Just because no one else has said, Adam has been involved in EFF for a long time. EEF Podcast episode with him in it:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/04/podcast-episode-making-hope-adam-savage
Which delights me as he’s more mainstream and so wakes people up to things like the Right To Repair movement.
EFF?
Edit: Electronic Frontier Foundation, apparently.
Yep, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Key players in Right To Repair in the US. With good history of “fighting for the user”.
Being excited about being wrong because either way it’s information
This literally is the basis of science that I think a lot of people misunderstand. Science doesn’t prove anything conclusively. What scientists try to do is disprove the leading theory and when they can’t, it adds to the pile of evidence that increases the likelyhood of the leading theory being correct. Even things that we’re very, very, very sure are correct are still like 99.99999999999…% confirmed.
A good example that’s often used to show how it’s more important to try to disprove a theory rather than trying to prove it is the existence of black swans. It was long thought that all swans were white and every time someone saw a white swan, that idea was reinforced. But when someone actually went out of their way to go looking for a black swan, they found a bunch of them!
I feel it is my pedantic duty to inform you that 99.9… is equal to 100.
Only if you’re rounding. 99.9 is still 1/10 of a digit separated from 100, but it’s not equal to 100 for good reason.
But the “…” matters.
It only signifies that the post-decimal nines are repeating infinitely. It still doesn’t make 99.99999…=100 unless you intentionally round the value for some nondescript reason, and even then, rounding off isn’t changing the value, only the perceived value for mathematical simplicity, not objective accuracy.
“.9…” is repeating, but rational. So it’s actually “1” . Let’s do the math.
.9… / 3 = .3…
.3… = 1/3
1/3 x 3 = 3/3
.9… = 3/3
3/3 = 1
.9… = 1
So why is it represented as 99.999… Instead of just 100? It’s because you’re forgetting the fact that fractions and decimals are infinite depending on the magnification. 99.9999… literally goes on forever. That means that no matter how close it gets to 100, it will never be equivalent to 100.
It’s like how you can know infinitely nothing and still think you know everything. 👀🫠
It’s because we can write numbers in many ways. 9900/99 is 100 just as surely as 99.99… is.
Love how you fight this to the death in a thread where people are discussing how a scientific mindset is so important.
“Replicate the circumstances, then replicate the results.”
MythBusters will always and forever be a treasure.
I miss Mythbusters. These days, the closest thing is Maker youtube channels like Failed Mythbuster Allen Pan, Simone Gertz, William Osman, StyroPyro, ElectroBoom, Stuff Made Here.
Then there’s Michael Reeves to represent the chaos goblin contingent…
My fav was if you could shoot someone in water. Turns out that just 3 ft. of water was enough to stop a 50 cal! So as great of a film as Saving Private Ryan was, the opening scene where bullets wiz thru the sea killing soldiers was pure fiction.
Bigger/faster the bullet the easier it was for water to stop. The small rounds from handguns worked best for shooting into water.
It makes sense once they do the maths but it was a great episode
It isn’t that the water is stoping the bullet- rather that water’s surface tension creates a shockwave that shatters the bullet, and this distributes the mass over more fragments.
Lower power cartridges are able to survive that shockwave, or it fragments into fewer slugs which keeps its energy concentrated.
Either way, I wouldn’t want to be near the high powered cartridge hitting the water. You’re going to feel that shockwave.
It is the water breaking it. The water doesnt compress so the water doesnt absorb enough of the kinetic energy fast enough so the bullet fractures. As i understand it anyway. The 50cal is travelling a lot faster so a lot more force is applied on the bigger rounds.
Later on they did a dynamite fishing one and we learned being in water when a large enough shockwave hits is VERY bad for internal organs of squishy creatures in it
It’s the surface tension that causes the shockwave, soapy water wouldn’t have the same effect.
And yes, dynamite explosives are rather more dangerous under water. Which is how torpedos work to break ships without much regard for armor.
Right so its the water that causes it to break because of the surface tension of the water.
Sounds like you are arguing against my phrasing while agreeing with what i understand. Im confused why we seem to be in a disagreement.
Maybe you can school my dumb ass though, can you eli5 what would need to happen for you to say it was the water that does the work on stopping bullets?
Bigger/faster the bullet the easier it was for water to stop.
For bullets that’s probably true because of their light weight, but heavy shells from the big naval guns of battleships (12" to 18" caliber) actually carried a long way through water and sometimes hit and damaged target ships below the waterline. The Japanese in particular actually designed some of their shells to maximize their underwater performance.
I wonder relatively what speed those shells would have to hit the water yo behave like bullets and shatter… You wanna revive myth busters and we can find out? Maybe in honor of Grant on his birthday or something would be cool.
We just need a lot of money, some military connections and a way to put the team back together for it
Ive told people this many times, we need to create more room for failure. From school, to jobs, to building businesses, to loans, to health.
If we can try something because if we fail we can try something else, we would find a hell of a lot more to care about in this world.
