[HN Gopher] Gell-Mann amnesia and its opposite
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Gell-Mann amnesia and its opposite
Author : 1cvmask
Score : 16 points
Date : 2021-10-19 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.johndcook.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.johndcook.com)
| echelon wrote:
| I miss Michael Crichton. His writing and imagination reinforced
| my interest in science and engineering and got me interested in
| studying biochem in undergrad. I should _not_ have been reading
| his books in the third grade, but it was a defining period for
| me.
|
| The 90's were great. Michael Crichton, Bill Nye, Carl Sagan,
| LeVar Burton, Mr. Wizard, Stephen Hawking, Lonnie Johnson (local
| engineer and inventor of Nerf and Super Soaker). We were also
| fresh off the 80's wave of sci-fi with Aliens, RoboCop,
| Terminator, etc. The future always felt like it was going to have
| infinite potential.
|
| It's probably even better for kids now with YouTube. Derek
| Muller, et al. are killing it.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| I had to look up who Derek Muller is.
| MetricExpansion wrote:
| He's actually a person to whom I applied the "opposite" of
| the Gell Mann effect to. I first watched his videos on the
| stuff I _did_ know something about to make sure he was
| covering the nuances before watching his other material. Now
| I watch his other videos on things I don't know about,
| trusting that he'll cover the nuances of those subjects.
| AlexCoventry wrote:
| Crichton gave a lot of cover to climate-change denialism,
| though, speaking of Murray-Gellman effects.
| jimmygrapes wrote:
| Less denialism than caution against jumping to conclusions
| and "consensus". He understood that to base society off of
| models with phenomenally low confidence has the potential to
| harm more than help, despite any good intentions.
| chmaynard wrote:
| John Cook's blog posts are often interesting and are generally
| very well-written. I wonder why he is so obsessed with his blog?
| To promote his consulting business? That may be a factor, but he
| posts so frequently that there must be a stronger motivation.
| godelski wrote:
| I think this can be a great tool to vet sources. I've often found
| that looking for subjects I am an expert on lets me understand
| how much nuance and understanding someone is putting into
| presenting some work.
|
| I've found this to be extremely important because many of the
| tough (and popular) topics we discuss today are extremely
| complex. But if people are only going into the basics and don't
| talk to experts about the complexity and nuance they will
| frequently make extremely bad conclusions. Science communicators
| are supposed to be taking the complex and nuanced topics that
| experts understand and distill it into something more palpable
| for the common (or even a bit nerdy) audience. But I do find that
| a lot of our extremely popular YouTube pop-sci channels or
| information based comedy shows (and even news) often don't
| actually seek out discussions with experts for clarity, even if
| they appear to or have the budget for it. It has really limited
| my source list of these channels and shows, but I also think it
| has really helped.
| zafka wrote:
| I absolutely love the rationale for the name of the effect.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Actually that's the reason I posted this when I saw that gem at
| the bottom of his blog.
|
| Naming is clearly a form of branding. Why Michael Crichton
| called it the Gell-Mann amnesia effect:
|
| By the way, why is the effect named after the Nobel Prize-
| winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann? Crichton explained
|
| I refer to 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.
|
| -
|
| It reminds me of why von Neumann told Shannon to call it
| entropy:
|
| When Shannon first derived his famous formula for information,
| he asked von Neumann what he should call it and von Neumann
| replied "You should call it entropy for two reasons: first
| because that is what the formula is in statistical mechanises
| but second and more important, as nobody knows what entropy is,
| whenever you use the term you will always be at an advantage!
|
| http://www.spatialcomplexity.info/what-von-neumann-said-to-s...
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp...
|
| _" I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is
| better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows
| nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with
| falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the
| great facts, and the details are all false."_
|
| Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 14 June 1807, Works 10:417--18
|
| (sigh - sometimes people notice, but not much can be done, and
| trying only seems to make things worse, ahem, "fact-checking",
| cough ... perhaps we should lower expectations, and not demand
| that advertisement padding double up as a source of truth.)
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