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Veritasium VS Tom Nicholas: spotting nastiness without background information
I watched a few vids from the "pop science" channel Veritasium.
Great videos and channel.
And I noticed a few smaller red flags from the main guy.
Then YB proposed me this critique of one Veritasium video.
The criticism is that he had taken sponsor money from a self-driving car company and basically did an ad instead of a proper critical review of the service and technology.
You don't need to watch it, but here it is for reference:
More interesting yet, was that Veritasium replied, and Tom replied yet again.
Great opportunity to analyze and assess characters and "right and wrongs", without knowing too much of the background information (I htink it's a trap to think that you must always know the full backgrond to have a good idea. In real life you oftne don't have the full background on someone).
These are the 2 messages.
In red what I thought were potential power moves:
Tom,
I’m happy to receive your constructive criticism, but I’m disappointed you didn’t fix any of the factual errors we alerted you to via email before you launched this video.
Examples:
23:42 You cherry-picked this quote to make it seem like the NTSB blamed automation for the crash, when the report focuses squarely on human error: “The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of this accident was the flight crew’s mismanagement of the airplane’s descent during the visual approach, the Pilot Flying’s unintended deactivation of automatic airspeed control, the flight crew’s inadequate monitoring of airspeed, and the flight crew’s delayed execution of a go-around after they became aware that the airplane was below acceptable glidepath and airspeed tolerances.”
32:37 Self-driving cars have maps including traffic control so they would know where stop signs are meant to be even if road markings aren’t there or stop signs are obscured. Plus they have better obstacle detection and avoidance than human drivers.
39:16 I’m not saying rare accidents don’t happen, I’m saying they happen less often than common accidents, many of which could be prevented by self-driving cars. I sent you an academic paper that recreated in simulation 72 real-world fatal accidents that occurred in the area where Waymo operates. In almost all cases the accident was avoided or mitigated by the Waymo driver. Why did you omit this study?
47:03 It’s well understood that autonomous cars properly coordinated could reduce traffic because they don’t have the same reaction time delays as humans. For example all cars at an intersection could start moving together instead of one at a time as we currently do.
47:10 We don’t have to increase the car utilization rate to 100% to reclaim significant value. If cars were parked 90% of the time instead of 95%+ we would only need half as many vehicles.
Isn’t it ironic that a video purporting to call out misinformation itself contains so many distortions and factual errors? (Which we pointed out in advance but you didn’t feel compelled to fix)
On the issues themselves, I like public transport. I also ride a bike, and enjoy walking to get around when it’s practical. But cars will be a part of the transport mix for the foreseeable future. And it’s my opinion, based on the evidence, that roads will be safer the more cars are driven by computers than humans. No one has to pay me to tell you that.
*Click to expand the block quote
Without knowing the case too well, I personally gave it high chance this guy is a potentially nasty power mover/manipulator.
And then Tom's reply:
Hiya,
As I said in my reply to the email from your team, my decision to make this video came from a place of disappointment rather than animosity. -
-As such, it’s a real shame to see you again coming out swinging in response to my points rather than the video giving you any pause for thought surrounding your relationships with sponsors.
I’m glad to see that you've taken on board my critiques of your initial rebuttals to this video and attempted to strengthen them. I imagine you know the flaws in these responses to what you mistakenly call "factual errors" but I'll do you the courtesy of replying to them anyway.
-23:42 You accuse me of cherry-picking here. However, the very next sentence from that which you quote states that 'Contributing to the accident were (1) the complexities of the autothrottle and autopilot flight director systems that were inadequately described in Boeing’s documentation and Asiana’s pilot training, which increased the likelihood of mode error [...]'. The reality is that, as in your original video, you're working on the false presumption that humans and automated/autonomous technologies are in conflict with one another. However, as is the case here, such technologies are always going to involve human interaction and they therefore need to be designed in ways that ensure that those interactions don't lead to accidents (as the Acting Chairman of the NTSB states in the quote included in my video). You use the crash of Flight 214 as an example of human failure with the implication that automated systems could have avoided the crash; it is disingenuous and distasteful to have eliminated all mention of autothrottle from your version of events just because it didn't suit the argument you wanted to make.
32:37 It is, again, completely disingenuous to refuse to mention the maps which Waymo vehicles rely on when it suits your argument during your initial video but to now hold them up as a vital part of the technology. You spoke as though those maps didn’t exist in the video and so it was only fair, in critiquing your video, to respond in kind. A further point for consideration here is the extent to which creating maps/scans for the entirety of even the United States (let alone other countries too) is practical. That seems like a highly intensive task which would be very costly, possibly to the point it’s unworkable.
39:16 Two points here: Firstly, you do not say in your video at all that the kinds of accidents considered when people discuss the ethical implications of driverless cars “could be prevented by self-driving cars”—you say they’re rare and quickly move on. Secondly, the “academic paper” your team sent over was a write up of a study produced for Waymo and written by Waymo staff. I can’t seem to find any instance of it being published in a reputable journal (or a journal at all for that matter) or of it being subject to peer review. It is also, as one might expect, based entirely upon accidents which occured in the few suburbs of Phoenix where Waymo cars presently operate (and have had years of “training” in) and so it would be improper to suggest that its findings would be representative of a wider roll out to locations that Waymo’s cars have not been fine-tuned for or where conditions differ.
47:03 While they might have an impact, the idea that these tiny bits of time saved here and there would eliminate congestion is optimistic. The more extreme version of this (included in the CGP Grey video you’re referencing) in which all autonomous vehicles “talk” to one another (or even just to the traffic lights) would require such a level of implementation and standardisation that it is unlikely even in the medium term to the point where it’s a fun thought experiment but little more.
47:10 I make no such claim that we would need to “increase the car utilization rate to 100% to reclaim significant value” in my video. I merely state that the use of the 95% figure is misleading as it ignores several important caveats (like the existence of the nighttime). Even a figure which related to the percentage of the daytime that cars go unused would have been more useful to use here—it may not have given you such an impressive figure but it would have been a fairer representation of the reality. To reiterate, suggesting that my video contains “distortions” and “factual errors” is deeply disingenuous.
Nevertheless, I know that, whatever the circumstances, someone suggesting that you’ve acted improperly is a horrible experience. I hope that, with the passage of time, you’ll take on board some of the thoughts provided here about your relationships with sponsors.
Note:
This isn't to say Tom is right or "good".
And there are some covert power moves in his reply as well (albeit you're always more justified to power move after others did it to you first).
I also think his video was biased and overly critical on a technology that probably still represents the (better) future.
But, overall, my personal opinion is that he is more straight and less nasty/manipulative.
