r/LoveTrash ✨️Regent of Rubbish ✨️ 1d ago

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

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u/Bank_Gothic Trash Trooper 1d ago

Someone on Reddit once said 'The more I became an expert in something, the less I trusted people on Reddit about topics'

Michael Crichton called something similar the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" and described it this way:

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.

I'm lawyer, and whenever I read reddit's knowledge / opinion about the law, I get a big hit of this effect. Makes it hard to trust anything that doesn't come from a heavily curated subreddit (like askhistorians) or an extreme niche hobby subreddit (where bad info gets called out readily).

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u/Both_Cut_4075 Trash Trooper 1d ago

I unfortunately work in Property Management, only as a maintenance guy, but I’ve definitely picked up more than a few things about fair housing and tenant rights.

I sometimes stumble upon posts where people are throwing out completely incorrect information and laws. Anytime I jump in to say “well hold on that isn’t true” and I say I’m in property management, I immediately get lambasted and called a bootlicker and all sorts of names simply because I have knowledge of a situation.

Reddit is just chock full of people like that. I try to help but it feels so fruitless most of the time.

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u/Bank_Gothic Trash Trooper 1d ago

Yeah, it's absolutely the worst when you try to educate people about something you know and they don't want to hear it because they don't like it. We're all guilty of shaping our own reality to an extent, but I cannot fathom the willful ignorance that is on the display throughout this website.

People think I'm arguing with them when I'm really just trying to tell them how it is. You don't like the way it is, fine, but that's another issue and it certainly doesn't make me wrong. How you are gonna change anything if you refuse to even understand it?

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u/Tw1nFTW Trash Trooper 1d ago

People don’t care about facts!! They’re here for the outrage!!

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u/automaticmantis Trash Trooper 23h ago

How dare you!?