Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ben_w | Hacker News Reader

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"""In a speech in 2002, Crichton coined the term "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" to describe the phenomenon of experts reading articles within their fields of expertise and finding them to be error-ridden and full of misunderstanding, but seemingly forgetting those experiences when reading articles in the same publications written on topics outside of their fields of expertise, which they believe to be credible."""

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnes...

Newspapers may have said that, scientists did not, and would not have done. I mean the maximum is about 70m rise if everything melted, and while that would mess all the coastal cities, the adjective "costal" is important. Also the worst case heating isn't expected for a while yet, and the "ice age" discussion that sometimes gets mentioned was on the scale of millennia, not decades.

> Newspapers may have said that, scientists did not, and would not have done

True, but most people's information to access about the issue is from the media. Most people do not have subscriptions to journals, or any decent subsitute.

Media reports also quote scientists, so while the GP's claim is incorrect and exaggerated, there have been plenty of badly wrong predictions in the media that do quote scientists - e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20100212233059/http://www.indepe...

That phenomenona accurately describes the hackernews experience.

Also LLMs.

IMO this is why newspapers are so afraid of LLMs, they're competing on the sense of authoritativeness.

~32 years ago I was in grade school and our class went to the Museum of Natural History in NYC. There was an exhibit there depicting Manhattan under water due to global warming. It gave some year - I don't remember exactly which, but remember calculating that it would be before I would be "old".

It was very impressive, and left an impression on me which I still carry. And yet, it doesn't match reality or anything close to it.

And yes, you can argure that it was not setup by scientists - after all it was in the "Natural History" museum, which is probably not the ideal venue. But you get quickly into "No true Scotsman" territory when you discount every source that is found afterwards to be false.

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