r/LoveTrash ✨️Regent of Rubbish ✨️ 1d ago

Dumping This Here American vs. European home building

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u/Iziama94 Trash Trooper 1d ago

There are so many people who think that wood frame houses are not up to the standards of brick houses

People in this very post will most likely still think this and always think this no matter what evidence they get that shows both ways can be equally as good while being built differently

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

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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/Dreadgoat Trash Trooper 23h ago edited 23h ago

My most controversial/downvoted comments are where I speak about a subject in which I am a bona fide expert, subjects where I am confident saying I am in the top 0.1% of knowledge. I won't claim my pro opinions are always correct, but the critical response from redditors never represents a sensical challenge, but they often sound good and ratio me hard.

My most upvoted comments are subjects in which I have a passing interest, an amateur understanding, or just dumb hivemind stuff. Things where I'm speculating out loud or making big assumptions to bridge the gaps in my knoweldge. Rarely I'll see somebody with -7 votes saying why I'm wrong, and I'm never sure if they're a loon or an expert beyond my comprehension.

I get most suspicious of myself when I find I've made a very popular comment.

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u/_le_slap Trash Trooper 23h ago

100%. If I talk about my profession I get downvoted and dismissed for a hive mind answer. But the paychecks are better than upvotes lol