11 ms·

Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next ar

by npstr 6y ago

Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next article completely forgetting how bad the reporting actually is - there is no reason to assume they do a better job on topics that one is not an expert in! I think this bias had a name but I can't remember it.

the-dude 6y ago
Gell-mann Amnesia : 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...
- mratsim 6y ago
  I'm surprised they don't even get the show business right, I thought many publications were owned or actually in the show business and so they would have many subject matter experts available.
  - the-dude 6y ago
    The have long found out, it does not matter.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  This always bugs me, because “science” is a giant spectrum of fields from astronomy to zoology. Nobody knows even a small portion of it, and yet we expect a few journalists to cover all of it, often on tight deadlines[0]. Politics is probably closer to many journalists’ backgrounds, and it changes slower—-last week’s background helps with this week’s scandal too. [0] The impetus for most articles is usually the publication of a new paper, but this always seems weird because it’s really more of a hook: papers are almost always incremental progress on a problem and most of the article ends up being background and context anyway.
  - arkades 6y ago
    As you pointed out in your footnote, science is a bad topic for journalism, intrinsically. Something like Scientific American is about as good as it gets for lay audiences - solicited longform articles from the relevant experts, meant for a general audience.
Apteris 6y ago
It's called Gell-Mann Amnesia. And the only reason I remember that is because it was mentioned in a short story written by Scott Alexander.
mrweasel 6y ago
I first heard this explained by John C. Dvorak and it has terrified me ever since. Originally I just believe that journalist just had a terrible understanding of IT, but when you think about it, there's no reason why it's just IT. Why would journalist have a better understanding of medicine, politics, climate, finance or any other topic covered. Basically you're left it a situation where you can only trust highly specialized publication, who hire subject matter experts and let them act as the journalist. This raises the question: Are journalists actually required?
- zozbot234 6y ago
  It's not just IT. You can definitely spot terrible understanding of stuff like policymaking/policy analysis and social science, business, etc. Exceptions do exist but they're rare and tend to be well-known on that account. (And I'm definitely not saying that an average journalist should be an expert in these things; what's missing is even the basic knowledge required to e.g. frame issues properly and provide missing information to aid comprehension.)
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  > This raises the question: Are journalists actually required? Depends. The alternative is bloggers. This situation is ugly. All sorts of motives are being tossed at the journalist, here, but it may be as simple as they think they have a “scoop,” which is pure gold, for journalists (especially young ones). That said, there are standards that journalists are supposed to meet; usually about things like the number of independent sources they use, and whatnot. It’s fairly obvious that many journalists don’t meet those standards, but they are supposed to. We’ve all seen what happens with bloggers. There’s good ones, which are basically the same as top-quality journalists, and there are bad ones, which are nightmares that make Joseph Goebbels smirk from his lava pool. I have been getting downright despondent over the quality of the writing in today’s journalists. I see at least three typos in pretty much every publication I read, every day. Sometimes, terrible ones, in the headline. I think it’s a shame that the first ones out the door were the editors.
  - VSerge 6y ago
otherme123 6y ago
From time to time the regional newspaper contacts my workplace for news (headers like "Business LLC is doing this thing to end world famine") to fill blank space. Every single time we try to be as exact as possible while leaving technicalities aside, but the reporters every single time manage to 1) extract a click-baity/sensationalist headline from an isolated phrase during the dialog and 2) gets 90% of the text slightly wrong on the limit of being a lie.
rswskg 6y ago
Dated a journalist who would ask me to explain tech things. Aghast, I asked if this was how she wrote about everything. It was. She's now a management consultant which explains alot.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Isn't it better that she's asking you rather than making up things?
  - rswskg 6y ago
    It was the barest of understandings. When I realised there is a class of people who make decisions on what journalists write, I realised how misaligned the 'tech zeitgeist' can be
    - catacombs 6y ago
      I'd like to know how you would explain a complicated topic to the average reader, all keeping it between 600-700 words, on a tight deadline, with quotes from a variety of people, and engaging enough to hold a reader's attention to know how this particular topic will impact their lives. These are the hurdles reporters face when reporting on complicated topics.
      - ameister14 6y ago
        Why do it in that format at all?
        catacombs 6y ago
        That's how stories are written. Short, succinct and informative enough to give the readers what they need for the day. Now, there are times when reporters work on "enterprise" pieces that dives fairly deep into a particular topic. Many national papers have investigative teams that churn out one or two stories A YEAR, but they are dense thorough. Perhaps that what you might enjoy reading.
jimmydddd 6y ago
