Generally Speaking

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I can’t really speak to the matter of general officers from extensive personal experience with the rank; throughout my military career I was mostly in places removed from direct personal contact. A merciful deity, to quote the rabbi from “Fiddler on the Roof” kept the general ranks kept them far, far from us, although a SAC one-star did show up one day at EBS-Zaragoza, unannounced and unheralded. It was lunchtime, practically everyone save the radio and TV op on duty had left the building. I was sitting in my office, peacefully adding another layer of much-needed polish to my shoes, when a flight-suited guy appeared in the doorway and cheerily asked, “When you’re done with yours, can you do mine?” He was a youngish-looking, personable guy, and it took me at least five seconds to grok the single star that designated his rank. He introduced himself, Brigadier General Something-or-other. said he was visiting for a readiness inspection of the SAC unit. He just thought he would mosey around and drop in to visit some of the other activities on base which supported his people so well … and could he have a tour of our broadcast facility?

Well, duh like I could say ‘no, general, sir’. He got the brief informal nickel tour, conducted by yours truly, introduced to the few of our staffers who weren’t at lunch, and the other senior NCO, the maintenance chief, who hissed at me: “Why didn’t you tell us there was a one-star on the ground? We should have been prepared!” and I hissed back that I hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone anything, said one-star just appeared. It was likely, I added, that this general was probably much more knowledgeable about what was really going on in the activities that he visited, because of his practice of just casually dropping by … rather than doing the formal, pre-announced official inspection visit.

But to most junior and med-ranked enlisted, general officers are like saints to Catholics we know of them, about them, recognize their attributes, and experience the effects of their pronouncements and dictates.

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“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.”

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I’m a scientist now working in IT. I’ve been blogging at idontknowbut since 2002, when it was the fashion to pick an unusual “nym.” I decided to be different and use part of my name (not all, to cut down on spam), but the day came when I found other “james”s with the same idea and so I tweaked the name. I’ve worked in Berkeley of the Midwest for years, but I’ve never met Dan.

I’ve some expertise in physics, and interests in history, Africa, autism, and various “squirrels” that distract me.

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

What Twain actually published was: “Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”

If you prefer a more recent source: “It’s better to be uninformed than misinformed. I even doubt some of the pictures I see in the papers.” (Orville Hubbard)

A commenter here on HVAC and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect wrote that he tries to interpret news stories using a simple procedure: determine the bias, and then assume the opposite of what the story claims. As a rule of thumb it has the obvious problem that every now and then a liar tells the truth–as with Twain’s liar.

 

One of the things they tried to drill into us early on was that you had to measure the measurable, but your measurement wasn’t complete without an estimate of the error on that measurement. And if you screwed up, say so. These disciplines aren’t common, but they’re valuable.

 

How do we figure out what’s real?

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HVAC and the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

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Today I read this choice article on Fox with the lengthy title of “Air conditioning shortage ahead of hot summer causes nationwide price spike” and was reminded of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. To remind everyone, the definition is:

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.

As someone who has been in the field of HVAC distribution for 32 years I know a thing or two, as they say. Lets take a look at this article (yes, a good old fashioned fisking) and see if it reports what we are seeing on the ground here, or if reality has been distorted somewhat, and we perhaps have an example of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect as I peruse the rest of the news for today.

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Report Those With Unapproved Ideas to the Proper Authorities!

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In China:

In April the party launched a telephone  hot line  and online platform for reporting “historical nihilists,” who fail to comply with the official party line.  

In the United States:

In a  national survey, 85 percent of college students who identify as “liberal” say they’d report a professor who made an “offensive” comment. Sixty-five percent of “independent/apolitical” students and 41 percent of “conservatives” also would report a professor to the university.

Students were almost as eager to report their classmates: 76 percent of liberals, 57 percent of independents and 31 percent of conservatives say that a student who says something that offends other students should be reported.

We have fallen a long way from the ideals expressed in Norman Rockwell’s classic painting, and the downward path is continuing.