Applying the Gell-Mann Amnesia to American Politics
A case study of Twitter politics.
Greetings readers,
Have you ever heard of the Gell-Mann Amnesia? It’s not a concept the “experts” would tell you. Coined by novelist Michael Crichton of Jurassic Park fame, it went as follows1:
“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.”
While it’s easy to criticize people for falling into this trap, this is simply human nature. Indeed as Crichton implied, this is something we are all guilty of. By default, we believe what we are told, especially if it comes from an authority figure or someone we thought we could trust.
Right now I’m being vague right now. So let us make this more concrete. And I got just the thing: American politics.
American Politics
As you know, the US Presidential election is coming up. As of the writing of this post, it’s about 2-3 months away. And with election season in full-swing, things are getting really heated. And I’m not just talking about the Republicans v. Democrats, Donald Trump v. Kamala Harris, and so on. There are also intra-political party2 fights going on. The one I want to zero-in pertains to a very hot-button issue in the United States: abortion.
Thanks to his appointment of various pro-life judges into the Supreme Court, President Trump had often been credited with the repeal of Roe v. Wade, the court decision that once legalized abortion through all the fifty states of the Union. That said, to call Trump the “most pro-life American president” would be misleading. Despite both his past rhetoric and actions, the pro-life cause had never been Trump’s baby; he had always maintained a moderate position when it comes to the abortion issue. Thus, it was not a surprise that once the political winds seemingly shifted in favor of abortion, Trump attempted to distance himself from the pro-life cause. Trump’s move towards a more “pro-abortion” position culminated in this post on Truth Social:
If Trump thought he could get away with what seemed to be a betrayal of a huge portion of his voting base, then he was sorely mistaken. All across the Internet, pro-lifers called out the Republican candidate over his change. A prominent voice who has been criticizing Trump for this is pro-life activist Lila Rose, who posted this on Twitter:
Unlike President Trump, Lila Rose had made it her life’s work to oppose abortion in the United States, going so far as to found her own anti-abortion advocacy group when she was only 15-years old: Live Action3. It’s this organization that I want to focus on, and how it relates to the Gell-Mann Amnesia.
The Example
As readers might be able to tell, I’ve spent more time on Twitter than I care to admit. Much of my time in that infernal app is spent looking up American politics. I know, I know… I should get a better hobby.
That said, it can’t be all bad since it was something I saw on Twitter that inspired me to write this blogpost.
Going back to Rose, Twitter user going by the name of “Bad Hombre” accused her and her organization of some serious improprieties4:
Confused? So was I when I first saw this tweet. I don’t know about you, but I’m not an expert on American tax documents. Sure I’ve filed my taxes in the years I’ve lived in America, but I used TurboTax for that. Can you imagine how annoying it would be to manually write down all these line items? No wonder there are people in America who make a lot of money filing other people’s taxes. Like plumbing and toilet cleaning, people literally had to be paid to put up with it.
Anyways…
On first glance, things do look bad for Lila Rose and Live Action. As Bad Hombre said, her organization raked in over $14 million in 2022, yet only $24,000 was given as grants to domestic organizations for pro-life causes and only $81,000 for lobbying. In total, that’s $106,000 out of $14 million that Live Action used for those two purposes.
You don’t have to be a mathematician to know that you’ll get a very low percentage out of that.
So does that mean Lila Rose is a grifter? Is she just in it for the money? That seems to be the prevailing attitude when I scroll through the Twitter thread…
Now I would have gone along with the mob if it wasn’t for one thing, I actually tried to examine the accusations for myself. Again, I’m not an expert on tax documents but I want to give everyone a fair shake. It also helps that I’m a natural contrarian. I don’t like seeing anyone being singled out and picked on. So I want know if whoever gets bullied actually deserves it.
Also, I’ve played enough Phoenix Wright to know that just because someone looks guilty, doesn’t mean she is.
So I looked into the thread with a critical eye, and found a contradiction. It was in this comment that Bad Hombre made:
In response to a question asked regarding how many people are working at Live Action, Bad Hombre said nine, and only five paid. I assume he’s not counting Lila, so technically that would make a total of ten employees and six paid. Keep this in mind.
Having been told by the original tweet how most of the company’s $14 million went to Lila Rose and her “lavish lifestyle”, I’m sure most people quickly imagined $14 million divided amongst five people, with Rose probably gobbling up the lion’s share.
Bad Hombre had painted a very bad picture as it pertains to Lila Rose. But there’s a very big problem with all this: Bad Hombre is full of shit5.
Unlike a lot of the people who responded to the initial tweet, I actually read the documents. Tried to, anyways. Like I said, I’m not an expert on tax documents. But when I saw a tweet which contradicted Bad Hombre regarding Live Action’s employee numbers, I took a closer look.
Here are the documents, just so people can follow along:
If you don’t understand the intricacies of American tax documents, don’t worry. I don’t either. In fact, the point of this blogpost is that I am a relative ignoramus when it comes to American tax documents.
Now pay attention to line 5 of the left document. It said that the company had employed 53 individuals in calendar year 2022. 53 paid employees is certainly a far cry from 5 that Bad Hombre implied.
So we have a serious error on our hands. But does it matter? Aren’t I just being pedantic here?
That’s the Gell-Mann Amnesia at play. Once a person becomes aware that there is something wrong with what was said by an authority figure, the temptation is to dismiss it. Not so much to say that the error doesn’t exist, but that it doesn’t matter.
Overcoming the Gell-Mann Amnesia
I admit, if I had been predisposed to believe the worst about Lila Rose, I would have fallen victim to the Gell-Mann Amnesia. But like I said, I don’t like seeing people bullied by the mob. More importantly, I’ve long paid attention to American politics as a registered member of the GOP.
