Your Opinions Are Not Your Own

I shall now explain the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.  WARNING: the Gell-Mann amnesia effect will ensure you forget the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

You watch, listen, or read a news story about a subject you know well.  For me, it has been Pagans and the Law, or JRR Tolkien, or Risks to the Public in Computers.  You realize the journalist has reversed cause and effect, assumed causation instead of correlation, and left out key facts.  You are infuriated not only because the story is wrong, but also because it leaves people stupider than before.  And then you see or hear the next story.  You turn the page.  You click the next link.  And you get amnesia. 

You forget your emotional response to the bogus reporting.  When you consume the next story about politics or foreign affairs or science -- you accept all facts, opinions, and conclusions therein as logical and truthful and trustworthy.  Because otherwise someone would have stopped them from saying it.  Or if someone pointed out errors they'd admit their mistake and publish a follow up setting the record straight.

Or would they?

The mental pressure you're feeling right now is cognitive dissonance.  Your brain is juggling two contradictory beliefs:
1. The media narrative is never accurate in any situation I have personal experience
2. The media narrative is always accurate when I use it to make decisions

The "amnesia" part of the Gell-Mann effect will happen in a few minutes because it's the only way for you to function in modern society.  Every day we choose: who do I associate with; what do I buy; when do I act; where do I go; why do I believe, how do I live.  Our mental health requires we believe our decisions are logical and fact-based, and not duped into making bad decisions because someone lied.  Your brain tosses personal experience (belief #1) down a memory hole, because questioning the media narrative (belief #2) leads down a dark path of paranoia, tin foil hats and conspiracy theories.

While your brain is still reeling in disbelief, ponder two questions:  What do you know, and how do you know it?

Our secular society no longer accepts Revelation on faith.  Instead, there are three fonts of knowledge, three sources authorized to answer the question, "What is Truth?"
* Government Leaders
* Scientists / Academics
* Journalists
But are these three sources reliable?

Information from government sources is easiest to impeach, because the government lies blatantly when it wishes to conduct unpopular foreign policy.  "Iraq has WMDs" is this generation's most notorious lie, but every foreign adventure starts with a false flag: Gulf of Tonkin,  Sinking of the Lusitania, Remember the Maine, Remember the Alamo, 54-40 or Fight.  The government lies to cover up embarrassing mistakes: the attack on the USS Liberty, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, the many court cases where the State Secrets Privilege has been wrongfully invoked.  Finally, the government lies to favor certain business sectors: the USDA Food Pyramid, the unemployment rate, justifications for special-interest tax policy.

What all government lies have in common is that they allow the people responsible for the lies to engage in acts which would otherwise not be allowed in an open and democratic society.

Information from academic and scientific sources is subject to the Replication Crisis.  The results of far too many scientific studies are impossible to replicate, either by the independent researchers or the original scientists.  This has grave consequences when government policy and individual decision making is based on those studies.

What all academic/scientific lies have in common is that they allow the people responsible for the lies to get a job or make money peddling goods and services.

Information from journalistic sources, the Mainstream Media or "MSM", is under attack from individuals sharing information on the internet.  For every news story containing wrong facts, incorrect assumptions, and misleading conclusions -- there's someone with subject matter expertise raising a hand and saying, "That's not entirely accurate."  At the same time, ownership and control of the media has never been more centralized.  Six companies publish at least 90% of all TV/cable, radio, print, and online news.

What all journalistic lies have in common is that they allow the 0.01% who own and control these companies to prosper.  Which rarely trickles down to the rest of us.

In a perfect world, government leaders, scientists/academics, and journalists would all be free of bias and provide information to serve the public good.  How close are we to living in this world?