And the most important thing we would care more about is ourselves
Science and academia, too. There’s way too few papers being published about failed experimemts. “I thought A, so I did B in order to achieve C, but it didn’t work out because of D.” is a very useful result.
I cannot agree enough with this statement and especially love your closing. We definitely don’t tend to be able to take enough time to really care for ourselves and try and fail at new things.
Oh thank you very much
Mandatory Dwarf Fortress in every school.
Okay thats it im tired of people commenting about this Dwarf fortress. How much of my soul does it cost? Whats that in hours needed?
If you’re the type of gamer that gets sucked into Rimworld, then Dwarf Fortress will very likely consume you.
First, read Boatmurdered. Then realise it’s worth whatever the cost is
Yes. Be ready for the most fun you’ll ever experience in a game.
Curiosity is the best trait nature ever gave us.
The Elephant and Mice episode was so wild, because if I remember correctly, the elephant didn’t act afraid of the mouse, it acted afraid it would step on and harm the mouse; as if the elephant had a basic understanding and concern for the wellbeing of another creature conspicuously lacking in many human beasts
If we would, we would be all vegan.
Yep. Elephants are wonderfully kind creatures. With my very limited understanding of elephant body language, it didn’t look like an ‘oh no, im scared’ it was more ‘oh hey little guy, didn’t see ya there. ill get outta your way.’
Just smart as hell. This video makes me wonder if elephants legit have a sense of humor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VOvEFHDOaU
Animal behavior can be difficult to interpret (and even when descriptions come from experts, I often find myself asking “yeah, but how do we really know that?”), but this looks very close to being like someone who’s known for lighthearted pranks.
Oh my goooooood. This is so delightful, you can almost see the smirk. Thank you for sharing. <3
I WANT to believe this but I’ve seen too many elephant videos that turned out to be just elephants trained to do a quirky thing for tourists and there’s someone off camera subtly directing them.
It’s amazing how intelligent and emotionally mature elephants are. It’s not wonder why people were willing to believe that “Elephants have a moon religion!” line for so long, it seems believable with how often elephants seem to act like chonky humans with a trunk instead of arms.
This is why most skepticism based programs don’t work, and Mythbusters did.
They didn’t try to be smug about it, they didn’t belittle people who believed in the myths, they never brought religion and politics into it, and the biggest pitfall they avoided: They never pretended that the “science was settled” and that they “already knew everything”, they simply did the research and went where the data took them.
Too many skepticism based programs seem to think the scientific method is running into a church, yelling “FAKE!”, and then running outside to hurl insults at passersby.
Mythbusters didn’t do that, they skipped the dogma and went straight to the science.
Also, most of the myths weren’t “serious”- it wasn’t like they were debunking flat earth or something.
I hate that debunking flat earth is now seen as serious rather than a 5th grade science experiment.
it wasn’t like they were debunking flat earth or something
Though you could do that. And with equipment and a type of experiment that would make sense on their show. The experiment conducted at the very end of the documentary Behind the Curve is perfect. Great big lasers, a simple and easy-to-visualise pass condition. If they had wanted to, they absolutely could have done it.
Could’ve had an episode where they tried as many experiments as they could fit into a two-week production.
“Failure is always an option.”
That and writing down results.
For anyone missing the show, there was a wonderful project called Streamlined Mythbusters where fans edited each episode down to remove the filler, pre and post ad recaps, etc. They usually also would reorder things so each individual myth was seld contained.
It’s wonderful, but some episodes legitimately got cut down to be 16 minutes long with no real content loss, which can be kind of jarring.
There is also Smyths, which is the same thing.
Unfortunately Mythbusters edits have a tendency to get pulled from the typical video sharing sites rather quickly. I wish someone would make a torrent of the entire series edited this way, and call it a day.
What, like the pinned post on the smyths reddit page?
Thank you so much for sharing this!!
Thanks for the Rec! I definitely miss the show. Adam’s YouTube channel sometimes scratches the itch, but not always.
Oh god, I forgot, it was during the “REALITY TV!” boom where marketing and hype had more substance than the shows themselves, and if the show had substance… edit it like it is Reality TV…
I do not miss that.
I would say escaping from quick sand and escaping from an alligator chasing me were two major concerns in my childhood. LoL, global climate change was maybe not even on the list, for which I will curse the petroleum industry.
My favorite is the fan mounted to the boat blowing the sail causing the boat to move. I mean there are a shitload more experiments in fun episodes that are far better and more entertaining, but this one is my favorite because it flies in the face of logic. It shouldn’t work. My brain rejects the possibility. But physics and fluid flow work otherwise and I found it pointlessly infuriating only because I’d been unassailable in my confidence that it couldn’t possibly work. Yet there it is with a perfectly logical explanation. I still find it irritating even if I accept the reality of it. (Episode 165 if anyone’s wondering)
That said, I still follow Adam on various platforms. That enthusiasm and joy of discovery is all still there, along with some maturity and some life observations. Literally the only celebrity figure I follow.
