Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
What is it?
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect describes a phenomenon where people recognize media inaccuracies in areas they are knowledgeable about but still trust the same media on topics they know less about.
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect happens when you catch a news source making mistakes in a topic you know a lot about, but then still trust it for other topics you know less about.
Example: Imagine you're an expert in cars. You read an article in the newspaper about cars and notice it’s full of errors—wrong information about engines, models, and how things work. You think, "Wow, this article is really inaccurate!" But then, a few pages later, you read another article on, say, global economics—a topic you're not familiar with—and you completely trust what it says, even though it might be just as wrong as the car article.
It’s like forgetting that if the news got one thing wrong, it might get other things wrong too! ...