Comments by "nexus1g" (@nexus1g) on "Veritasium" channel.

  1. For those wondering, the paper is called, "Motivated numeracy and enlightened self-government". A co-author on this paper was Paul Slovic. My mom worked for him at Decision Research back in the 90's when he was doing his book The Perception of Risk. She's mentioned by name in the forward of the book. He's a really awesome researcher and person. When I saw this paper, I thought it was amazing he was still in the business and still doing great research.
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  2. I remember first hearing about this concept about 20 years ago or so. It's amazing to see how far we've come.
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  3. TheTruesonicfan3602 It's not a trick, it's science!
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  4.  @giantermite7039  Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. You're just assuming. You're the one who's claiming something about the research based on a video not even done by the original researchers. I'm telling you to prove your claims of it being "terrible" research. The burden is entirely on you. Logic 101. Now if you were really wondering, you'd go read the paper itself and not make your only support argumentum ad ignorantiam.
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  5.  @giantermite7039  I asked where you saw in the video that they included people who didn't give a desired answer in the N value. You just had assumptions based on what you saw, but no proof of your claim. So even if what was shown in the video was accurate to the study, you still have no valid argument to believe that the study is "terrible". This video also doesn't strongly suggest anything of the sort. It doesn't even remotely suggest any such thing, in fact. The only place where you even made a tenuous connection between the video and your belief suggested no such thing. You presume because they didn't state explicitly that such people were excluded, it's acceptable to assume they were included. That's completely irrational. When I engage your comment, I'm not creating a burden of proof for myself. That's not at all how it works. You came here and made a claim that it was terrible, not me. Even if you wanted me to support that it was good research, the fact that it made it past peer review does that. It's on you to prove your claim against the peer review process.
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  6.  @giantermite7039  Such as the woman who said about the skin cream, "The numbers mean nothing to me," you're assuming she was included in the N-value.
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  7.  @simonjonsson3654  You're here gatekeeping when and where arguments shouldn't be conducted with a bit of blackmail threatening apparent intelligence--like these things are even related.
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  8. Pladimir Vutin Elon Musk hires engineers and scientists like Thunderf00t to determine feasibility of projects. This vacuum train idea has been around since like the 50's. It's going to happen, but the technology and investment needed to mature. I agree that we're about there.
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  9. D4MNF0xy You really think it's easy to travel into space -- even relative to what's required to build and maintain the hyperloop? Lifting a 2-million-kilo, 18-storey structure into orbit by controlling 3 million ft. lbs. of thrust in 127 seconds, not to mention the extreme stresses of reentry is a HUGELY monumental task unlikely to happen from an engineering perspective.
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  10. I'm sitting here at 42 thinking, "Don't do that... Don't give me hope..."
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  11.  @giantermite7039  How do you figure the video suggests that?
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  12. So, my mom was visiting today. She worked for Paul Slovic--as mentioned; she's a statistician, biologist, zoologist, and nurse with two master's degrees; and she's published in academic journals multiple times across two fields of study. I had told her that Veritasium had covered the paper Slovic was involved in when I found the video, the existence of said paper we'd both already been privy to for years. She happened to see on my computer me working on a reply to you here. She has intentions on dropping by and providing a few words of her own to add to my replies.
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  13. By your reasoning of there being no way to deal with expansion and shrinking due to heating and cooling means the SR-71, rockets and the space shuttle, guns, etc. would not exist. Since there's little fluid resistance since it's a partial vacuum in the tube, most of the heat we deal with in the other applications I mentioned earlier won't be an issue. If anything, accounting for thermals will be easier.
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  14. Cao Cao By your standards, I don't think you believe the space shuttle should work.
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  15. Master Evar Seriously, stop thinking Thunderf00t is an expert in everything. He's simply not a structural engineer, and he's going outside of his expertise in this matter. He's a biochemist. He's using his authority of having an advanced degree to talk about things he doesn't have any position to really be discussing with authority. In other words, he's using a logical fallacy: a fallacious appeal to authority.
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  16. InSQUIDious What I find most funny is that you nor thunderf00t think the idea of earthquakes has not, at some point, crossed the mind of the engineers planning the project and that they already have a solution. To paraphrase Thomas Edison: I can think of a billion ways how a light bulb would fail, but it still works because someone found the solutions to the issues.
