Less News, The Better

Happy Monday to the growing Analects family. For the several newcomers, I welcome you.

And for the 200+ that have been around, welcome back.

Lets take a dive into what I found over this past week.

Something to Read: The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

Named after famous physicist Murray Gell-Mann, the Amnesia Effect was coined and popularized by Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton to describe the act of feeling skeptical as you read a magazine or newspaper article about an area in which you have expertise and then completely forgetting that skepticism as you turn the page and read about something you know less about.

If they could get it so wrong for one, why don’t we assume they could get it so wrong for all?

Here’s Michael Crichton explaining it:

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.

Something to Watch:

VanEck Associates CEO on what's behind the recent crypto collapse

A Song to Listen to:

Geoffroy - Coastline (Official Video)

Listen to this track and many others on La Fórmula by Modern Analects

A Quote to Think About:

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

Malcolm X

And another:

“The two key inputs that shape our mindsets are: the people we spend time with and the media we consume.”

Peter Diamandis