Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
- 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. (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.)
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.
Mentioned here:
There-Must-Be-A-Pony Effect
- Another issue concerns the sheer volume of speculation. Sheer volume comes to imply a value which is specious. I call this the There-Must-Be-A-Pony effect, from the old joke in which a kid comes down Christmas morning, finds the room filled with horseshit, and claps his hands with delight. His astonished parents ask: why are you so happy? He says, with this much horseshit, there must be a pony.
Nobody Knows the Future
- So, in terms of imminent events, can we predict anything at all? No. You need only look at what was said days before the Berlin Wall came down, to see nobody can predict even a few hours ahead. People said all sorts of silly things about the Communist empire just hours before its collapse. I can’t quote them, because that would mean I had looked them up and had facts at hand, and I have promised you not to do that. But take my word for it, you can find silly statements 24 hours in advance.
NOBODY KNOWS THE FUTURE.
Now, this is not new information. It was Mark Twain who said, “I’ve seen a heap of trouble in my life, and most of it never came to pass.”
Crisisization
- Gosh, I wonder what will happen to the German Mark? Are they going to get their labor problems under control? This promotes the well-known media need for a crisis. Crisis in the German mark! Uh-oh! Look out! Crises unite the country, draw viewers in large numbers, and give something to speculate about. Without a crisis, the talk soon degenerates into debate about whether the refs should have used instant replay on that last football game.
The Punditic Thrust
- over the years the punditic thrust has shifted away from discussing what has happened, to discussing what may happen. And here the pundits have no benefit of expertise at all. Worse, they may, like the Sunday politicians, attempt to advance one or another agenda by predicting its imminent arrival or demise. This is politicking, not predicting.
Don't Believe Michael Crichton Either
- The second study is a National Academy of Sciences report on the economic effects to the US economy of the last El Niño warming event of 1997. That warming produced a net benefit of 15 billion dollars to the economy. That’s taking into account 1.5 billion loss in California from rain, which was offset by decreased fuel bills for a milder winter, and a longer growing season. Net result 15 billion in increased productivity.
This report is worth a look, but Crichton ought to have noticed that “The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or UCAR.”
That's not so bad, but ...
- The other thing I will mention to you is that during the last 100 years, while the average temperature on the globe has increased just .3 C, the magnetic field of the earth declined by 10%. This is a much larger effect than global warming and potentially far more serious to life on this planet. Our magnetic field is what keeps the atmosphere in place. It is what deflects lethal radiation from space. A reduction of the earth’s magnetic field by ten percent is extremely worrisome.
But who is worried? Nobody. Who is raising a call to action? Nobody. Why not? Because there is nothing to be done.
The magnetic field keeps the atmosphere in place? Uh, can I get a citation? The reduction is worrysome, but I am trusting am_Unition on this one, everything will work out okay somehow.
The big idea I get is that science is hard, seeing reality as it is takes work, but it can be done. It just takes a lot of clicking and reading to get (closer) to the bottom of things.
You can pay an academic to say whatever you want.
There is no science in economics.
Outsourcing maintenance compromises airline safety.
Paid family leave is good for workers.
Environmental regulation promotes cleaner water.
Racial bias is conspicuous in courtrooms.
Absence of government has been harmful to Somalia.
Minimum wage causes benefit and not harm.
Kids born rich fare better than poor kids who get an education. Bonus: Quiz
But who is worried? Nobody. Who is raising a call to action? Nobody. Why not? Because there is nothing to be done. This was pretty comical, it reads not unlike the premise of one of my favorite worst high-budget science fiction films to date. Long story short, yeah, the atmosphere is kept in place by the Earth's magnetic field, and here's what happens when your planet doesn't have a magnetic field. Like francopoli mentions in the resulting thread, this ain't the first time the field has flipped. Apparently nobody told Mikey. It generally happens every million years-ish, so if Earth's 4 billion years old, it's happened roughly thousands of times. For more details, see the thread. So is there cause for concern on the subject? Yes and no. Things will change, but any engineering challenges presented by the lack of a strong dipole magnetic field aren't immediate enough to raise any alarm bells from where I'm sitting. The timescale over which this will become a problem isn't as immediate as global warming, and perhaps more importantly, humans have not affected the process (unlike Anthropogenic global warming). He was kinda right though, there's nothing we can do about the magnetic field. Except make shitty sci-fi that's tangentially related to the subject. And as everyone here knows, the reason why we raise such a racket about global warming is because there are practices we humans can adopt to curb it. Edit: Also, I'd like to mention that I've never seen any analysis on the effects of magnetic field reversal on global temperature/climate. It's uhhh... it's a bit complicated.The other thing I will mention to you is that during the last 100 years, while the average temperature on the globe has increased just .3 C, the magnetic field of the earth declined by 10%. This is a much larger effect than global warming and potentially far more serious to life on this planet. Our magnetic field is what keeps the atmosphere in place. It is what deflects lethal radiation from space. A reduction of the earth’s magnetic field by ten percent is extremely worrisome.
