Veritasium: A Story of YouTube Propaganda [video]
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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.
I think these are great responses to many of the points and simply shows that Tom is also a hypocrite. But being a hypocrite really only hurts his overall high-road image of wanting truth more than money/attention. It doesn't null out all of his argument and if you concede all of these points from Veritasium I think Tom is still making a lot of good points about self-driving capabilities and about Veritasium presenting information disingenuously.
Something not addressed by Veritasium's counters is how all 5 of the YT videos used the 94% human driver statistic without following the source or thinking it through. I found this use of statistics especially egregious because Veritasium is one of the people who helped me understand Bayesian statistics and how easily they can fool people!
I'm a believer in the Uncle Ben principle whereby the more power you accrue, the more responsibility you also take on. I am genuinely upset by the main point about how educational Youtubers are being incentivized to sell their authoritative power to corporations who have a vested interest in promoting their products as social good. I've spent quite a bit of air lauding educational Youtube as one of the best places on the Internet.
Imagine Bill Nye being sponsored by Facebook in 2011 to talk about all the benefits of social networks to mental health by showing how Grandma is never more than a click away from pictures of her Grandkids and Facebook Groups connect like-minded individuals allowing them to collaborate to create good in the world and everyone is connected to all the news across the world, making them far more informed and better able to engage civically...
Today we would view that as a betrayal knowing that even in 2011 there were indicators that social networks and social media may not be the great good in the world that Facebook was claiming.
Disrupting complex systems has unforeseen consequences, I think we would all benefit from some some humility when assuming that planned positive benefits of a major disruption will outweigh any unforeseen negative consequences, especially considering the scales we're working with.