Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect; You Will Forget How Bad the Mainstream Media Is

Vance Crowe [00:00:09] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Well, if you've been following on my Twitter or you've seen the Legacy Interviews Instagram, you know that we are on the road. This week we were given an invitation to go to a farmhouse on a small town outside of Springfield, Illinois, and we are doing eight Legacy Interviews. One of you, a Vance Crowe podcast listener, called me up one day and said, Hey, I have a dream. I want to, I want to get my family's history recorded, and I wanna know if we can do it in this unique and interesting way. And at first, I, I didn't know, you know, we don't do a lot of traveling to do Legacy Interviews. I didn't know if this would be a good idea, but after a few conversations, we worked out a great way to do this, and I'm really excited that we've been able to spend the last two, now, the third day, recording these amazing family stories. So we are on the road, which means it is a little hard to put out an interview. So I decided that I was gonna do a solo podcast for today, and the big topic that's been on my mind is the concept of misinformation and disinformation. Now, if you're a long longtime listener to the podcast, you know that this is something I care a lot about. When COVID hit, I was really upset that, you know, you were really only allowed to say certain things. You know, masks are good, or you can't say anything bad about the vaccines, or even question whether or not Ivermectin was, was okay. But this is all stuff that's happened. Everybody knows about all of this. Then when the Ukraine, Russia War happened, I was absolutely appalled that our government found that it was within their ability to shut off all of the Russia today and the, the information and news from other countries from coming into the United States.

Vance Crowe [00:01:56] Now, even if those are arms of their propaganda wings, I don't care. As an American living in a society that is supposedly free and believes in free media, it really matters to me that I be able to hear what other people are thinking and saying. And the fact that our government thought that they were doing us a favor by doing that is, is abhorrent to me. This is a terrible idea. So what we're gonna talk about today is not just the stuff that we're hearing about in the news. You know, we're hearing a lot about misinformation and disinformation. You know, there was just, I just heard this morning about a government agency that's now defunct, that the, the woman that was running it was claiming that the human minds, the American human minds was infrastructure. That they had a responsibility to protect, meaning that they should be able to architect ideas into our mind. They're able to put them out there. This is terrible, and it's wrong and it's bad. And I think the reason I feel that so strongly is as a communicator, I spend a lot of time thinking about how is it that people know what they know? Why do they believe what they believe? And the reality is, you know what, you know, because of the ideas that you are exposed to, you can't know things that you're not exposed to these ideas, and you really can only think about a small subset. So whatever is going on in the culture, whatever you're exposing yourself to, whether that's turning on the tv, reading a magazine, presumably using your phone, looking at social media, whatever is going on there is telling you what are the few things that you can keep in your mind that are what's important.

Vance Crowe [00:03:34] And really the agenda of other people has nothing to do with what is the information that's important to you. And I, I think that when I am thinking about how to get out of these terrible misinformation and disinformation bubbles, there's a couple things that are worth sharing. The first thing we're sharing is there's no way completely out. And the best thing for you to do is not to just accept it and be like, wow, since I can't do anything about it, you know, I'm just going to allow the propaganda to hit me. But I think the most important thing is to say, Hey, I can easily spot the propaganda that they're putting onto other people that believe things different than me. But I should recognize for every one unit of propaganda I see being downloaded onto their software, I should expect that one unit is being downloaded onto mine. In particular, if you are watching anything at all to do with mainstream news and, and mainstream news may be dying, but they certainly have a lot of power to set what the agenda, who is talking about what? And it's really good to know that even though you can spot it on other people, and it feels like you are not susceptible to the propaganda you and I both are, and it is really important to recognize that in particular, the biggest way is that the media may not tell you exactly what to think, but they are controlling what you think about what is the window of ideas that we're talking about. What are ideas that are acceptable to talk about which ones are the crazy new thing that's going on that you should have an opinion about?