Yes. Gell-Mann Amnesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#G...
gexla 6y ago
I wonder just how deep this rabbit hole goes? And how much of our lives is directed by misunderstandings, misinterpretations, bad translations, outright deception, etc. As a programmer I know that my the screen I'm looking at is the visual output of a house of cards. It's amazing the whole thing works. I suppose you might say the same about society in general. This makes me think of that Steve Jobs quote where he talks about poking things. I guess one reason why you can change things is because there's a low bar for improvement. ;) Relevant Steve Jobs quote. > The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
wolfgke 6y ago
> Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. This is the argument behind the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  We really need to retire "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" and relegate it to a /glossary on HN along with the various philosophical razors, "Dunning-Kruger effect", "X fallacy", "gaslighting", and other intellectual placeholders like that. As soon as I read the grandparent comment, I knew there was going to be a flood of people arriving to supply us with some wiki link. This way we can just cut to the chase with "Ah, I smell a case of /glossary#4 going on!".
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    Why should it be retired? Is it untrue? Is there a valid reason to doubt it? It is hard to accept a removal of useful mental shortcut for no reason.
  - monoideism 6y ago
    Are you suggesting that it's not an actual phenomenon?
aj3 6y ago
Would it be worthwhile to create an index where people that are experts in something could vouch for the journalists that seem to know what they're talking about? E.g. I can verify that on the information security topic Joseph Cox from Motherboard is constantly on topic, but that information is useless to me personally, because by the time Vice publishes something it's already old news for people in the industry (or anyone following infosec twitter really). But that information could be useful for someone else and in return I would like to know which journalists actually know a thing or two about say ML/AI or astrophysics.
- bookofjoe 6y ago
  >If we wait till we're ready, we'll never get started. —Eleanor Roosevelt Carl Zimmer, New York Times (science); Dennis Overbye, New York Times (physics, astronomy); Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post (technology); Nicole Nguyen, Wall Street Journal (technology); Dexter Filkins, New Yorker (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan); Ben Smith, New York Times [ex-BuzzFeed] (media); Bob Woodward
  - JshWright 6y ago
    This simply moves the problem up one level. Who is going to vouch for your credibility in vouching for these journalists?
    - bookofjoe 6y ago
      People who read my blog?
- sk0g 6y ago
  Do you mean something like MetaCritic for journalists? It could work, but then who reviews (and vets) the reviewers?
- catacombs 6y ago
  This is open to abuse for people, particularly companies, who have an axe to grind and will flood the "index." This is a bad idea.
1stcity3rdcoast 6y ago
The bias is Gell-Mann Amnesia. Edit: looks like this was already answered by @the-dude
kaybe 6y ago
As an expert, what you want when you work with many journalists is a dedicated journalist handler who is not an expert. Make sure this person understands the basics properly and they make sure the journalist understands. After some time explaining the same topic you both usually know the common misunderstandings and easiest-to-understand explanations. Then, give the journalist a phone number and tell them to call for any questions whatsoever. At least for us, during field measurements, that usually worked quite well, I didn't find any significant mistakes afterwards.
deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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deleted 6y ago
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sly010 6y ago
Personally, I call it the Dan Brown effect, because when I was a teen I read "The Da Vinci Code" (I am not expert) a few months before reading "Digital Fortress" (I am somewhat knowledgable) and I found it so profoundly bad that it mad me angry for wasting my time.
- Izkata 6y ago
  I met someone our first week of college who chose a CS degree because of Digital Fortress. It was awkward and I don't think I saw him again past that first week.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Stronico 6y ago
Gell-Mann Amnesia In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. He explains the irony of the term, saying it came about "because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton
asveikau 6y ago
I first noticed this as a teenager. But I think in the time since then I have allowed for the idea that it's more complex than this. The "getting it wrong" part is not universal - some people do better than others. Further, when we are experts in something, we are more opinionated, and those firm opinions are not always universally held or appropriate for a general audience, they may even be distracting. I think the more general thing to say is it's hard to assess the quality of reporting and quoted sources when it's a topic we're less familiar with -- not that the reporting is necessarily all terrible.
geodel 6y ago
Great point. I have exactly same experience when one guy who wrote something with total confidence and absolute cluelessness. I would not have known had I not been very familiar with the subject. This made me think what all other things they might be ignorant but still write with such an expert tone.
dang 6y ago
(We detached this large subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610880)

by npstr 6y ago

the-dude 6y ago

Gell-mann Amnesia : 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...

