I’ve enjoyed Mark Rober’s videos for a while now. They are fun, touch on accessible topics, and have decent production value. But this recent video isn’t sitting right with me
The video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGENEXocJU
In it, he talks about a few techniques for how to take down “bad guy drones”, the problems with each, and then shows off the drone tech by Anduril as a solution.
Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.
In the video, the Anduril product is a heavy drone that uses kinetic energy to destroy other drones (by flying into them). Quoting the person in the video:
imagine a children’s bowling ball thrown at twice as fast as a major league baseball fastball, that’s what it’s like getting hit by Anvil
This technology is scary for obvious reasons, especially in the wrong hands. What I also don’t like is how Mark Rober’s content is aimed at children, and this video includes a large segment advertising the children’s products he is selling. Despite that, he is promoting military technology with serious ethical implications.
There’s even a section in the video where they show off the Roadrunner, compare it against the patriot missiles, and loosely tie it in to defending against drones. While the Anvil could be used to hurt people, at least it is designed for small flying drones. The Roadrunner is not:
The Roadrunner is a 6 ft (1.8 m)-long twin turbojet-powered delta-winged craft capable of high subsonic speeds and extreme maneuverability. Company officials describe it as somewhere between an autonomous drone and a reusable missile. The basic version can be fitted with modular payloads such as intelligence and reconnaissance sensors. The Roadrunner-M has an explosive warhead to intercept UAS, cruise missiles, and manned aircraft.
Rober’s always seemed a little off to me, like one of those who enjoys being famous more than the stuff that made him famous in the first place. Seems like he’s gotten worse, though. For instance, this video declares it “was not sponsored [by Zipline] in anyway nor did they pay for any of my travel or accommodations,” despite extolling their virtues over and over again by name, and lingering lovingly on their drones and logos like Michael Bay with a car company’s badge.
Smarter Everyday is also rather polished, and he’s even more in bed with the military industrial complex, but (as of a few months ago anyway) he comes off like he’s still actually enjoying the projects themselves and the information he’s sharing. It’s hard to exactly articulate the point where a content creator loses me, but I can feel it in my nerd-bones.
Destin works for defense contractors and he’s never been shy about his interest and involvement in weaponry. He has a bible quote at the end of his videos. I seriously doubt I would agree with him about pretty much any politics and definitely not his personal beliefs, but he keeps his channel pretty strongly focused on the episode’s subject without bringing his personal views into it. He seems to do the channel because he likes geeking out about nerdy stuff and wants to share that love with others.
I personally feel that the knowledge he’s sharing is more important than knowing we probably disagree on some things. If he starts including prayer time or turns his channel into military porn, I’m out. But his channel is a positive influence for now, IMO.
Rober is different. He acts like cool science bro that worked for NASA and wants you to think he’s Bill Nye or something. But he seems to be doing it for views and to push the stuff he’s selling. He doesn’t seem genuine. He’s at risk of turning into a prank bro channel if his quality goes downhill.
yeah I quite respect Destin despite being pretty opposite to him in ideology. he’s able to be fairly apolitical while being very clear on his views by way of his topics and minor Bible nod on his videos. the politics are never front and center tho and the dude is actually a real real engineer that is a great science educator. the dude just really loves farm and weapon tech.
Watch his video on when he was asked to interview Obama. It’s actually great. He also had a great vid on disinformation on the internet. He seems pretty rational after watching those.
I just opened two of his (Destin) newest videos and couldnt find any quote about it in the video and channel description.
Are you sure that’s up to date informationen?It’s just the book and verse number on screen, like “Psalms 3:10” or whatever. Along with a graphic of a mouse(?) in a hat.
Usually in the last 10 seconds or so of the video IIRC
Found what you mean.
Yeah it’s unobtrusive but the ones that should get the mesaage will receive it and the ones that do not, wont be bothered.Good way to do it.
Rober’s always seemed a little off to me, like one of those who enjoys being famous more than the stuff that made him famous in the first place.
It’s hard to exactly articulate the point where a content creator loses me, but I can feel it in my nerd-bones.
You’ve articulated my thoughts more clearly than I could myself. I’ve felt the same way for some time.
It’s a really good video about a great drone project that he obviously loves, I don’t get what your problem with it is? He wasn’t sponsored, but still said good things about people delivering blood in inhospitable regions using clever tech and organization?
I think most of us watch his videos because we’re interested in this sort of stuff
I’m saying he’s lying.
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Yeah I just watched it and it seemed off. Almost like the mrwhosetheboss touring a fucking prison a while back.