Vance Crowe [00:05:10] So the first thing is that just know that the propaganda is everywhere. There's no way to avoid it. The best you can do is try and put some sunblock on. Now, the next thing that I think is important to think about is what kinda media diet am I on? You know, is, is my Twitter designed to make me get excited? Is it made so that I only see my friends and people that I trust? Do I throw all different kinds of news in there thinking that if I have CNN and Fox or M-S-N-B-C and some other side that I'm getting a balanced diet, or does my diet need to be wider than that? Does it need to be further away from the media that's only being produced on the east and West coast? I am really not a, a person that watches tv. I, I doubt you are. I wonder how much news we get from the regular, I almost never turn my radio on except to listen to my, my buddy Mark Reardon. I, I like him, but I, you know, he's, he's just as much putting ideas in my head as anybody else. But to, to that point. You may not be either, right? But really thinking about what are the podcasts I'm listening to? What am I getting through osmosis? Just by the fact that I'm using Twitter and some of the people that I'm connected with are watching this type of news or that type of news, what are they putting in there? And then third, and this is kinda where I want to round out the conversation, is a concept called the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

Vance Crowe [00:06:41] So now this became, popularized the term by Michael Crichton, the, the amazing writer. He wrote Jurassic Park, of course, but also Andromeda Strain. And if you ever want to go see a guy that just eviscerates people with bad arguments about things like climate change way before it was something that it became a big part of culture. Go look up Michael Crichton on, on on C-Span. You can find a bunch of him on YouTube. He's an amazing guy. And he is the one that popularized this term, the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. And what he was doing was he was quoting a friend of his, a physicist named, I think it was, what is it? Murray Gell-Mann. Yeah. And so Gell-Mann was saying, you know, I write an article and, and about physics and people take parts of it, they get it all wrong. And so what they observed was that something that's a phenomena that, that we see happen all the time. I'll give you an example. Let's imagine you're reading a magazine or you're reading something on your phone. The first article or two you're reading, you're like, all right, okay, I, I don't know very much about whatever this is selling weapons to this country, or some kind of new medical breakthrough, something like that. And then you read that article and then you flip the page, and now it's on a subject you know a lot about, maybe, maybe you happen to know a lot about agriculture, you know, cattle or corn or something like that. You read the article and from the very beginning you're like, they got everything wrong about this. They did not understand the point, they didn't understand the people.

Vance Crowe [00:08:14] They do not understand anything at all about what they're talking about here. And you can see it plain as day that this author either was misinforming people or they were so far off, or they just didn't do their due diligence, but they got the idea the concept's completely wrong. So you look at that and you reject it in your mind. But now the funny thing that happens is you turn the page and now you're reading about something else. Let's say it's a kind of dog medicine or some kind of social issue going on in a place you don't know anything about. Well, you forget how badly they screwed up on the subject you knew a lot about, and you start saying, oh, okay, well no, that's what

Vance Crowe [00:08:55] They say about this going on over here. And so you are forgiving these writers who totally botched the one thing that you could evaluate on, and you're giving them a pass because you're talking about subjects you don't know. Now, what Michael Crichton was saying, and I completely agree with this, is you really need to avoid that. When you find that somebody is putting something out there as a journalist, maybe they're a YouTube commentator, or a person that goes out like me, gives talks, and you find that when they're describing something you know a lot about and they're completely wrong, you should be very unforgiving of that. Now, I don't mean you should like personally hold it against them or a grudge or something, but I'm saying you shouldn't forget that they completely botched in this one area and they're likely completely botching in the other. And that to read articles written by either this person or more likely this outlet, and to allow those ideas to have any cred, credence at all, is not doing yourself any favors. It's allowing them to continue doing this thing that they've been doing. And so, I am really taken by this idea, and if you're one of those people out in the world that's ever had the media point their spotlight at you and write an article about you, and you know how unfair it is, you need to remember that as something that can happen about other people. You see an article written, and the way the article is written, it looks plain as day, this person is guilty, this person is wrong, this person did bad. When you knew if that article was written about you, you would understand that they didn't put the nuance in, they didn't understand it.

Vance Crowe [00:10:31] And I think that this is, this is really important. So my overall point today is if you are like me, and my sense is if you're listening to the podcast, you have some sense like this, you want to be a sovereign individual, you want to be a person whose mind has the liberty to think about things that you want to think about, and that definitely wants to focus on things that matter. Then going on a, a diet and being very aware of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect can be really good for you. I would recommend being really selective about what you listen to being very unforgiving if, if a, an outlet is putting things out that you know are wrong. And, and really try and expand your circle to find news outlets or places that people are talking about things that challenge your thinking. Now, everybody that's putting out an idea, everybody, everybody, everybody is applying resources to writing a blog or a newsletter or putting something out of the news because they're trying to get something in return. It might be that they're trying to get eyeballs, so they're trade you for advertising revenue. It might be like, in my case, I'm trying to show you, Hey, I am really good at having these kinds of deep conversations with people. Maybe you could imagine me having a deep conversation with your loved one. Or maybe it's somebody that has political ends. They want to get these ideas out because they want to get more emphasis behind their political ideas. Whatever it is, be aware that everyone is motivated by what they're putting out there.

