this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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You ever read a newspaper article on a topic you know a lot about and think, "wow they have no idea what they're talking about?"
Somehow that realization doesn't carry over to the next article you read about something you don't know as much about.
This is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, a term coined by author Michael Crichton.
Streamers as a rule also have no idea what they're talking about, ever, yet for some reason people keep listening to these morons.
i don't understand: of the course the realization doesn't carry over because you don't enough about the topic to say whether or not they know what they're talking about. are we to just assume that literally no one ever knows what they're talking about?
My read of Gell-Mann Amnesia (dunno how close it is to the intended spirit of it) is basically a lesson about skepticism. That people are prone to forgoing skepticism when it's a topic they don't understand and then suddenly remember what skepticism is when it's a topic they do understand.
That said, my personal view at this point in my life? It's impractical to be skeptical about everything and the more important part is the trustworthiness of sources, especially based on the motives behind them. So if I were to do a broad brush criticism of the "influencer" types under capitalism, it would not be that they don't know what they are talking about, but rather that they have material motives to be more performance art than substance, in order to keep attention on them and keep making money. So no matter whether they know or don't know at any given moment, the motives will push them toward being more entertaining than substantive, more shocking than thorough, and this keeps attention through a kind of nurtured friction with the world outside their sphere of influence but does not lend itself well to thorough discussion, investigation, or developing cooperation. Through this nurtured friction, they can develop cliques (or in extreme cases, cult-like groups) of people who become increasingly separated from views that don't align with those of the influencer.
It can have its benefits, drawing people out of a manipulative sphere of influence into a different, healthier one. But it can also have an isolating effect, of drawing people out of one manipulative sphere of influence into another. Really depends on the situation.
this sounds like an actual marxist interpretation of the cited effect. my concern with things like the "dunning-kruger effect" and similar theories is that they ultimately serve to reinforce the bourgeois notion that people (specifically exploited classes) are just too stupid to understand reality or anything in it. "gell-mann amnesia" takes a basic premise of the theory of knowledge, namely that we can't all be experts on everything due to the extreme complexity of reality, and uses it to pose human nature as being fundamentally irrational. if we approached everything that we didn't know with the skepticism it fully deserved, we would become completely nonfunctional. i hope it is obvious why this is significantly reactionary.
after all, there are plenty of experts that have deep knowledge about their fields that are fundamentally incorrect about the topics for which they have expertise. "gell-mann amnesia" implies that only those with expertise should be trusted for topics with which you don't personally have expertise. but, what about bourgeois economists, historians, psychologists, and the like? we all believe we are fundamentally more correct than them, even though i'm sure they would have plenty of specific arguments for why we're wrong, derived from their expertise. theories such as these serve to support the status quo; skepticism is never devoid of ideology. as you mentioned, the correct usage of skepticism is through the lens of a marxist class analysis: what are the material interests behind the information i'm consuming, and how do those conflict with whether or not they may be truthful? this allows one to be skeptical and critical of both entertainment posing as education, but also bourgeois experts.
Yes, the point is that you should assume that all that newspaper's articles or streamer's analyses are similarly inaccurate.
Experts typically know what they're talking about in the field their knowledge applies to. You should question the knowledge and motivations of media and content creators.
I do not read newspapers, and I do not remember experiencing that phenomenon. Also not surprising that streamers do not know much (are you criticizing Hakim and the others?).
Be skeptical of the level of knowledge and level of care for reporting accuracy of streamers like Hakim and the others in this clip.
Numerous others in the thread who have a higher level of relevant experience and expertise than Hakim on this particular subject have disagreed with his analysis.
When someone makes little effort to formulate their statement yet speaks with conviction, they are often going to be called out for that bad opinion. You should also then assume the same lack of understanding in every subject they talk about in which they are not a subject matter expert. This is a core aspect of media literacy: skepticism.
Hakim is a physician. I would trust his input on the German healthcare system or general medical knowledge. If he is so willing to speak without doing appropriate research on this particular matter, it is likely that he gives the same lack of care to other matters outside his purview.
Got it.