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  17. Master Evar "A fallacy is something that undermines the argument. thunderf00t never used authority as an argument," He's using his authority to avoid using proper sources while still being taken seriously. "And no, I don't think your use of "appeal to authority" is correct. Authority is one who has deciding power over someone else. Just becasue you think you are smarter than someone else on a subject you don't have to believe you have any deciding power in that subject. And even then, you don't have to believe you are smarter than someone to make the claim that you are right about one thing they are not." An authority, in this case, is a person with knowledge in a subject. "Oh, and a lot of this is based on your interpretation of the video. I didn't interpret it as if he made himself an authority on the subject, and I do not view him as an authority on the subject." You being persuaded is not a requirement here. "In order to be fallacious, the argument must appeal to the authority because of their qualification in an irrelevant field" A biochemist speaking authoritatively, without presenting valid evidence, about structural engineering. "If you have any other sources, you are free to present them." John Lock, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Argumentum ad Veracundiam. As Wiki sums it up, "...[An appeal to authority] can be misused by taking advantage of the 'respect' and 'submission' of the reader or listener to persuade them to accept the conclusion."
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  18. It's awesome how such chaos on such a small scale when looked at on the macro makes such a beautiful pattern. It reminds me of quantum physics.
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  19. More important: Who was the guy who decided he wanted hot grapes that first stumbled across this effect?
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  20.  @cheesecakedelicious  The appeal to authority is publishing multiple research papers and being a leader in the field of study over multiple decades in this exact subject, which is a valid appeal to authority. That he's a great guy is an aside bonus of his personality. I have been privy to both good research and bad research, and in the good and bad ways of how that research is communicated to policy and decision makers. I fully understand these matters. Please don't talk down to me. The assumption that because my informal comment lauded him on being a genuinely great person, that must also mean a negative correlation with the validity of his work is just that--an assumption. And a wild one at that. Great people can put out good research just as much as crappy people and, vice versa, crappy people can put out bad research just as much as great people. It was just an anecdote of his character that people took to mean so much more than what it can actually say. The body of works that he's added to the field of study speaks for itself, and if you have any questions about the validity and importance of his research, go read it and review the impact factor on it. Until then, I implore everyone to act less like a pseudo-intellectual in making inferences that can't possibly be gleaned from the information given solely for the sake of being a contrarian.
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  21. I would love to hear more about how a person's actions affects the expression of genes. Does it have to do with endocrine reactions to outside stimuli?
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  22. Each block received X amount of kinetic energy. The rotation of the block is irrelevant to the kinetic energy it received because the circular motion is negating any additional energy it's appearing to provide.
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  23. C (edited from B, explained in reply). Since there's no string, it would be equal. But in this case, since he's holding the ping pong ball down, introducing additional force into the system on the ping pong ball's side, the buoyancy would push the ping pong ball up. However, since he's holding it down with greater force than buoyancy is forcing it up, Newton's Third law of motion applies which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Therefore, the force of buoyancy being applied to the ping pong ball is also being applied to the scale, forcing the ping pong ball side down.
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  24. nexus1g However, I forgot about the force of the buoyancy being applied on the acrylic side as well. It would remain the same. My answer is changed to C. I predict that it will show the same weight now on both sides.
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  25. Cane: I would say that it's psychological to keep the cane from falling, but since this is specifically about physics phenomena, I'll say that it's because of differences in friction between the two fingers from increased and decreased weight over the individual fingers. Phone: Conservation of angular momentum I would suspect is playing at least a part in this. I think it's interesting that the phone seems to become stable at its apex, but during its ascent and descent is when it seems to become unstable. It's also worth noting that the ascent sees the phone spin around the long axis in the opposite direction when compared to its descent. In the case of the phone, we not only have the angular momentum of the spinning phone, but also the vector along which the phone itself is traveling through the air which seems that it may play a role. I'm unable to articulate what the relationship is. Cup & Water: Since create an abundance of electrons on the cups, there is going to be a difference in charge between the water and the cup. As such, when the two come close together, electrons are going to try their best to balance out between the water and the cup. Electrons start flowing from the more negatively charged cup to the more positively charged water -- a static discharge. Prior to the discharge itself, however, the two opposite charges will be attracted to one another. Cereal: Most cereals are fortified with iron. Teabag: The teabag is porous. As it burns, it is releasing lighter-than-air gases. When it reaches the bottom of the teabag, the mass left is light enough to be lifted by the gases that happen to get trapped in the remaining meshing.
