this post was submitted on 14 May 2026
544 points (95.3% liked)

Science Memes

20200 readers
1572 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] MoonMelon@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 day ago

Angela Collier's video about this: https://youtu.be/wBBnfu8N_J0?t=2213 (Kaku part starts at 36:50).

A TLDW on the rest of the video: "Gell-Mann Amnesia" is a term Michael Crichton coined. It refers to how people read articles in a newspaper about a topic they are experts in, realize it's all horribly written trash, then turn the page and happily read the next article about an unfamiliar topic forgetting they just learned the newspaper is trash.

Collier expands on the idea to include the Gell-Mann Complement and Gell-Mann Recollection. The Recollection is what Kaku does, where he doesn't know anything about a topic but presents a simple explanation on it anyway just because he's an expert in something different. This frequently gets him into completely bonkers territory, like Deepak Chopra level bonkers.