Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Fickle Finger Of Fate COMPILATION | Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In | George Schlatter* 
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Marcel tells us that The New York Times is a stinking pile of shit. He doesn't say so explicitly, I just summarised what you should already know. He refers to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, which sounds vaguely familiar. Michael Crichton, who coined the term, provides us with his description:

“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.”

But how did this effect get it's name? A little digging unearths Michael's explanation:

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.

For some reason that prompted me to check me blog, and lo and behold, I posted about this subject once before. Funny how I forget names like Murray Gell-Mann but remember Michael Crichton.

Who runs the NYT? A. G. Sulzberger, great-great-grandson of Adolph Ochs who bought the paper in 1896, that's who. Should we blame him for the crap his media empire produces? Yes, we should, not that it is likely to do any good, but we can feel good about pointing the flying fickle finger of shame at him. He is just like any other media mogul, out to maximize profit, never mind the truth or any of the little people who get squashed. Which brings to mind this quote from H. L. Mencken:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

* Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In was on the air circa 1970 when the dollar was worth about ten times what it is now, so the $9 billion dollars they mention is like $90 billion now. It's not a trillion dollars, but it's still a fair chunk of change.