raizinho

I've gradually come to see that the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect is an abstraction even though it refers (with good reason) just to newspapers. I've become hyper skeptical (always wait for more evidence, get the other side of the story, etc.), and the evidence so far supports its effectiveness. Generally my belief is proportional to my knowledge.

But what if you need assign a strong belief to a topic that you don't have the bandwidth (time, mental, etc.) to put into learning about it? What I want to ask about is how you structure this, from the highest (I can more or less read this conclusion and basically accept it) to lowest (I wouldn't accept this conclusion if my life depending on it).

I tried to outline my own hierarchy:

* Meta-analysis of papers that have been reproduced.

* Paper that has been reproduced.

* Meta-analysis of papers that haven't been reproduced.

* Paper that hasn't been reproduced.

* Books: As far as I've seen most book reviews are generally "Did I like what I just read?" and have little to do with fact checking. This [instance](https://www.thecut.com/2019/05/naomi-wolf-interview-book-error-bbc-interview.html) comes to mind.

* Anecdotes: Dismissed out of hand unless it's addressing the equivalent of an existence proof.

I'm on the technical side and naturally lean towards the true source of data being tables in a database. Day to day I also have to deal with non-trivial data whose source of truth is stored in Google Sheets instead. I believe that it's the wrong tool for the job beyond casual data tasks, but recognize its value-add and the impracticality of expecting everyone to learn SQL and/or the basics of a language associated with data analysis.

How do you deal with this tension?

Apologies if the title is unclear. I often feel a disconnect between the freedom I have to interact with laptop versus the barriers put up between me and my phone - often due to the app-centered relationship. Examples include:

* The ease of being able to drop files into Dropbox for syncing on a laptop, but not having a clue how to do the same on mobile.

* Not being able to interact with the file system "normally". (I know there are some mobile terminals but none seem to fit well.)

* Not being able to run scripts and use a scheduler.

There are products out there like Integromat to lessen this disconnect, but I was wondering what the scope of the resources was.