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  26. I heard nothing. I was too busy staring at that thing in his nose.
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  27. EclecticBuddha Part of Los Angeles' light rail is a subway. Structural engineers have learned pretty well how to deal with earthquakes.
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  28. Master Evar A fallacious appeal to authority does not need to be explicit to still constitute a fallacious appeal to authority.
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  29. Master Evar "I wouldn't say it was implicit either, so I guess by that logic every person of authority int he world does this, and we shouldn't listen to them?" Yeah. That's how logic works. When someone is an authority on the subject being discussed, their opinions and assessments hold more weight than someone who is not an authority on the subject. Let's say you have two applicants for a computer programming job. One applicant holds a degree in English. One applicant holds a degree in computer science. Who are you going to pick for the job? Despite having the same level of education (both bachelor's let's say), why is one more of an authority in the matter of computer programming than the other? Now that I have gotten you to think, that's exactly what's wrong with making a fallacious appeal to authority. When you make such an appeal, it's like hiring an English major for a computer programming job. I couldn't care less about what you said outside of this. The point is that you're making a fallacious appeal to authority just as thunderf00t has. If you're following his assessment over the engineers behind the Hyperloop, then you're being a fool.
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  30. Master Evar I really don't feel like holding your hand through this entire thing, so I'm going to answer these questions and that's it. "And where does thunderf00t break this principle?" Where he expects that his opining is infallible enough to consider a project like the Hyperloop "debunked." "And Elon isn't an engineer or scientist - he's an entrepreneur. He finds people with ideas and fund it for them, help out with marketing and growing a business." He hires the talent required to solve the issues. He isn't making claims -- his engineering staff are, and he's the messenger. "Nope. Just nope. If he was your father or some other person with authority and says he should get the job because of that, then it's a fallacious appeal to authority. What you're talking about is stupidity." Nepotism isn't even related here. You're way off base. You're too quick to make an argument and not slow enough to really think through what I'm saying. "The one with a degree in computer science, of course. I fail to see what this have to do with our discussion. I never said thunderf00t knows better or is right." The person I actually responded to did.
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  31. Master Evar "Which is nowhere" Oh, excuse me -- not debunked, he titled his video, "The Hyperloop: BUSTED!" Close enough. He even goes so far as to assume that they, and I quote, "...haven't done even the simplest expansion calculations." His assertion is that an entire team engineers just simultaneously and inexplicably forgot about their high school physics classes. But thunderf00t remembered because he's just awesome like that. Of course, the more likely alternative, apply Occam's razor here, is that they have a solution for this issue, but they're keeping the method and/or materials proprietary. "Then I think you accidentally wrote the wrong name when you responded, because I'm very sure I've only responded to comments who have responded to me." Yeah, that was my bad. It was a response to you.
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  32. Master Evar I changed my post. You replied too quickly.
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  33. Master Evar "Nope, nowhere close to being a fallacious appeal to authority." He's pretending to be an authority on the matter, so, yes, this is a fallacious appeal to authority. "Yes, he's arrogant like that. As I said, I don't think of him as an expert on the subject and I do dislike that side of him." If I say, "I know better than professionals in their field," am I not making myself out to be an authority on the matter?
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  34. Master Evar "No. It's a bold statement, but not an appeal to authority." Are professionals in their field authorities on the matter? Yes. To assert your opinion contrary to theirs is putting yourself in a class of authority higher than their authority. Whether you want to say it's arrogant or bold is not exclusionary to it being an implicit appeal to authority. In fact, a false appeal to authority in oneself would, in every circumstance I can think of, be arrogant. "If a kid says he will beat a professional football player, is that kid also making an appeal to authority?" Considering he's not trying to pose an argument and simply making a claim, no.