mratsim 6y ago
I'm surprised they don't even get the show business right, I thought many publications were owned or actually in the show business and so they would have many subject matter experts available.
- the-dude 6y ago
  The have long found out, it does not matter.
mattkrause 6y ago
This always bugs me, because “science” is a giant spectrum of fields from astronomy to zoology. Nobody knows even a small portion of it, and yet we expect a few journalists to cover all of it, often on tight deadlines[0]. Politics is probably closer to many journalists’ backgrounds, and it changes slower—-last week’s background helps with this week’s scandal too. [0] The impetus for most articles is usually the publication of a new paper, but this always seems weird because it’s really more of a hook: papers are almost always incremental progress on a problem and most of the article ends up being background and context anyway.
- arkades 6y ago
  As you pointed out in your footnote, science is a bad topic for journalism, intrinsically. Something like Scientific American is about as good as it gets for lay audiences - solicited longform articles from the relevant experts, meant for a general audience.

Apteris 6y ago

It's called Gell-Mann Amnesia. And the only reason I remember that is because it was mentioned in a short story written by Scott Alexander.

mrweasel 6y ago

I first heard this explained by John C. Dvorak and it has terrified me ever since. Originally I just believe that journalist just had a terrible understanding of IT, but when you think about it, there's no reason why it's just IT. Why would journalist have a better understanding of medicine, politics, climate, finance or any other topic covered. Basically you're left it a situation where you can only trust highly specialized publication, who hire subject matter experts and let them act as the journalist. This raises the question: Are journalists actually required?

zozbot234 6y ago
It's not just IT. You can definitely spot terrible understanding of stuff like policymaking/policy analysis and social science, business, etc. Exceptions do exist but they're rare and tend to be well-known on that account. (And I'm definitely not saying that an average journalist should be an expert in these things; what's missing is even the basic knowledge required to e.g. frame issues properly and provide missing information to aid comprehension.)
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
> This raises the question: Are journalists actually required? Depends. The alternative is bloggers. This situation is ugly. All sorts of motives are being tossed at the journalist, here, but it may be as simple as they think they have a “scoop,” which is pure gold, for journalists (especially young ones). That said, there are standards that journalists are supposed to meet; usually about things like the number of independent sources they use, and whatnot. It’s fairly obvious that many journalists don’t meet those standards, but they are supposed to. We’ve all seen what happens with bloggers. There’s good ones, which are basically the same as top-quality journalists, and there are bad ones, which are nightmares that make Joseph Goebbels smirk from his lava pool. I have been getting downright despondent over the quality of the writing in today’s journalists. I see at least three typos in pretty much every publication I read, every day. Sometimes, terrible ones, in the headline. I think it’s a shame that the first ones out the door were the editors.
- VSerge 6y ago

otherme123 6y ago

From time to time the regional newspaper contacts my workplace for news (headers like "Business LLC is doing this thing to end world famine") to fill blank space. Every single time we try to be as exact as possible while leaving technicalities aside, but the reporters every single time manage to 1) extract a click-baity/sensationalist headline from an isolated phrase during the dialog and 2) gets 90% of the text slightly wrong on the limit of being a lie.

rswskg 6y ago

Dated a journalist who would ask me to explain tech things. Aghast, I asked if this was how she wrote about everything. It was. She's now a management consultant which explains alot.

saagarjha 6y ago
Isn't it better that she's asking you rather than making up things?
- rswskg 6y ago
  It was the barest of understandings. When I realised there is a class of people who make decisions on what journalists write, I realised how misaligned the 'tech zeitgeist' can be
  - catacombs 6y ago
    I'd like to know how you would explain a complicated topic to the average reader, all keeping it between 600-700 words, on a tight deadline, with quotes from a variety of people, and engaging enough to hold a reader's attention to know how this particular topic will impact their lives. These are the hurdles reporters face when reporting on complicated topics.
    - ameister14 6y ago
      Why do it in that format at all?
      - catacombs 6y ago
        That's how stories are written. Short, succinct and informative enough to give the readers what they need for the day. Now, there are times when reporters work on "enterprise" pieces that dives fairly deep into a particular topic. Many national papers have investigative teams that churn out one or two stories A YEAR, but they are dense thorough. Perhaps that what you might enjoy reading.

jimmydddd 6y ago

Yes. Gell-Mann Amnesia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton#G...