Almost like the mrwhosetheboss touring a fucking prison a while back.
The channel Boy Boy (I Did A Thing’s
brotherfriend) did a great response video to that one.Yeah that is how I know about this. I never watched the original video because I am not interested in prisons.
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Brother? Are you sure about that?
I always assumed they were brothers, idk why
They look nothing alike. Also Aleksa or at least his family is from the Balkans.
I’m sure it’s been implied by some joke they’ve made in one of their videos, but yeah fair enough that they look nothing alike.
He talks serbo-croatian to his grandpa and I also believe he mentions running from the balkans when he was a couple years old. Might have been in the north korea video
I know he mentioned being from the Balkans in the video where he interviews the American gun nut.
I also had this uneasy feeling watching the video. It certainly felt a bit like a cog in the military industrial machine. While the actual content of the video wasn’t exactly bad in my opinion, I don’t know how I feel about pitching anti-terror or war machines to children through the lens of, “Engineering is cool!” That said, there are many more examples of that pitch out in the world in other forms. I do think Mark could be more careful especially when he is directly promoting a company in the defense industry.
Unfortunately engineering and military have a huge overlap in the US. It’s kind of inescapable. I found out recently that Destin from Smarter Every Day also worked for a weapons manufacturer before starting YouTube. These people just don’t want to think about the fact that they probably have blood on their hands.
I am well aware of this overlap and it doesn’t come as a surprise. I perhaps wish more of these creators acknowledged the military industrial complex and addressed what it means for their content and for the world of engineering.
I don’t think Destin’s ever been real shy about his connections. Huntsville is basically nothing but NASA and missile companies, and he did a multi-part series where he lived on an active US Navy sub for two days.
There’s a difference between showing off a technological marvel like a nuclear submarine and not really focusing on its applications as a weapon, versus showing off a weapon and being like “it’s so cool to kill ‘bad guys’ with this stuff”
And yeah he probably hasn’t been shy about it, I don’t watch his videos religiously. I found out during his excellent talk on the Artemis program. IIRC, he mentioned he helped design missile countermeasures, which is pretty tame as military industrial complex goes, but it’s still participating in the amelioration of killing machines, which doesn’t sit right with me. And he talked about it so nonchalantly, like he hadn’t considered that the people at the end of the barrel of the weapons he was helping design obviously were the “bad guys”
I still have a ton of respect for the guy and his educational outreach work, and I don’t hold it against him, I just don’t get how someone could sleep at night knowing that they helped make weapons more efficient at killing people.
He worked for the military as a missile test engineer, even did an interview with a four star general. The general described the video he was making (the interview i mean) as a weapon
Damn, never saw that. At least the general was forthcoming about why they do that sort of outreach.
If you take a look into the fitness bubble on YouTube you will see military propaganda too. They’re often competing against real soldiers/SEALS/whatever to demonstrate how well prepared they’re are in the case of war. Back in the subject of engineering, William Osman was also sponsored by the Navy (I think) one time.
The US navy did a campaign a few years ago that paid a bunch of youtubers across a wide range of video genres.
Looking from outside the US, it appears pretty weird how deeply ingrained in America’s mindset the military is.
The US military spends a shitload of money to be deeply ingrained.
I don’t know how I feel about pitching anti-terror or war machines to children through the lens of, “Engineering is cool!” That said, there are many more examples of that pitch out in the world in other forms.
Kids have been sold military toys since forever. GI Joe, tin soldiers, toy guns, toy armor and swords, model kits of tanks and fighter aircraft…
Kids love to fight, adults realise there are better solutions.
The breathless enthusiasm for the military industrial complex while dropping scary descriptions of terrorism that hasn’t happened gave me exactly the same impression.
I hate this kind of content, especially from someone who seems like a pretty genuine person.
Please Mark: be a bit more critical.
Also a 5mn ad break to sell his kit felt much too long.
It’s like 1/3 of the video.
That’s his videos now. Get you to watch them to hype Crunch Labs.
This, I think, is more a symptom of YouTube no longer supporting creators. Most every big channel is looking to alternate income sources. YouTube ad revenue and sponsor inserts aren’t good enough.
Thing is, I wouldn’t mind it if channels could self-fund by things like this, but it’s being done on top of all the ads, not replacing them.
It does seem interesting though. I was thinking of getting one for my sister but I believe the price deterred me.
sponsor block would like to introduce itself
I think these are not blocked by default by sponsor block because it’s an ad for the creator’s products.
