Veritasium kinda obviously dumbs things down and sensationalizes stuff somewhat, compared to actual scientific content creators. But the peak of this was when he popped up with a video about how “electricity works differently than everyone thought”, with the two long wires doing induction or whatever, and then every physics and electrics youtuber had a reply video explaining how Veritasium was wrong with his theory.
Comment on Anon is a nice guy
Fawkes@lemmy.zip 2 days agoThis is the first I’m hearing of this, usually it’s the opposite. Care to provide justification and evidence?
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
and then every physics and electrics youtuber had a reply video explaining how Veritasium was wrong with his theory.
Veritasium’s first video was making the claim that a thr setup with wires stretching in either direction for a mile would have the lightbulb turn on faster than electrons or even light could travel through the wires. This is because the electric field extends out of the wire in all directions, not through the wire, and inducts through the other end of the wire without travelling all of the distance.
Then a bunch of other Youtubers made response videos saying he was wrong.
Then Veritasium made a second video where they actually did the experiment and proved themselves right.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Shut up.
jonman364@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Yeah, sounds exactly like science to me. Here’s my claim, here’s how I came to that conclusion, now show me how I messed up.
I don’t think most people realize that most science YouTubers are expert communicators, not necessarily experts in any particular science field.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
No, Veritasium did the experiment and proved Veritasium right
balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
The whole thing seemed to be engineered for drama, and the “results” are an exceptionally clickbaity oversimplification of what’s going on. It’s like that numberphile thing with 1 + 2 + 3 + …
It’s also more complicated than the lightbulb just “turning on faster than the electric field could travel through the wire”, in fact (depending on the exact circumstances) the current would ramp up very slowly, probably not enough to even meaningfully “light” the lightbulb, and only after the light-speed delay one-way would it ramp up to full-brightness.
Electric field obviously travels in all directions, but the electrons which produce fluctuations in the electric field are constrained to the wire, hence unless your wires are so close together as to basically be connected to each other, air attenuates the electric field wave propagation. This is an actually good-faith reproduction of the experiment and an in-depth explanation: www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8 .
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
But the peak of this was when he popped up with a video about how “electricity works differently than everyone thought”, with the two long wires doing induction or whatever, and then every physics and electrics youtuber had a reply video explaining how Veritasium was wrong with his theory.
fun fact: i study physics and one of our profs actually referred to exactly this video as a nice visualization of what we were doing in class. they said that the video’s right, actually, but there’s lot of dumb people on the internet who don’t get that and who nonsensically shit on stuff.
tyler@programming.dev 1 day ago
The one instance I’m referring to that caused me and my wife to stop watching was when he faked a science experiment for a wet wipes company, showing that wet wipes are flushable and used a faked experiment to show why.
You should not need proof for why this experiment was faked, but you can also just go find the video yourself and watch it. It’s so blatant that it doesn’t really need proof. And any wastewater engineer would tell you that wet wipes are not flushable as well.
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Was quite a lot of controversy around this topic
https://www.veritasium.com/videos/2021/7/23/why-you-should-want-driverless-cars-on-roads-now
Not well disclosed sponsoring among other things afaik. That video was why I unsubbed, no idea if there has been new stuff since
Fawkes@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I understand your justifiable concern, however I disagree with the blanket statement.
First off, if I remember the video correctly, it is not hidden that Waymo was the video sponser. It may not have been in the spotlight, but I don’t think that’s automatically a bad thing.
Secondly, it is very possible for some one to hold different opinions to yours, even with identical evidence. It was clear to me that he really did like the technology and made his best case for it. If new information has come to light, then that’s worth re-examining the opinion. Personally, I have always been in fabour of replacing human drivers with AI, for a wide variety of reasons. I agree with his sentiment that the sooner we replace human drivers, the safer we’ll all be. That being said, there is obviously a conflict of interest in the industry between making the technology safe, and profitable. And we all know what happens the larger an organization gets.
Third, the majority of the videos are not opinion pieces. They explain physics, chemistry, mechanics, etc. I’m not sure how some one can misrepresent physics, without being objectively wrong. And they seem to be pretty universally correct in their rigor. There has been more than one instance where the channel has come under scrutiny for being accused of manipulating experiments, and each time he comes back to re-explain the experiment and show that it had been misunderstood, not misrepresented.
iflscience.com/youtuber-derek-muller-won-a-10000-…
Hard to find a direct like but the “How electricity works” controversy also seems to fit this theme.
I am not saying the channel is above skepticism or is the poster child of perfection by any means. But I don’t think it’s fair to boycott on the grounds of a single opinion you happen to disagree with, especially when that opinion is genuinely based on available research and evidence. I think this is actually a disservice to progress as a whole. If you find an enemy in everyone that does share your exact values, it leaves progressives divided.
Droechai@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
When the video was published it was not clear at all that it was sponsored content by waymo when you watched it via Youtube and that they only added clarification after a lot of reactions speaks as a plus, however I think you have a responsibility to expand on why you post glorification about a tech that was not then nor now ready for use. How many “self driving” accidents has happened due to the same population (ie humans) that increase risk of crash with ordinary Cruise Control?
I also choose to stop supporting people who blindly promote LLMs as panacea for everything. I fail to see how that interacts with my political beliefs. American progressives are way too right wing to ever seem like allies to my swedish leftist views and political works. I will always abhorr being painted as divider of progressive factions when choosing who Im subscribing to. I can hear prager u content without subscribing to them as well
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
AI is overkill for this, like the vast majority of its applications
mik@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
I get the impression they meant AI as in general “Artificial Intelligence”, rather than the buzzword AI used to describe LLMs.
Arcka@midwest.social 1 day ago
There are types of AI that are very good at specific things and have been since before LLMs became accessible to use. We need to recognize that those are the types of AI which should be encouraged.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
Absolutely wild fucking take.
Yes, that is automatically a bad thing.
balsoft@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
We need to get rid of cars, the sooner the better. Whether self-driving, electric, or a combination of those, they are the worst transportation method for most use-cases, only used because they are the most profitable for the capitalist and seem immediately convenient for the user, resulting in a double tragedy-of-commons situation.
tyler@programming.dev 1 day ago
That was not the one I’m talking about. I’m talking about the literal faking of a science experiment he did when he did a sponsored segment for wet wipes.