flâneur

Gell-Mann Earworms

cold-takes.com · 989 words · saved by 1 readers

The opposite of Gell-Mann Amnesia: "I can’t trust this" is constantly ringing in your ears as you read anything. (Very much including this blog!)

Consider Gell-Mann Amnesia : 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 [Michael Crichton’s], 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

related reading