But anyway it’s far too long.
Felt like a LTT video…
Yeah, I recently learned you could enable blocking self-sponsorships too and it cut out like a third of this video.
Ive turned this shit off after 30s. Fucking military industrial complex propaganda. Remember, they’re gonna bomb your stadiums from drones (maybe) so forget about all other problems of our society and masturbate to our defensive abilities (that we would never ever use to kill innocent kids in the middle east).
Such a weird take, I just watched a program about education resources, was that bad because they didn’t also cover all other problems our society faces?
I think it’s more the dual-use nature of defense technology. It is very realistic to assume the tech that defends you here, is also going to be used in armed conflict (which historically for the US, involves in many civilian deaths). To present the technology without that critical examination, especially to a young audience like Rober’s, is irresponsible. It can help form the view that this technology is inherently good, by leaving the adverse consequences under-examined and out of view to children watching this video.
Not that we need to suddenly start exposing kids to reporting on civilian collateral damage, wedding bombings, war crimes, etc… But if those are inherently part of this technology then leaving them out overlooks a crucial outcome of developing these tools. Maybe we just shouldn’t advertise defense tech in kids media?
yea, thats about how far i got. Last thing we need is more fear of something that likley wont happen…
Why have a drone drop something off, when you could bring in something much larger in a backpack
Gee, I don’t know, because you can fly a drone (or multiple drones) around security?
I mean they’re have been drone attacks already. Like it has already killed people, with Ukrainian forces uses them and the Houthis attacks in the Red Sea.
I mean its like they are comparing SciFi tech for warfare, though some people like that too shrug
Mark Rober is a practicing mormon. And that already did not sit right with me. Christian, muslim, I don’t care what religion, these people should stay away from child education programs. Keeping your faith completely private is borderline acceptable, but please keep your symbols of faith out of your videos (white shirt for the mormons as I learned)
This reads as borderline schizoposting
Keeping your faith completely private is borderline acceptable, but please keep your symbols of faith out of your videos
Someone just being religious is “borderline acceptable?” Please go outside. People are often religious. It doesn’t necessarily make them bad people. “Keep your symbols of faith out of your videos?” What a thing to say to a religious person who isn’t trying to convert anyone with said videos. Like, I’m not Christian, I’m no fan of their bible, but I’m not about to give SmarterEveryDay a dislike and a block because he puts a bible verse at the end of each video.
Someone just being religious is “borderline acceptable?” In educational Youtube videos, yes.
but I’m not about to give SmarterEveryDay a dislike and a block because he puts a bible verse at the end of each video. Maybe give him a dislike and a block because he gave Jared and Ivanka a platform?
I don’t take issue with personal beliefs, but religion is organized belief, telling people what and how to believe. Anyone who advocates for religion has no business in any education system whatsoever.
He’s not even in an education system he made a video on YouTube, but still you’ve got to recognize ‘ban all Christians from any form of education system’ is utterly wild?
- he’s making educational videos on Youtube, with a wide audience. You don’t have to be a teacher to be part of an education system
- fuck your strawman bullshit, learn to argue, here’s what I wrote:
Christian, muslim, I don’t care what religion, these people should stay away from child education programs. Keeping your faith completely private is borderline acceptable, but please keep your symbols of faith out of your videos (white shirt for the mormons as I learned)
“Ban all Christians from any form of education system” seems like a fairly accurate summary of “Christian, muslim, I don’t care what religion, these people should stay away from child education programs.”
Like, I guess we could give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you don’t want them banned, you just want them to voluntarily never educate children in any way, and that’s… Still utterly wild
No?
There are crazies in every religion, and even agnostics and atheists have their fair share of crazies that go too far. It’s also not a great idea to just not expose kids to religious folk (even if that was conceivable, which it’s not given how many people are religious) and it’s not a great idea to demand they keep it private. Preaching is too far, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a teacher to tell their students what the teacher believes in and to wear iconography like a necklace of Jesus on the cross. In fact, I would much rather they be extremely public about what they believe in rather than be silent about it.
I hope for your personal consistency that you then are also okay with a woman in a hijab creating educational videos for youtube.
As far as the crazy atheists go, there’s a type of “atheists” that treat atheism as a belief system, but have neither tried nor have the intellectual capacity to come up with their own, original understanding of why there is no god. However, there is a fundamental difference: Every crazy atheist is on their own, there’s no “atheist institution” that backs their craziness. For cults (and the only practical distinction between a religion and a cult is just the amount of followers), that’s not the case - you have a power hierarchy, sometimes more, sometimes less flat, that advocates their belief system.