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  35. Master Evar "Authority? More like independence from the authority." I feel like you're just playing word games. Everything you describe would fit under the definition of authority. "In fact, if we are going to be really nitpicky, appeal to authority is actually citing an authority on something that's outside of their field as a standalone argument." Who the authority being appealed to is irrelevant to whether something qualifies as an appeal to authority. One may appeal to oneself as an authority, just like they may appeal to a third party authority. "Kid with an argument. So how about it now?" That depends. As it simply stands of everything we know about this kid at this point, no. Let's say his dad was Troy Aikman. Now it is an appeal to authority, implicitly, because his dad being who he is would likely give a higher credence to his word among his audience. It's how he presents himself and the effect he has on his audience whether or not he is making an implicit appeal to himself as an authority. It's irrefutable that some people here who state that the Hyperloop is an impossibility and citing thunderf00t as their reasoning are citing him because they view him as an authority on the matter. They clearly take thunderf00t's word as gospel because they look up to his advanced STEM degree -- even if it's in a completely unrelated field on which he discusses. Thunderf00t is making a fallacious appeal to himself as an authority, and those who accept his projected authority also cite him as an authority. This is really a clear case.
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  36. Master Evar "No, it wouldn't. Please explain why." For instance, you say that what I stated isn't authority but independence from authority. Well, then you're just establishing yourself as a better or, at the very least, alternative authority. "What if his dad was not Troy Aikman, but he had a little brother who believed in him a lot and thus put higher credence on his big brother than the professional football player? Or what if his dad was a high-ranking politician?" If he's persuasive based on that authority, he's implicitly using that authority to support his arguments. If his authority is irrelevant to the argument, it's a fallacious appeal to authority. "By your logic, anyone who has something impressive in their life can't make a claim without making an appeal to authority. What if some movie star claimed that 1+1=2 because they learned that in school. They make an argument, and they are no an authority on the subject of math but they they still are some sort of authority." If they used their notoriety in a way that persuaded people that they were right, it would be a fallacious appeal to authority. A valid argument would have to be made for why 1+1=2 is true. A celebrity simply claiming that 1+1=2 is true, with an expectation to be taken on their word is a fallacious appeal to their authority over their audience. "He's using tools (mathematics and physics) that he has studied up on in order to make his argument." He throws out finished product numbers and assumptions. It's entirely his authority that sells these points. It's worth noting here that you don't have to be wrong to make a fallacious appeal to authority. "So people who knows how to speak are always making appeals to authority as well?" Again, only if they are persuading using their perceived authority. It's important to note here that there are valid appeals to authority. For instance, if you get a doctor saying that they think you have the cold, not a flu, they are validly appealing to their authority as a doctor. "Yes, but then it's THOSE PEOPLE who are making an appeal to authority, not thunderf00t." No, they are both making an appeal to authority. "If someone cited your comments here because they thought you were right, does that mean your comment suddenly becomes an appeal to authority?" Clearly I am appealing to myself as an authority here. I'm not comprising my argument of anything but my opinion. I haven't even quoted a dictionary definition. Absolutely I'm making an appeal to my own logical authority. If I weren't, I would be presenting external resources from globally-recognized authorities on the matter for proof of my conclusions, not arguing my own conclusions using my own logic.
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  37. Dietmar Gaber But he hasn't reasoned well. For instance, regarding the vacuum: He maintains the atmospheric pressure inside the tube is going to be a near-perfect vacuum (99 Pascals, but on the white paper this is labeled as the pressure at the intake, not the actual pressure of the chamber). Now, the Hyperloop is expected to travel at about 700 MPH. The current speed record holder is a maglev train in Japan that has reached a little over 350 MPH. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe drag coefficient is linear. In order to go 700 MPH using the same amount of energy, you would need to be at half a bar of pressure, or 50,000 Pa, not 99 Pa.
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  38. NuclearSavety If we can run a maglev through a tight tunnel at 375 MPH at 1 bar (current passenger-load world record), why couldn't we run a maglev through a tight tunnel at 700 MPH at half a bar?
