Comment by dofm
4 hours ago
> Concerns with his politics aside, I do think there's a truth to what he's talking about here
One thing the AI era has changed for me is how easily I spot Gell-Mann amnesia, of which this is an unfortunately strong example.
His politics, even putting aside their nature, are framed with deliberate misuse of facts and data; why would he be someone to listen to in any depth on any other topic?
Gell-Mann amnesia assumes a journalist is not an expert on _anything_. In this case, DHH is (according to some) an expert on software but it's much less clear he's an expert on politics. So I'm not sure Gell-Mann amnesia applies here, it's maybe more like Nobel disease, where you're an expert on one thing and assume it "transfers" to other fields.
> much less clear
I have a background in sociology and urban planning. It's very clear that DHH is not an expert on politics. His blog posts demonstrate a very elementary understanding of the topics he covers. He doesn't even understand statistics.
Ha. I was trying to be charitable there :)
> His politics [...] are framed with deliberate misuse of facts and data;
Any specific examples? I am/was out of the loop on this and had to Google "DHH politics" to know what people are talking about.
With his infamous "As I remember London" article [1] he directly correlated skin colour to nationality leading to the claim that native Brits had dropped from 60% to a third.
If you check now using current sources the British-born population is still around 59% the only thing that has changed is that fewer people identify themselves on the census as 'White British' which has a host of reasons around it. So he took a misleading statistic, interpreted it incorrectly and then built some kind of nostalgic story around it to support what was essentially an excuse to support far-right thugs protesting.
[1] https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64
The first link in his article cites his source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_London
Thank you for mentioning the effect by name. I read first about it 20 years ago, memorized it under a totally different name, and was never able to find it again.
I am slightly abusing/overstretching the concept, to be fair; other commenters are not wrong to remark as such. But still.
One thing the AI era has changed for me is how easily I spot Gell-Mann amnesia, of which this is an unfortunately strong example.
The one for me is spotting the Baader-Meinhof effect, of which this is an unfortunately strong example.
Touché. I mean it has almost the same meter. I get that you're disagreeing with me, but have my compensatory upvote.
> The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is a cognitive bias where a person spots major errors in a media report on a topic they know well, yet completely forgets that unreliability and trusts the rest of the same publication on unfamiliar topics.
Yes. I am broadening the definition of "media" and "publication", maybe, though it is posts on his own publishing platform and performances at his own breakaway conference.
But if someone misrepresents deliberately on a topic of polarising importance, why would you spend any time listening to them on any other topic?
I would (still) listen to him if I did not know he wrote stupid wrong things on other topics in bad faith.
Apparently somewhere between a third to a half of American scientists believe in some kind of god. Not to denegrate those who believe, but that's some kind of compartmentalization going on. Politics isn't any different. I dunno, I guess I don't have much issue listening to people with whom I disagree. Some people just get stuck on things. I do to, and maybe I'm the one that's wrong.
Do you automatically dismiss everything someone says based on their opinions on other topics not relevant to their main job? Is everything always absolutes?
DHH or anyone else spouting opinions on social media is hardly qualified to be setting policies for countries. Social media is also hardly the place to have any sort of debate on those topics.