It is therefore okay for a teacher - when asked(!) about it - to tell children about their personal beliefs. It is absolutely not okay for a teacher to tell unasked, or to tell children about the belief system / cult they are a part of.
I hope for your personal consistency that you then are also okay with a woman in a hijab creating educational videos for youtube.
Yeah. That’s exactly what I was saying. You are correct, I am completely okay with that.
It is absolutely not okay for a teacher to tell unasked, or to tell children about the belief system / cult they are a part of.
I disagree. It’s perfectly fine for someone to give a sort of disclaimer as to what they believe in and other things like that. The issue is when they start preaching what they believe in without warning while supposedly teaching a different subject.
While I’m not linking to an external article, I’m hoping that my write-up within the post can still fit with the intent of this community :)
Maybe I’ve watched too much Black Mirror, but this video felt too similar to the tech demos at the start of a sci-fi thriller. In fact, it made me think of the Slaughterbots short film from 2017.
Two relevant points from that video:
-
The person in the tech demo for the drones also uses language such as “bad guys”
-
The address at the end:
This short film is more than just speculation. It shows the results of integrating and miniaturizing technologies that we already have. I’m Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley. I’ve worked in AI for more than 35 years. It’s potential to benefit humanity is enormous, even in defense. But allowing machines to choose to kill humans will be devastating to our security and freedom. Thousands of my fellow researchers agree we have an opportunity to prevent the future you just saw, but the window to act is closing fast.
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I made a nightmare after watching this short.
I mean what’s being shown here is effectively “how do you stop something like a slaughter bot or a ‘terrorist bomb bot’?”
I thought it was a neat video … We need people thinking about these problems.
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I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a great interest in war when I was a boy. Now as an adult, I’d rather have Mark explaining things to kids than anyone else they might seek out.
Sure, and I went through the video looking for some nuanced explanation of the technology, the risks, and what safeguards were being put in place. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any, and the cheerful music throughout the video seems to be promoting the content more than anything else.
I find that there are other engineering channels that discuss technologies while focussing on the technology itself, both the good and the bad. I’m not opposed to such content being accessible to children, but the way this video goes about it did not sit right with me
If it’s military tech, then the finer details are likely not part of the public domain. Anything that could be used to understand or develop a way to counteract the weapon more effectively, or sometimes even just understand its precise capabilities, would be secret.
It’s understandable that it does not sit well, I think that’s healthy. War is hell.
This is a common pattern in content creators. As they grow their goals shift into running a production machine that maximizes earnings, throwing away any values or standards they started with.
Just look at LTT/LMG. It’s not gonna get better, so you could watch someone else who still values things other than money.
I stopped watching his content after his ableist campaign with NEXT For Autism (another shitty autism “charity” like Autism Speaks) and his subsequent removal of comments and banning of users who criticised his campaign or attempted to inform him of the dangers of the organisation.
It’s good to see that his morals and ethics are still, to this day, not exactly heartwarming. /s
Given that his own kid is on the autism spectrum, I’d like to think any involvement he has with autism related organizations comes from a genuine desire to do good by autistic people.
maybe, but he really strikes me as the kinda guy that cant ever admit he was wrong or had a bad idea. So if he said “this autism charity is good” then he will fight and die on that hill no matter what happens even if it comes at the expense of his kid.
Weird topic for a channel aimed at children
I was not expecting this amount of hate over this video when I clicked on this post. The video is… normal? I don’t see issues? This whole thread seems oddly anti-military, anti-tech, and anti-Mark Rober. Like, what, is this tech going to be used to murder children more effectively than bombing a school? Even if it is, why is Mark Rober at fault and actually a phony who’s just shelling out for fame/cash? I’m genuinely curious what I’m missing here.
It’s simply, propaganda. The issue with its audience is they are too young to realise they are being sold the next gen of weapons and it’s being promoted in a positive light. If you don’t understand why that is wrong then do a quick moral check in yourself.
Lemmy is slipping into a weird form of pacifism where they’re really hype about certain types of violence (punch a nazi, execute billionaires, etc) but also hate democracies working together to defend against attack because they see government as a nebulous evil and they’d rather people die than admit their edgy ideology is overly simplistic.
And yes I know the west has been involved in bad wars predicated on lies, the west isn’t the only place where people lie and do awful things for personal power and wealth, democracy isn’t perfect but it’s a work in progress best effort to work on making things better and it’s actually working pretty well really all things considered. I certainly think having tools to defend it against attack is a sensible and good thing especially something as elegant and accurate as just smashing attacking drones with percussive force. Far less likelihood of civilian casualties or ecological damage.