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  39. NuclearSavety You're making claims, but no numbers. A turboprop costs a passenger about $100. I don't think anyone's willing to pay that for a daily commute, and the time it takes for that commute would not be feasible. This train would greatly increase job markets and trade for city centers and more rural locations. Here is one of Japan's maglevs setting the current world record with passengers watch?v=Lw0CYYiNYaY -- watch the LCD display near the start of the video showing how tight the tunnel is as it reaches the world record. watch?v=ltqp4McM2wY This is a video from inside the train that you can see the walls are rather close to either side of the train in the tunnel. It's also worth noting since the issue was pointed out earlier, Japan is one of the most seismically-active regions of the world.
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  40. NuclearSavety Perhaps you could clear up the math. Transonic speeds are considered mach .85 up to mach 1. Mach .85 (transonic) is when the movement of the air exceeds the speed of sound of, let's just use the easy number, 340 m/s. That means when a craft is traveling 289 m/s, it is moving the air out of the way at 340 m/s. Presuming this is a linear figure based on percentages (so correct me if I'm wrong on this), that means that 700 MPH should be moving the air out of the way 15% faster than the speed of the craft which would give us 360 m/s, not 700 m/s. "in the videos you explicitely see how large the maglev tunnels are." Perhaps at the exits and entrances. I couldn't find a video or picture of a better demonstration than from inside the car itself.
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  41. zwerko "With our current scientific knowledge - that's clearly and demonstrably false statement." Prove your claim. "And that's while ignoring that the place they want to build this is one of the most seismically active places on the planet and burrowing the pipe into the ground doesn't help you with that." LA already has subways and Japan's maglev train already spends a significant amount of time under ground. The issues of earthquakes has been solved for a while now.
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  42. Technocracy Communism is an entire socioeconomic model. Socialism is an economic model that is the de facto economic model of communism. What you're talking about is specifically Marxism, which is one of many philosophies of communism. You can't nail communism down to a single definition as you have done. It's a broad topic with many writers over hundreds of years contributing to different philosophies of what such a socioeconomic system would look like and how it would come about. Leninism, which is a communist ideology, is what the CCCP was.
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  43. Technocracy Socialism is simply the public ownership of the means of production. Nothing more and nothing less. Communism cannot be communism without socialism being active at the same time. What you confuse is the dictatorship of the proletariat with socialism, the two of which has the same qualities but describe quite different things. Socialism does not cease to exist under a communist system, and the dictatorship of the proletariat is specifically the transition from capitalism to socialism. Leninism was the "practical application" of Marxism. The reason that there has "never really been a communist state," is because it's impossible to achieve. So while you can hang onto "there's never been a real communist state," think a bit about why there has never been one, despite the endless attempts.
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  44. To be honest, I've never taken data science that serious because of these issues, and this is especially true when dealing with complicated systems.
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  45. Bottom line: Don't hate the playa, hate the game.
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  46. So who pictured a crack ton of apples flying out of the engines?
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  47. I got this question randomly in a YouTube ad interestingly. When I saw it was Veritasium running the ad, I answered with glee. I answered C myself, because I thought the drag would overcome the mass toward the end of the rope. I thought perhaps D depending on how far down the propwash extended. Never did I expect a perfectly straight line.
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  48. Quinine is what I want in my custom loop.
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  49. What people miss about these questions is that they just want to see how you problem solve. They don't care if you end up with the right answer per se.
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  50. Quantum computers exist. D-Wave has made a few up to 512-qubits I believe. In an independent test that resulted in a published paper (I can't remember the title of it off hand, but with some savvy Google work, you should be able to find it); even when the D-Wave needed an interpreter, it was 30 times faster than your average desktop CPU at solving the algorithms. On native problems and some of the most complex, the D-wave was up to 30,000 times faster.
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  51. According to the research out there, critical thinking is either there or it isn't. There's very little evidence that generalized critical thinking can be taught. It may be that we don't yet have the methods. A lot of people I speak with who are good critical thinkers, and take this with a grain of salt--anecdotal evidence being what it is, typically have childhood trauma that made them suddenly question everything we've ever known. That lack of stability, I think, may be the genesis of a talent for generalized critical thinking.
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  52. Imagine making a computer with a trillion tiny compliant switches. I wonder what it'd sound like, if anything. It might actually be simpler to make a half adder using compliant switches, come to think of it. But I'm done thinking now.
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  53.  @timapple6586  I don't think they're selling consumer products so as to be concerned about marketing.
