Comment on I Tried To Make Something In America (The Smarter Scrubber Experiment) - Smarter Every Day 308
Thorry84@feddit.nl 5 days ago
I haven’t forgotten Destin trying to push his creationist agenda using his YouTube platform. He makes a lot of good content, but after that I don’t want to watch his stuff anymore. Fuck him for doing something like that.
I’ve been following him for years and I don’t really remember him pushing any narrative except the bible verse references at the end, can you be more specific?
It’s obvious he’s religious but he’s a great educator and host so unless it’s affecting his videos, I don’t care what he does with his free time.
I’ve responded with a link in another reply in this thread.
C can you link to that reply?
When did he do that?
And, if someone has a sincerely held moral belief and they honestly believe other people’s lives would be made better if they heard it, then how is is not morally good from their perspective?
He can believe what he wants in his personal time. He can even use his platform to spread his beliefs. However being all about science and then pushing some weird agenda is a whole other thing. He betrayed the trust, so I choose not to watch his stuff anymore.
It was this video: youtu.be/VPSm9gJkPxU
When this video went up it caused quite a fuss online as Destin seems to heavily push an old debunked intelligent design narrative around flagella.
He literally says that there’s a lot of good research being done trying to find the evolutionary mechanism. Nowhere that I saw at least did he push creationism, other than mentioning that the concept exists, and that he believes in god.
Well, I don’t think it’s worth repeating the debate again. You can go back and look at what was posted back when it came out.
But he tells a very one sided story and keeps telling to keep an open mind. He presents this thing as if it’s totally unique and amazing, where there are very similar structures in nature out there. He also heavily focuses on the idea of it being a motor in the way that a human designed motor works, giving the same names to parts which are kind of similar on a surface level but really aren’t. He also repeats all of the bible thumper talking points around this subject, as if it’s a mystery nobody can explain and couldn’t have come to be without some kind of intelligent design at the helm. But the reality is, this is not representing the reality at all. This whole flagella thing was an exercise of goal post moving in the first place. The ID people kept pointing out weird things and missing links. Then when science explained exactly how that thing came to be, without ID involved, they just pointed to the next thing at one point ending up at flagella.
There is a whole Wikipedia page talking about how flagella evolved and how it came to be. The intelligent design people have been shouting about this for 3 decades now and there is so much info out there to find about how this came to be. If Destin wanted to approach this from a scientific standpoint, he would focus on that information, instead of presenting it like some kind of mystery we are still figuring it out today. And not keep telling people to have an open mind and how he can’t figure it out. He could have even gone into why people might think it was ID and then explain the science why it is not. Something other online science communicators often do, give people the points they have been hearing from the “wrong” side and then go into those points and explain them.
Basically the whole subject itself is very hard to present without going into the whole ID versus evolution standpoint and the way he represented it was straight out of the ID playbook. And keep in mind all of this was thoroughly debunked back 20 years ago. Him bringing this up now is inexcusable.
I’m curious to see the creationist stuff but I’ll be honest, I don’t want to listen to him for a half hour. Is there a time stamp I can skip to?
how is is not morally good from their perspective?
It is, but thier perspective is immoral.
Yeah that’s a fair perspective I have. I just don’t like when people aren’t honest about their problem with it because they want to act like they’re okay with religion.
I think religion is ok, as long as it isn’t evangelical or spreading anti-intellectualism.
Believe can cross into delusion and become harmfull. I believe (hihi) creationism is part of the latter, as it also implies a hierarchy between people and other life.
Additionally, all evidence points away from intelligent design. For this youtube channel in particular, it’s sad to see examples of belief over evidence.
Fundamentally isn’t any religious belief in an omnipotent/world creating god creationist? I think the evidence trying to “prove” intelligent design is pretty weak, but the thing about essentially all religious belief is that its not exactly falsifiable. The argument can basically be as simple as “yes that evolved but god created everything in the world so it would evolve that way” or “no it didn’t evolve, god created the world 5000 years ago, he just also made stuff that to any observer would appear older. he did that to intentionally obfuscate the truth so you must have faith”
Fundamentally isn’t any religious belief in an omnipotent/world creating god creationist?
