The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

Recently, highly paid, apparently trustworthy and skilled professionals all reported a missile strike on a hospital in Gaza which turned out to be an accidental detonation of a Hamas rocket prior to launch. This was pointed out, and the collective media, far from apologising, simply moved on in a herd to the next watering hole.

So why do some still trust in everything they read?

Do you agree with and accept everything you are told? If the answer is “no” you may not be ‘off the hook’ because you still may believe some things, but totally reject others.

How can it be that a person can read a newspaper, be outraged by one factually inaccurate report, but totally passive in their acceptance of other articles?

Why, if we are misled once, do we simply accept that everything else is true?

In ‘The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe’ C.S. Lewis suggested we can trust a witness if their previous track-record is good. Such as when Lucy first claimed to have visited Narnia, and Edmund contradicted her:

“Logic!” said the Professor, half to himself. “Why don’t they teach logic at these schools? There are only three possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious that she is not mad. For the moment then, and unless any further evidence turns up, we must assume that she is telling the truth.” (C.S. Lewis)

So is it fair to assume that if the media are not mad, but do tell lies, we may assume they lie about other things?

Michael Crichton detected a tendency to believe the media which is touching, to say the least. I’ll let him take over here:

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,  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.

I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means "untruthful in one part, untruthful in all". 

But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.

So remember (or try not to forget) that if you catch the media with their collective hands dirtied by untruths – that the next time you place your trust in them it’s highly likely you are being similarly set up to believe what they want you to believe. 

That is very different to you being presented with accurate, or factual information, which is what they would like you to believe is the case.