I remember that story, and I apologize for ignoring your invitation to discuss the economics of magnetic pole reversal. It sounds ... expensive ... but maybe more a curiosity than a catastrophe. But just for those of us who do not carry giant telescopes in the trunk, or think that plasma is something you can donate to the Red Cross, I would like to confirm that gravity is what keeps the atmosphere in place, and the magnetosphere makes it harder for the sun to blast it away. I wonder if Crichton knew about this.here's what happens when your planet doesn't have a magnetic field
Someday we might get to this. I'd need to invest a lot of time researching for it, and god knows I don't have any.I remember that story, and I apologize for ignoring your invitation to discuss the economics of magnetic pole reversal.
"NASA Attack", hahah! Like I mentioned before, I have been thinking about it, and have come to a fairly deep-seated philosophical hurdle in the conversation. You have placed an infinite amount of worth/value on a human life, and I'm not so sure that I do (maybe I'm competing for Hubski's King Asshole title). I'll flesh this out better in the thread you linked to someday soon. Maybe.
If you are referring to feeding starving kids, I wouldn't say the value is infinite, but it is surely non-zero. The entire justification for collecting taxes to fund NASA is to pay for benefit X, right? Call X whatever you want, but it also has some non-zero value. I ask: who enjoys the benefit of X? Who pays for the benefit? When you get around to it. And don't miss the video!an infinite amount of worth/value on a human life
1. A point of detail on the prediction here attributed to Thomas Watson: Wikiquote has this to say: 2. One point that jumps out at me as important is the phenomenon Crichton calls "crisisization". All kinds of groups have their own interests in portraying present states of affairs as crises (most obviously businesses, including the media, and politicians). With all this trumped-up panic in the air it's very easy to be distracted from the reality of one's own life and into a world of make-believe anxiety and doom. I know it was years before i realized this was happening to me, and I'm still vulnerable to it, and it's not good for my mental health. I can't be the only one - what's the effect of this cheap crisis-talk on the well being of us all? Not good I suspect. That said, the answer isn't to just ignore all news, but to be critical about what you hear. Is someone making an overblown claim or is there good reason to think something is a crisis? I can't agree with him about climate change not being a crisis, since here the results of our most careful, widespread, expert investigation suggests that it has all kinds of negative ramifications, and the predictions of earlier models are already being confirmed. The question to ask is whether someone is claiming x is a crisis because of rigorously examined sound evidence or because of intellectual laziness and/or self-interest. More often than not, it's one of the latter. But some things really are crises and then, while no-one knows what's going to happen, not all guesses are created equal. In general, "don't believe you know what's going to happen" is good advice though. We more often err in the direction of overconfidence than underconfidence.* * With the possible exception of kleinbl00. :)Expertise is no shield against failure to see ahead. That’s why it was Thomas Watson, head of IBM, who predicted the world only needed 4 or 5 computers. That is about as wrong a prediction as it is possible to make, by a man who had every reason to be informed about what he was talking about. Not only did he fail to anticipate a trend, or a technology, he failed to understand the myriad uses to which a general purpose machine might be put.
Often dated to 1943. Thorough research of Watson's writings and statements have produced no example of him saying this. It appears to be a corruption of a remark by Howard Aiken that four or five computers could meet all of the United Kingdom's computing needs. See Ralph Keyes (2006), The Quote Verifier.