But the West isn’t a work in progress. We actively support genocide. We are the baddies that live on the backs of the rest of the world. We currently do this. Actively.
That’s such a simplistic and idealistic world view, you really think the rest of the world would just be a utopia of mutual love and respect if it weren’t for the existence of the evil race?
People the world over are all just human there are lovely Americans, lovely Arabs, lovely Chinese and Japanese and Ghanaian… however there are also greedy and manipulative people in all these places, people who will hurt others to get in a position of power - this is a reality of life, things are complex and sometimes interests and established beliefs clash leafing to conflict. This happens everywhere all through history.
The world is work in progress, its a lot if hugely difficult challenges many which come with added surprises and difficulties and unintended consequences.
I never said that everyone else is perfect. Don’t strawman my words.
I didnt hate the video when I watched it, but Mark’s videos are heavily aimed at family friendly vibes, and this video is heavily centered around domestic terrorism, even though it family friendly dances around actually using the term. Which is a weird vibe
This kind of thing happens a lot. Something “negative” comes up about a popular person and everyone comes crawling out of the wood work about how they “knew all along” and “this person really is such a horrible person” and “on my god how could they do this?”
I’m probably going to regret the few comments I’ve made in this thread … but yeah, I really don’t think that video was that bad. It shows off how engineering can be applied to defending from possible future attacks. Maybe someone could use this offensively and “promotes the military industrial complex” but I think a bullet or a bomb is a lot more economical than “anvil” and “anvil” is something folks could potentially see in real life in civilian defense applications.
I’d personally love to see more people taking an interest and inspiration from counter weapons systems rather than the mentality of “the best defense is a good offense.” Not because I want to see more war, but because I think we’ve created some really nasty weapons and the shield and castle have long been out classed… People should be able to protect themselves.
Mostly I just hate when very obviously sponsored videos don’t declare their sponsorships. The entire first half of this like, 15 minute video is an ad, and then the rest of the content is made by like 3 other people. The thing he did was a big dart launcher. Now sure, that’s probably just for fun, it’s a scaled up version of the science kit he’s selling, it’s probably laudable that he didn’t want to show up his co-stars or whatever, but this is a video that has no content and basically no educational value. It’s trash, basically, it just has science education skin on.
Veritasium has done a similar thing a couple times, like his video on the autonomous cars. Very clearly a sponsorship, I think he only says so at the very end of the video, he totally glosses over any problems or downsides the technology has and speaks glowingly of it the whole time, paycheck please, next video, credibility is basically totally shot. I dunno, when I was a kid, magazines like popular science sold me on shit like the hyperloop. I wish they had been as forward thinking and hyped about normal trains, instead. Especially considering how many people have probably fallen for similar garbage like this due to that kind of stuff.
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Mark has always been icky for me. I watch these kinds of videos almost excellently - the science-tech ones; yet I avoid him like the plague.
This just in: Palmer Luckey is a piece of shit. This is what you bought when you paid for the Oculus Rift.
Somehow I already knew this was Anduril.
What’s wrong with Palmer Luckey. I don’t have much research on him but I believe Oculus was better before he sold out to Facebook.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries
It was founded in 2017 by inventor Palmer Luckey with investors and founders associated with Palantir and SpaceX. Anduril aims to sell the U.S. Department of Defense technology, including artificial intelligence and robotics. Anduril’s major products include unmanned aerial systems (UAS), counter-UAS (CUAS), semi-portable autonomous surveillance systems, and networked command and control software.
This was months after he left Facebook. He left in March 2017 and opened Anduril in June 2017.
Point one against him was that he sold Oculus to Facebook. Point two is that he used his earnings from Oculus/Facebook to start a military hardware company with focus on autonomous weapons.
In other words, everyone who paid money to support Oculus ended up supporting this. This is what the profits of Oculus Rift bought: violent weaponry with more concern for profit than humanity. Great job, VR gamers!
Like seriously, though. If I buy a video game console, I shouldn’t have to be concerned the profits will be used to make weapons.
While I don’t want to support weapons, blaming people that bought the vr headset in the past for what he would do with the money after the sale is a very bad take. You can’t blame them for not knowing the future.
Also the argument itself doesn’t make much sense and can be strawmaned to “you pay taxes, therefore you are a complicit in the murders of your military, therefore you are a bad person”.
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