Vance Crowe [00:12:06] And I guess I thought I would wrap up by maybe throwing some different podcasts out there that might, you know, just challenge what you think, or at least give you a new person to listen to and be like, huh, what is this, this crazy cat? The first one I'm gonna say is, of course, the Shaun Newman podcast. I in particular love their Tuesday mashup. You've probably heard me talk about this a lot. Shaun and I have become good friends over the years and, you know, he's talking about Canadian politics. And what I think is so interesting is if I didn't have the Tuesday mashup with twos, I wouldn't know anything at all about what's going on in Canada. But the really interesting thing is, so many of the things that happened in Canada six months later happened here. Another podcast that I think is worth taking a look at, and you don't have to listen to all of them. I I did go and look one up in particular, I think is worth, it's a podcast called Part of the Problem. It's with a libertarian comedian named Dave Smith. Now, whether or not you're interested in, in being a libertarian, that's not the point. He did a, a recent episode called Anatomy of a Libertarian, where he has a guy come on and interview him about where he got his ideas from. And this is a laundry list of who influenced him, how he was influenced, how he came to the ideas that he had. And I thought it was a really, really well done podcast. So I'll, I'll include a, a link to that in the show notes. It is part of the problem. And the episode is titled Anatomy of Libertarian. Another one that I listen to all the time, and it may be too technical, but if you're a person that's been saying, I know I should learn something more about Bitcoin, check out the rabbit hole recap.

Vance Crowe [00:13:47] I, I listened to that. I remember the first maybe five or 10 that I listened to. They were way over my head. But just like learning another language, as you listen more, you start to be like, oh, I get it. I see what's going on here. So that is one that is deeply in the, in the Bitcoin world and really the community of it. What's getting built there? How well is the network doing? When you hear news about Bitcoin and you hear it in the mainstream, they describe it one way, but the guys from Rabbit Hole recap really break it down and say, Hey, this is the, maybe the larger picture of it. Finally, there is a really, really interesting podcast I would recommend anybody go and check out. And it is Michael Malice, who is an avowed anarchist. He, he doesn't just believe that there should be low government. He believes there should be no government. He had a really interesting conversation with a guy named Cenk Uygur, who runs a program called The Young Turks. So these two guys sat down and had an amazing conversation about their different philosophies and what they see in the world. And what I love about what Michael Malice does is he treats it like having a guest in his home. He has the person in and he doesn't just try and get in a senseless fight with him, which you often have when left and right gets together. But instead he asks him genuine questions and he gives him plenty of space to explain himself. So that again, is Michael Malice. He has a show called You're Welcome. And he did an episode with Cenk Uygur is really, really interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:15:19] He also had some crazily enough some episodes with Roseanne Barr that were really interesting, if you can believe that she's, you know, definitely got an edge to her. But it was interesting to see her being given space to talk about things that she was kind of canceled for. So I bring this stuff up because it's really important now more than ever, that we are getting more and more sources of information and news. And I know that I am a person, I like Twitter, but the fact that it is run by a single guy, Elon Musk, no matter how good that guy is, he now has control of the, the arms of, of that information and the way that he's doing things by prioritizing people that pay him to get more views. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that model, it's just to say that you now have to be careful because the way that people are being monetized, their incentives are being changed, and you just have to factor this in on your media diet. I know that this is not communications advice in the normal way that I've been doing it. I love all the feedback I've been getting about helping people have better conversations. That's been great and I love, love, love doing interviews. So we will be getting back to that as soon as we get back from being on the road. If you are interested in having me come do a legacy interview somewhere in the US or maybe even Canada and you want to try and work that out, or you wanna bring one of your loved ones to our studios here in St. Louis, we'd love to work that out. Go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. Alright, we'll be back next week with more.