{"id":17031,"date":"2016-02-07T13:30:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-07T12:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/?p=17031"},"modified":"2020-10-03T17:11:35","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T15:11:35","slug":"the-murray-gell-mann-amnesia-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/the-murray-gell-mann-amnesia-effect\/","title":{"rendered":"The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 323px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a title=\"can a giant eraser remove the past?\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/73645804@N00\/2895975611\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm4.staticflickr.com\/3116\/2895975611_f9218387f8.jpg?resize=333%2C500&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"can a giant eraser remove the past?\" width=\"333\" height=\"500\"><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Can a giant raser remove the past?&#8221; Typewriter Eraser. Scale X, 1999, by Claes Oldenburg (American, born 1929, Sweden) and Coosje van Bruggen (American, born 1942, The Netherlands). Photo by Woodleywonders via Flicker (cc)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Came across this whilst reading Felix Salmon&#8217;s superb &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/fusion.net\/story\/173383\/science-cant-trust-journalism\/\">Why you can&#8217;t trust journalism<\/a>&#8220;. He links to Seekerblog&#8217;s 2006 post on &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/seekerblog.com\/2006\/01\/31\/the-murray-gell-mann-amnesia-effect\/\">The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect<\/a>&#8220;, who in turn quotes Michael Criton&#8217;s 2002 speech &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20050328084634\/http:\/\/www.crichton-official.com\/speeches\/speeches_quote03.html\">Why Speculate?<\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.<\/strong> (I call it by this name 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.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray\u2019s 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 \u201cwet streets cause rain\u201d stories. Paper\u2019s full of them.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>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 with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.<\/strong> I\u2019d point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all.<\/p>\n<p>But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn\u2019t. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I have noticed this time and time again. People who lambaste the media for supporting something they oppose will uncritically quote the same media when they suddenly find themselves in agreement.<\/p>\n<p>Another area I notice this is with Serbs commenting on other countries. Serbs have been demonized in the media for over 20 years. They have suffered the most appalling slanders, yet it has not equipped many of them at all to spot the same treatment of others.<\/p>\n<p>When Denmark recently came under fire for extending its social welfare laws of asset confiscation to migrants, I had Serbian friends in all my timelines writing &#8220;F*ck Denmark!&#8221;, not wondering at all if the story was being portrayed accurately (which it was not).<\/p>\n<p><strong>See also:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/truth-leakage\/\">Truth Leakage<\/a> &#8211; How politicians and journalists often reveal the truth as metadata or background material when discussing a tangential topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Came across this whilst reading Felix Salmon&#8217;s superb &#8220;Why you can&#8217;t trust journalism&#8220;. He links to Seekerblog&#8217;s 2006 post on &#8220;The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect&#8220;, who in turn quotes Michael Criton&#8217;s 2002 speech &#8220;Why Speculate?&#8220;: Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. You have all experienced this, in what I call the &#8230; <a title=\"The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/the-murray-gell-mann-amnesia-effect\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about The Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[30,34,145,7,9,11,14,15,42,19],"tags":[296],"class_list":["post-17031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belgrade","category-contemporary-culture","category-ethics","category-language-writing","category-media-communication","category-miscellaneous","category-philosophy","category-politics","category-psychology","category-sociology-social-sciences","tag-published"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prY0k-4qH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":17107,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/truth-leakage\/","url_meta":{"origin":17031,"position":0},"title":"Truth leakage","author":"Limbic","date":"March 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the links in a recent post examines US liberal's attitude to Trump\u00a0\u00a0(\"Liberals look at Trump and populism, but see only their prejudices\") . The author identifies a wonderful bit of journalistic leakage from\u00a0John Cassidy writing in the New Yorker: The rest of his essay is the usual horse-race\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Miscellaneous&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Miscellaneous","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/miscellaneous\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":21732,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/japans-koseki-system\/","url_meta":{"origin":17031,"position":1},"title":"Japan&#8217;s koseki system","author":"Limbic","date":"October 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The koseki is Japan\u2019s family registration system. All legally significant transitions in a person\u2019s life \u2014 births, deaths, marriages, divorces, adoptions, even changes of gender \u2014 are supposed to be registered in a koseki; in fact, registration is what gives them legal effect. An extract of a person\u2019s koseki serves\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Contemporary Culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Contemporary Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/contemporary-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32808,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/taylor-pearson-on-procrastination\/","url_meta":{"origin":17031,"position":2},"title":"Taylor Pearson on Procrastination","author":"Limbic","date":"August 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Taylor Pearson really\u00a0has become a fine essayist. This one on procrastination was packed with wisdom: \"Whenever you feel that some situation or some person is ruining your life, it is actually you who are ruining your life... feeling like a victim is a perfectly disastrous way to go through life.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Interesting Links&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Interesting Links","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/interesting-links\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15722,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/ratchet-effect\/","url_meta":{"origin":17031,"position":3},"title":"Ratchet effect","author":"Limbic","date":"September 8, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Forget that Miley Cyrus junk, this is the real ratchet. Ratchet effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: \"A metaphorical ratchet effect is an instance of the restrained ability of human processes to be reversed once a specific thing has happened, analogous with the mechanical ratchet that holds the spring tight\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Words &amp; Quotations&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Words &amp; Quotations","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/humanities\/words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25102,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/riled-up-citizenry\/","url_meta":{"origin":17031,"position":4},"title":"Riled Up Citizenry","author":"Limbic","date":"April 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The Nation has a very good profile of Karl Polanyi, the mid-20th century left-wing Austro-Hungarian sociologist and economic historian. \"\u2026[Polanyi] had been a violent critic of the gold standard\u2014which, like the euro, restricted a nation\u2019s capacity to inflate or deflate its currency based on the needs of its citizens. In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropology","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/science\/anthropology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/saint-stalin.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/saint-stalin.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/saint-stalin.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":32814,"url":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/william-dershowitz-on-multitasking\/","url_meta":{"origin":17031,"position":5},"title":"Einstellung effect","author":"Limbic","date":"August 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"There is a well known bias related to this called the\u00a0Einstellung effect, a psychological phenomenon characterized by a fixation on the first solution to a problem discovered at the expense of being able to find potentially better solutions.\u00a0 This is aggravated by multitasking. William Dershowitz on Multitasking: \"Multitasking, in short,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Critical Thinking&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Critical Thinking","link":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/category\/critical-thinking\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.limbicnutrition.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}