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Comment by madamelic | Hacker News Reader

Really tired of mainstream hit pieces against cryptocurrency.

I wouldn't call myself a bitcoin fanatic (I hold a very small amount, just for the fact of making myself learn about blockchain and cryptocurrencies), but these articles are not well-researched.

They don't understand the difference between Bitcoin and Dogecoin, let alone the difference between ICOs and Bitcoin, not to mention their misunderstanding that blockchains are a technology, not Bitcoin.

The article even admits Dogecoin's creator was always skeptical and made the coin as a joke, so him suddenly saying he is skeptical is just about the least shocking thing.

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Indeed, and since this is the NYTimes, it's worth remembering Gell-Mann Amnesia once again:

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

For every story you read where you notice wrong facts, tens or hundreds of stories are getting things fine.

Almost no one sits down and says "oh, indeed, this article is competent and a correct statement of fact"

It just so happens that all the stories where we know about the topic are the ones with the wrong facts?

Without any other comment or value judgement it's just worth pointing out that while the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is named for Murray Gell-Mann, it doesn't come from him. It's a coinage of the fiction writer Michael Crichton. We should probably call it the Crichton Amnesia Effect, but that doesn't sound as cool.

From his talk:

> I refer to it by this name because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself, and to the effect, than it would otherwise have.

This might be humblebragging, since Crichton is certainly more famous than Gell-Mann.

But Circhton was an author, while Gell-Mann was a physicist. We associate scientists with a lot more rigor than authors.

The full essay, for those as curious as I was: http://larvatus.com/michael-crichton-why-speculate/

I didn't see as a hit piece. This is a mainstream publication that probably feels the need to explain the basics to the mainstream general populace.

Their conclusion after exploring a number of cryptocurrencies is that the environment attracts a fairly large number of fraudsters, scammers and pump-and-dumpers. Doesn't mean the entire ecosystem is 100% scammers, but the probability of an average joe being hit by a scam is quite high.

What other common use case should they have covered for their readers? Micropayments on the Web? Wide retail acceptance? We know the ship has sailed on those two.

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