gexla 6y ago

I wonder just how deep this rabbit hole goes? And how much of our lives is directed by misunderstandings, misinterpretations, bad translations, outright deception, etc. As a programmer I know that my the screen I'm looking at is the visual output of a house of cards. It's amazing the whole thing works. I suppose you might say the same about society in general. This makes me think of that Steve Jobs quote where he talks about poking things. I guess one reason why you can change things is because there's a low bar for improvement. ;) Relevant Steve Jobs quote. > The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”

wolfgke 6y ago

> Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. This is the argument behind the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

hombre_fatal 6y ago
We really need to retire "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" and relegate it to a /glossary on HN along with the various philosophical razors, "Dunning-Kruger effect", "X fallacy", "gaslighting", and other intellectual placeholders like that. As soon as I read the grandparent comment, I knew there was going to be a flood of people arriving to supply us with some wiki link. This way we can just cut to the chase with "Ah, I smell a case of /glossary#4 going on!".
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  Why should it be retired? Is it untrue? Is there a valid reason to doubt it? It is hard to accept a removal of useful mental shortcut for no reason.
- monoideism 6y ago
  Are you suggesting that it's not an actual phenomenon?

aj3 6y ago

Would it be worthwhile to create an index where people that are experts in something could vouch for the journalists that seem to know what they're talking about? E.g. I can verify that on the information security topic Joseph Cox from Motherboard is constantly on topic, but that information is useless to me personally, because by the time Vice publishes something it's already old news for people in the industry (or anyone following infosec twitter really). But that information could be useful for someone else and in return I would like to know which journalists actually know a thing or two about say ML/AI or astrophysics.

bookofjoe 6y ago
>If we wait till we're ready, we'll never get started. —Eleanor Roosevelt Carl Zimmer, New York Times (science); Dennis Overbye, New York Times (physics, astronomy); Geoffrey A. Fowler, Washington Post (technology); Nicole Nguyen, Wall Street Journal (technology); Dexter Filkins, New Yorker (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan); Ben Smith, New York Times [ex-BuzzFeed] (media); Bob Woodward
- JshWright 6y ago
  This simply moves the problem up one level. Who is going to vouch for your credibility in vouching for these journalists?
  - bookofjoe 6y ago
    People who read my blog?
sk0g 6y ago
Do you mean something like MetaCritic for journalists? It could work, but then who reviews (and vets) the reviewers?
catacombs 6y ago
This is open to abuse for people, particularly companies, who have an axe to grind and will flood the "index." This is a bad idea.

1stcity3rdcoast 6y ago

The bias is Gell-Mann Amnesia. Edit: looks like this was already answered by @the-dude

kaybe 6y ago

As an expert, what you want when you work with many journalists is a dedicated journalist handler who is not an expert. Make sure this person understands the basics properly and they make sure the journalist understands. After some time explaining the same topic you both usually know the common misunderstandings and easiest-to-understand explanations. Then, give the journalist a phone number and tell them to call for any questions whatsoever. At least for us, during field measurements, that usually worked quite well, I didn't find any significant mistakes afterwards.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

sly010 6y ago

Personally, I call it the Dan Brown effect, because when I was a teen I read "The Da Vinci Code" (I am not expert) a few months before reading "Digital Fortress" (I am somewhat knowledgable) and I found it so profoundly bad that it mad me angry for wasting my time.

Izkata 6y ago
I met someone our first week of college who chose a CS degree because of Digital Fortress. It was awkward and I don't think I saw him again past that first week.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Stronico 6y ago

Gell-Mann Amnesia In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term Gell-Mann amnesia effect. He used this term to describe the phenomenon of experts believing news articles on topics outside of their fields of expertise, even after acknowledging that articles written in the same publication that are within the experts' fields of expertise are error-ridden and full of misunderstanding. He explains the irony of the term, saying it came about "because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeches_by_Michael_Crichton

asveikau 6y ago

I first noticed this as a teenager. But I think in the time since then I have allowed for the idea that it's more complex than this. The "getting it wrong" part is not universal - some people do better than others. Further, when we are experts in something, we are more opinionated, and those firm opinions are not always universally held or appropriate for a general audience, they may even be distracting. I think the more general thing to say is it's hard to assess the quality of reporting and quoted sources when it's a topic we're less familiar with -- not that the reporting is necessarily all terrible.

geodel 6y ago

Great point. I have exactly same experience when one guy who wrote something with total confidence and absolute cluelessness. I would not have known had I not been very familiar with the subject. This made me think what all other things they might be ignorant but still write with such an expert tone.

dang 6y ago

(We detached this large subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610880 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23610880)