You have all experienced this, in what I call the Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. Media carries with it a credibility that is totally undeserved. All human beings are subject to this media effect, including those of us who think we are self-aware and hip and knowledgeable. But the studies show that no one is exempt. This result would be amusing if it were confined to children.
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If you show them a bag of popcorn on a television set and ask them what will happen if you turn the TV upside down, the children say the popcorn will fall out of the bag.
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There was a well-known series of excellent studies by Stanford researchers that have shown, for example, that children take media literally. The reason why it is useless, of course, is that nobody knows what the future holds.ĭo we all agree that nobody knows what the future holds? Or do I have to prove it to you? I ask this because there are some well-studied media effects which suggest that simply appearing in media provides credibility. It’s bullshit on the front page of the Times. Such speculation is a complete waste of time. Isn’t it reasonable to talk about effects of current events in this way? I answer, absolutely not. You may read this tariff story and think, what’s the big deal? The story’s not bad. Bush is trying to hold together in the fractious coalition against terrorism.” In other words, the story speculates that tariffs may rebound against the fight against terrorism.īy now, under the Faludi Standard I have firmly established that media are hopelessly riddled with speculation, and we can go on to consider its ramifications. The Allies’ challenge would be “setting the stage for a major trade fight with many of the same countries Mr. Their legal case “could take years to litigate in Geneva, is likely to hinge” on thus and such.Īlso note the vague and hidden speculation. America’s allies “would almost certainly challenge” the decision.
Bush’s action “is likely to send the price of steel up sharply, perhaps as much as ten percent.” American consumers “will ultimately bear” higher prices. The column one story for that day concerns Bush’s tariffs on imported steel. For example, here is the New York Times for March 6, the day Dick Farson told me I was giving this talk. Let’s look at the so-called serious media. Everybody knows there’s no news on Sunday.īut television is entertainment. The Sunday morning talk shows are pure speculation. Today, of course everybody knows that “Hardball,” “Rivera Live” and similar shows are nothing but a steady stream of guesses about the future. I merely refer to it now to set standards. It went out with the universal praise for Susan Faludi’s book Backlash, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction in 1991, and which presented hundreds of pages of quasi-statistical assertions based on a premise that was never demonstrated and that was almost certainly false.īut that’s old news. The requirement that you demonstrate a factual basis for your claim vanished long ago. Again, in keeping with the general trend of speculation, let’s not make too many fine distinctions.įirst we might begin by asking, to what degree has the media turned to pure speculation? Someone could do a study of this and present facts, but nobody has. By the media I mean movies television internet books newspapers and magazines.
To keep within the spirit of our time, it should really be off the top of my head.īefore we begin, I’d like to clarify a definition. Some of you may see that I have written out my talk, which is already a contradiction of principle.
This is not my natural style, and it’s going to be a challenge for me, but I will do my best. In keeping with the trend, I will try express my views without any factual support, simply providing you with a series of bald assertions. I will join this speculative trend and speculate about why there is so much speculation. What does it mean? Why has it become so ubiquitous? Should we do something about it? If so, what? And why? Should we care at all? Isn’t speculation valuable? Isn’t it natural? And so on. My topic for today is the prevalence of speculation in media. In essence, people recognise that the media gets virtually everything wrong in media reports they know something about but credulously accept media accounts about everything else where they actually themselves know nothing. I will highlight the Gell-Mann effect where it occurs in the speech.
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect originates with a speech by Michael Crichton.