Heh!
Turns out there’s a term for it:
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.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.
December 21st, 2004 at 1:57 pm
Nice. I’ll have to remember that term.
December 21st, 2004 at 4:51 pm
In the Illuminati trilogy, there was a scene in which someone observes that there is a whole series of jobs open to people who can observe and record. At the top, are research scientists. Down a bit would be a police detective, but if a person liked the field, but had absolutely no talent for observing and recording, there was always journalism.