cover those topics. But that still doesn't invalidate the other articles automatically; it just means I should get a second opinion :)

snowwrestler 7y ago

IMO the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect” maybe should be titled the “Gell-Mann Amnesia Affect” in many cases since the people complaining about it are often in the position to fix, but don’t. Instead they complain about it. To be more specific, if you think reporters are getting things wrong, you can call them and tell them what the real scoop is; most reporters are very easy to get ahold of, and would to get the real scoop. The reality is that most people who really know what they are talking about, don’t like talking to the press. They either consider it a waste of their time, or have an agenda and are only interested in talking to reporters to advance that agenda. In fact I think a lot of the times people think reporters are “getting it wrong,” it is at least partially because the reporting doesn’t comport with their view on things. Economics would be a classic example of a discipline full of differing theories and schools about how to interpret the basic measurable facts (or even how facts should be measured).

vpribish 7y ago

my goodness, yes. My background is aerospace engineering, software engineering, and finance. Here on hacker news, the software discussion is good, aerospace is terrible, and finance/investing is teeth-gnashingly, garment-rendingly hopeless. Despite this I do read lots of the health and wellness discussions - and have no idea whether they are really any good.

rayiner 7y ago
As an AE major, what aerospace discussion do you think is terrible?
- NikolaeVarius 7y ago
  AE myself. Reading the discussion on the 737Max incident generally is extremely painful. Also anything involving electric airplanes
  - NoodleIncident 7y ago
    It would be a lot quicker for you to have posted your own interpretation of the incident, so that everyone could compare their own views with it at once. But, I'll post the version of events I gathered anyway: * Boeing wants to make a new plane, by pretending it's a "small" modification of their existing plane. (don't have to get certified; the old plane designs wouldn't get certified today; costs a lot to certify and re-train; take your pick) * One of the regulations they have to stay within is that the plane shouldn't pitch its nose up without any pilot input in that direction. (Maybe it was more specific than that; something about requiring more force to pitch higher up?) * Some airplanes comply with this requirement because they comply with the laws of physics. (Including presumably the original 737; otherwise this system wouldn't be new, right?) Not so the 737Max. * The system that caused the crash was meant to comply with the above. If the aircraft was pitched up, it applied a force on the controls down. (every 10 seconds or so?) * One of the problems was that there were only 2 sensors feeding into this system. If you have 3 sensors, a single failure can be outvoted; if you have only 2 that disagree, no matter what you try, you'll get it wrong in some cases * Something something software. We've already established we're working with too few sensors to be safe, and the system applies force intermittently every 10 seconds, so it's hard to even tell that it's a problem. Who cares how the software works? * Because of the original desire to pass through this new plane under the same certification, there was no new pilot training that mentioned this system. There was some sort of optional indicator, I think, too? The output of the broken system was also intermittent, so it was hard for pilots to quickly realize what was happening.

craigkilgo 7y ago

I feel like I have noticed this for years and never realized it had a name. I honestly think it happens in almost every field.

mikedilger 7y ago

I've only been in the newspaper once regarding a finance company collapse (I was a customer) and I remember two problems. First, I was motivated by the questioning to couch my story as one of hardship (it wasn't really, but clearly that is what they wanted) and I complied. Second, when it was in print they quoted me almost correctly but framed the quote entirely wrongly giving it a different meaning. I suspect that the reporter understood at the time what I had meant, but when reading her notes later on didn't remember the context and recreated a wrong context to save the quote.

oppositelock 7y ago

It's impossible to avoid the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect across all possible topics - at some point we will defer to a perceived expert, since we simply don't have the time or energy to vet everything ourselves, and that's totally ok and normal. However, when we open our mouths about something to other people, we better have put in that due diligence, or we'll propagate that misinformation. I've been working in tech for a long time, and have several areas of expertise; distributed systems, realtime systems, visual simulation, etc, and I've also been studying economics for a long time. My bullshit detector goes off frequently, but much more so when reading things about "soft sciences", like economics, where there is much more room for opinion. In areas where you can run repeatable experiments, you prove your statements that way, but when no proof is possible, and all evidence is observational, the BS spews much more freely.

base698 7y ago

Yes, starting with my youth in computing and video games. Following my hobbies in aviation and skydiving. It's routine to find accidents that are 100% inaccurate when reporting the cause.

asdff 7y ago

I'm in biology, and articles routinely overstate findings or misunderstand the significance. I get it though. A lot of people are enthusiastic about biology, but it takes years of study to get a handle on the foundational knowledge make sense of the field, longer still to actually gauge significance of things. If you don't have that background, you are going to whiff on your summary story. I don't mind that so much (aside from the anti-vax anti-gmo etc. etc. loony articles, those I detest of course), because that sort of ignorant enthusiasm is what got me into the field in the first place.