Journalists

I have mentioned Crichton and his Gell-Mann Amnesia effect before.

Hayek agrees:

CHITESTER: Do you find journalism generally to be superficial?

HAYEK: It’s always dangerous to generalize because there are some exceedingly good men among them to whom it does not apply. But in terms of numbers, yes.

CHITESTER: And the basic corrupting element is, as you said, the desire to appeal, to try to second-guess what’s going to be accepted or not.

HAYEK: And it’s a necessity to pretend to be competent on every subject, some of which they really do not understand. They are under that necessity, I regret; I’m sorry for them. But to pretend to understand all the things you write about, and habitually to write about things you do not understand, is a very corrupting thing.

Journalists are full of crap and arrogant and have nauseatingly high tolerances for sloughing off and rationalizing away and discounting shame. That is essential to enable them to navigate and succeed in the social environs they have created. They are proud of those qualities.

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