Oh yeah. This isn’t a problem unique to Christianity.
but the thing about essentially all religious belief is that its not exactly falsifiable
I think the function of a belief system is to lessen fear in scary, doubtfull, uncertain, painfull situations. That’s when an unfalsifiable happy ending brings comfort.
It’s just that many of them were invented quite a while ago, and some things that used to be unknown and scary then, are now better understood or obsolete. No point in engaging in makebelief for those.
flubba86@lemmy.world 5 days ago
He is also a staunch Republican, and a Trump supporter. I like some of his videos, but most of them are cringe if you’re actually knowledgeable about the topic he is covering. He researches a topic just enough to come across as the smartest person in the room, while dumbing down concepts and talking down to the audience like we’re infants. You can tell his target audience are poorly educated and easily impressed people from rural America.
aidan@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I pretty strongly disagree with that characterization, at least for the manufacturing videos I watched, that I do have experience in. I appreciate how deferential and humble he is to people in his videos even if they’re showing a job that is relatively unremarkable to most people.
I also think
is a pretty mean spirited and stereotype-based thing to say.
Venator@lemmy.nz 5 days ago
Also his target audience is anyone poorly educated and easily impressed regardless of where they’re from. 😅
ooo@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I watched this video in its entirety and it made me profoundly uncomfortable.
There was a lot of subtext that seems edited out. Yes he’s “humble” in some respects but he’s also willfully ignorant in others, or at least presents as such.
I would not be surprised if in a few years he goes off the deep end.
bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
I also watched the whole thing, and have to imagine that a lot of xenophobic stuff was edited out when they found out their chainmail from India was actually from China. That section was so cringe, they had someone on earlier who spoke Chinese, why not ask him what it meant or research some more, than make assumptions and air that lightly filtered.
I get he’s making a point to invest in local manufacturing, but then knowingly having the excess supply of chainmail come from India defeats the point he’s trying to make. Considering the handle for the first 2000 are from costa rica and the excess chainmail after the 2000 units was at least thought to be from India, it seems rare anything being sold is 100% Made in America, yet has a price tag 4x as much.
immutable@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Yea I watched it too and had the exact same response to the Indian chainmail.
He wants to make his product completely in America. Ok sure. He can’t. Ok sucks. Decides he’s actually just trying not to buy any Chinese components instead… ok what?
The other bit I thought that was kinda weird was that if he’s so interested in bringing back this manufacturing capacity to Americans, then, do that.
It’s an entire video about him trying to manufacture something without manufacturing it. Outsourcing every single component to a vendor as long as it’s an American vendor.
You want more people that know how to make tools and dies, hire some dude to do that, make it economically feasible for people to do that by having good stable jobs that do that at your brush factory.
I found the whole video kinda offputting in this way. It sure would be great if he could just magically find this manufacturing capacity sitting idle in America and exploit it to make his brush.
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Really ? he is a Trump supporter ? I know him only from his videos, but that seems out of character for someone versed in the sciences and reasoning. Can you provide a source ? I don’t want to support him with views anymore if that’s true
nieminen@lemmy.world 5 days ago
This. I’d be super surprised because he’s an intellectual who likes to understand the hows and whys of things. I really enjoy his content (especially his helicopter series). If he’s maga then I’ll definitely not watch another.
Venator@lemmy.nz 5 days ago
I don’t know what OP is talking about, but the whole premise of this video seems quite trumpian.
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 5 days ago
The video linked here ? I watched it yesterday, not at all. It’s about manufacturing in the USA. He makes great points that are valid for any service-based economy such as most of western Europe (where I am from). Watch it, it’s good
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
How is bringing back foreign manufacturing a MAGA thing?
This is essentially the whole selfhoating community doing the same thing with cloud services. And I wouldnt in my dreams vote for our country equivalent of the republicans.
m0darn@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
In the video where he’s shooting antique guns (or something) with his son, his son always calls him “sir”. Is that a regional thing? It seemed super weird to me.
flubba86@lemmy.world 4 days ago
I noticed the same thing, and you could see it a bit in this (OP) video too.
I think this one is partly regional and partly traditional.
Destin probably always called his father sir, and he probably has the same expectation of his children.