And I know that in conservative American politics, serious Christians (including pro-lifers) play the role of the abused wife to the Republican Party. Apologies in advance to those offended by my imagery, but it’s true. The GOP has a terrible habit of taking the votes of serious Christians for granted. Because why not? What are the Christians going to do, vote for the Democrats who are as pro-abortion as they come?
So like the abused wife who put up with her husband’s violent temper because she has nowhere else to go, Christians are forced to put up with the party who time and time again had stabbed them in the back.
Indeed for a lot of Trump supporters, the notion that Trump was responsible for the repeal of Roe v. Wade was enough to justify his campaign throwing pro-lifers to the curb. Another justification I heard is that it’s so important for Trump to win this election so people should just shut up and not push back or ask difficult questions.
Notice that the onus is on the voters to accept Trump no matter what. As if he is entitled to people’s votes instead of having to earn them.
Am I digressing? I don’t think so. Back to Lila’s accuser, this is his Twitter profile:
Did you notice what I notice? I sure hope so. Just look the top picture. This guy is clearly a Trump partisan. And as we have established earlier in this blogpost, Rose had the temerity to criticize Trump during election season. So maybe… just maybe… we should take what this guy said with a grain of salt.
More Errors
It’s because I know not to take this guy’s claim at face value that I soon discovered more errors. Once again, I ask the readers to take a look at the documents. This time at Line 15. That’s where we see how much money was spent on employees. And the number there is $3.8 million.
That’s much less than the $14 million that Bad Hombre’s original tweet implied was all spent on Lila and her team’s “lavish lifestyle”.
Now let’s do some math. If the money that goes to employees are $3.8 million and there are 53 employees6 then the average salary for someone who works at Live Action would be around $72,000. That’s not even a six-figure salary.
“Lavish lifestyle” my butt.
But what about Lila herself? Surely the CEO of the company would be paid more than the average worker. That’s true. I’ve looked elsewhere and found that Ms. Rose has a salary of about $271,000 from her own company.
That’s a very high salary, even by American standards. But I wouldn’t necessarily call it “lavish lifestyle” either.
Now let me level here, I don’t know much about Lila Rose before I started to look into this issue. I’ve heard about her a little bit, but I don’t really follow her work. So I’m not necessarily defending her. Maybe it is wrong for her to be paid $271,592 by her nonprofit company. Maybe her company could have made better use of that money.
That said, remember Bad Hombre’s initial claim: Lila Rose spent $14 million of pro-life donation money mostly for herself (and her little group). But as it turned out, she only made around $271,000 from Live Action. Again, that’s still a lot of money. But why didn’t Bad Hombre put up Ms. Rose’s actual salary in his original tweet? Was he afraid that it would undermine his case?
Remember when I first brought up the number of employees that Live Action had, and how Bad Hombre got his numbers wrong?. I told the readers to “keep this in mind” because it seems like Bad Hombre has a bad habit of getting his numbers wrong… which for some reason works in his favor. Funny that.
Bad Hombre made a very serious accusation in his original tweet. That the facts turned out to be much milder than the initial accusation really rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t like being lied to. Nor do I like seeing angry mobs (even Internet ones) forming on the basis of lies.
If you’re tired of seeing numbers, don’t worry because I’m done talking about numbers.
Beyond the Numbers
As someone with my own Twitter account, I didn’t just lurk around. I felt the need to express my own opinion and my disapproval of this witch hunt. And it’s a good thing that I did as I received a reply to my comment which shed a new light to this situation:
This is crucial because the original tweet by Bad Hombre made a big deal that Live Action only spent $81,000 out of the $14 million that the company had earned in donations. But if Live Action isn’t a lobbying company, then it would be unreasonable to criticize it for not spending most of their money on lobbying.
It’s like criticizing an automobile company for not spending enough money on planes. They’re two different things.
Lesson Learned
As I said before, the point of this article is not to defend everything that Ms. Lila Rose did. It’s also not to take a shot at Bad Hombre. Of course, the fact that I had to refer to this guy as “Bad Hombre” throughout my entire blogpost is revealing. Indeed, I looked through his Twitter profile hoping I can find more information on this guy. But I couldn’t find anything. No external links, no website, nothing. He’s just some anon.
Now in the original tweet, Bad Hombre challenged Ms. Lila Rose to appear on an X-space7 so she could explain herself. Maybe it’s just me, but the more I think about it, the more this guy left a bad taste in my mouth.
Let’s think this through… why should Ms. Rose give some guy who wouldn’t even go by his real name the time of day? I intend no offense to all the Internet anons out there; in fact, I have many anon friends on the Internet. But this whole thing feels so fake. Let’s be honest, there’s no reason why Lila Rose, someone who goes by her real name and her real face, would go on some Internet space to explain herself to a herd of anonymous people who are unlikely to give her a fair hearing.
Seriously. If you find yourself having your taxes called into question, and your first instinct is not to get a lawyer, then something’s wrong with you.
Thus, all this is nothing more than a stunt by a Twitter anon. Yet I wouldn’t have figured it out if had I fallen victim to the Gell-Mann Amnesia. Like I said, I’m not an expert in tax documents; also, I don’t know much about Lila Rose or Bad Hombre coming in, and I still have much to learn even now. But you don’t have to be an expert. All you need is just some awareness.
As for Ms. Lila Rose herself, this seems to be the most reasonable take on her:
Of course, I can be proven wrong in the near future about all this. That’s the problem with writing on current events.
Until next time, Michael P. Marpaung
A fancy way of saying that it happens within a single political party.
I would link the website rather than a LinkedIn page, but apparently it’s blocked in Indonesia.
Pardon my French.
Presumably including Ms. Lila Rose herself.
A space on Twitter where users can talk to one another. Basically a mix of livestream and podcast.