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  54. ​ @giantermite7039 ​ Can you please stop being a pseudo-intellectual where I am alerted to it? And now you're lying about reading the paper.
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  55. ​ @cheesecakedelicious  So many "haters gonna hate" posts here. You just dismiss it without reading and understanding the research. You even turned to argumentum ad hominem.
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  56.  @cheesecakedelicious  ​ You did commit an argument ad hominem fallacy by stating, "I'm sure he might be smart and charismatic and personable, but... turns out those qualities don't actually jive that strongly with good research, which is kind of orthogonal if not negatively correlated to his personality," when these things have nothing to do with one another. It's also a strawman argument. You made the assumption because I said he was an awesome person was a supporting argument as to why he's a good researcher. He's a good researcher because he publishes research which adds a lot of quality to the body of science. Skepticism is useless and is tantamount to just being a contrarian as it begins with a doubt to the truth when the truth is an unknown. Critical analysis is useful, and it doesn't begin with a presumption of untruth. When you begin with a presumption of untruth, then it's very easy to bias an analysis through that lens--especially when you're motivated to do so. When you begin with genuine curiosity, you presume neither fact nor fiction, which assists in establishing better and varying assumptions through which to view research. You're arguing yourself into epistemological nihilism. You can read the paper. You can determine who has quoted the paper and why. Which you apparently have done the former, given your next paragraph. Why not present the ratio directly? Because data isn't presented to the public in that way. It's presented in a way that it must be thought about to certain levels to understand. For instance, a 2018 headline from CNN reads, "Walmart's CEO earns 1,188 times as much as the company's median worker". According to media industry research, some 60% of people will read no further than that. I'm using this headline because it stuck out as particularly egregious use of numbers. I checked the SEC filings for Walmart and looked a bit deeper into it to see if the CEO's salary impacted worker's wages. As it turns out, his entire $24M compensation package divided among the 2 million workers would amount to about 46 cents per two-week check. So what was the point of the headline--or even the existence of the article itself? The design of the experiment is very good in how it reflects the way numbers are abused in popular communication to convey a certain emotion to the reader versus seeking to be accurate, requiring astute readers to think deeper than being presented information as accurately as possible. That is the world of information we all navigate on a daily basis, and so experiments to better understand how people perceive the data they receive are well-designed when they reflect that environment. And those binary outcomes are what people walk away with. Many will read the aforementioned CNN headline and walk away with the belief that Walmart's CEO is taking so much compensation that he's bankrupting his workers. Others will delve deeper into the assumption that the CEO's compensation hurts workers which is allowed to hang without resolution. The research was to determine whether political leaning impacted how problems were approached, and whether education (science comprehension theory) mattered or politics (identity-protective cognition thesis) mattered here. They controlled for the education with the politically neutral question regarding skin cream. Then they tested against that control with politically charged questions (e.g. guns). This is a very well-designed experiment.
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  57.  @PeaceSparks  Do you have a point with quoting that?
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  58.  @cheesecakedelicious  2. More people need to read their Descartes then. With sound reasoning, there's no need to be a nihilist. Just remember what George Box said: "All models are inaccurate, but some are useful." As long as we're able to use the body of science to a useful degree to at least some ends predict what will happen in our world, it's of consequence and useful. 3) "Did the authors actually think science-comprehension theory would win? I argue, no, they didn't, not seriously. They deliberately baked their expectation of a result into the design of the experiment. " By what reasoning do you believe this? They controlled with an apolitical question and the results showed numeracy mattered, creating a divide between the well-educated and the less-educated. Then they asked a political question and didn't see that same divide. How is that baking any assumption into the design of the experiment? I feel like you're assuming because they got a certain result, they then must have had bias in the design and therefore got the result they sought. Are you sure that you're not biased towards yourself, with a concern that this study might reflect you, causing you to attempt to undermine the study for identity protection? People, by and large, do believe outrageous, easily-disprovable things, no matter their education level and given all the time in the world for them to consider, ponder, and verify. For instance, do you know how many people on the left (the statistically well-educated partisan alignment) still believe that US defense spending accounts for over half of all government spending because of a headline that caught fire many years ago?
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  59. @lukasz96  i have a feeling a lot of the people leaving comments here are feeling personally attacked by this.
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