Tags for this video have been changed from 'UK, RAF Fairford, Avro Vulcan, XH558' to 'UK, RAF Fairford, Avro Vulcan, V bomber, XH558, cold war' - edited by calvados

MASSIVE LONG POST WARNING: feel free to skip this

I usually like Vsauce a lot, but I disagree with just about every assumption and every conclusion he makes in this video.

Anthropogenic vs external extinction event -
I think the likelihood of an anthropogenic extinction event is low. Even in the cold war, at the apex of "mutually assured destruction" risk, IF that destruction was triggered I think it would have been extremely unlikely to make humans go extinct. The US and USSR might have nuked each other to near-extinction, but even with fairly mobile nuclear fallout / nuclear winter, etc. I think that enough humans would have remained in other areas to remain a viable population.

Even if ONE single person had access to every single nuclear weapon in existence, and they went nuts and tried to use them ALL with the goal of killing every single human being on the planet, I still bet there would be enough pockets of survivors in remote areas to prevent humans from going utterly extinct.

Sure, an anthropogenic event could be devastating -- catastrophic even -- to human life. But I think humanity could recover even from an event with an associated human death rate of 95% or more -- and I think the likelihood of anything like that is real slim.

So that leaves natural or external extinction events. The KT extinction (end of the dinosaurs) is the most recent major event, and it happened 65 million years ago. Homo sapiens have been around 150-200,000 years, and as a species we've been through some fairly extreme climatic changes. For example, humans survived the last ice age around 10-20,000 years ago -- so even without technology, tools, buildings, etc. we managed to survive a climate shift that extreme. Mammals survived the KT extinction, quite possible that we could have too -- especially if we were to face it with access to modern technology/tools/knowledge/etc.

So I think it would probably take something even more extreme than the asteroid responsible for KT to utterly wipe us out. Events like that are temporally rare enough that I don't think we need to lose any sleep over them. And again, it would take something massive to wipe out more than 95% of the human population. We're spread out, we live in pretty high numbers on basically every landmass on earth (perhaps minus Antarctica), we're adapted to many many different environments ... pretty hard to kill us off entirely.


"Humans are too smart to go extinct" @1:17 -
I think we're too dumb to go extinct. Or at least too lazy. The biggest threats we face are anthropogenic, but even the most driven and intentionally malevolent human or group of humans would have a hard time hunting down *everybody, everywhere*.


Doomsday argument -
I must admit that I don't really understand this one. The guess of how many total humans there will be, EVER, seems extremely arbitrary. But anyway, I tend to think it might fall apart if you try to use it to make the same assertions about, say, bacterial life instead of human life. Some specific species of bacteria have been around for way way longer than humans, and in numbers that dwarf human populations. So, the 100 billionth bacteria didn't end up needing to be worried about its "birth number", nor did the 100 trillionth.


Human extinction "soon" vs. "later" -
Most plausibly likely threats "soon" are anthropogenic. The further we push into "later", the more the balance swings towards external threats, I think. But we're talking about very small probabilities (in my opinion anyway) on either side of the scale. But I don't think that "human ingenuity will always stay one step ahead of any extinction event thrown at it" (@4:54). Increased human ingenuity is directly correlated with increased likelihood of anthropogenic extinction, so that's pretty much the opposite. For external extinction events, I think it is actually fairly hard to imagine some external scenario or event that could have wiped out humans 100, 20, 5, 2, or 1 thousand years ago that wouldn't wipe us out today even with our advances and ingenuity. And anything really bad enough to wipe us out is not going to wait for us to be ready for it...


Fermi paradox -
This is the most reasonable bit of the whole video, but it doesn't present the most common / best response. Other stars, galaxies, etc. are really far away. The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000+ light years across. The nearest other galaxy (Andromeda) is 2.2 million light years away. A living being (or descendents of living beings) coming to us either of those distances would have to survive as long as the entire history of human life, all while moving at near the speed of light, and have set out headed straight for us from the get-go all those millions and millions of years ago. So lack of other visitors is not surprising at all.

Evidence of other life would be far more likely to find, but even that would have to be in a form we could understand. Human radio signals heading out into space are less than 100 years old. Anything sentient and actively looking for us, even within the cosmically *tiny* radius of 100 light years, would have to have to evolved in such a way that they also use radio; otherwise the clearest evidence of US living here on Earth would be undetectable to them. Just because that's what we're looking for, doesn't mean that other intelligent beings would take the same approach.

Add all that up, and I don't think that the Fermi paradox is much cause for alarm. Maybe there are/have been LOTS of intelligent life forms out there, but they have been sending out beacons in formats we don't recognize, or they are simply too far away for those beacons to have reached us yet.


OK, I think I'm done. Clearly I found the video interesting, to post that long of a rambling response... But I was disappointed in it compared to usual Vsauce stuff. Still, upvote for the thoughts provoked and potential discussion, even though I disagree with most of the content and conclusions.

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

I always believed he was a Formosan general in the early Cold War years, respected by mid 20th century Chinese immigrants for fighting against the communists in the Chinese Civil War. This is probably another one of the myths I've lived my life with because I randomly asked my dad a question and, not knowing, he just made up an answer.

Of course, now that I think about it, Daldain surely nailed it with the relationship to The Colonel, rather like Admiral Nelson's rum is to Captain Morgan's.

I think I can explain the democrat hate: pure romanticism

Lincoln was a Republican, arguably our best president in history. I think people still try to attach to that and ignore the fact that the parties basically flipped because of the Southern Strategy after the Civil Rights Act. That and Republicans weren't always hijacked by the crazies. I think too many people don't want to admit their party has changed. It's also indoctrination. I've met plenty of people that agree with me point by point, yet they still manage to do these crazy mental gymnastics to rationalize to themselves that they HAVE to vote Republican. It's how they were brought up. Hell it almost happened to me, as a kid, long before I had any political identity. I always assumed I was Republican simply because I believed what everyone told me "Republicans are good with money, Democrats waste it" It wasn't until much later that I realized how untrue that was. Hell, even my first presidential vote in 2000, I listened too much to a Republican friend of mine ( one of the people I mentioned before that agreed with me on most everything, but still voted Republican) and because of his influence, I did vote for Bush in 2000 (so so sorry...not that it mattered in my red non-swing state)

One of my best friends is like this. he doesn't vote purely along party lines, and we agree on most political points, yet he still identifies as a Republican when in my opinion, he's an Independent like me. I think it's mainly because he was brought up by a military family and he was brought up to believe that the dems were the devil...despite how much he tends to agree with them.

its totally dysfunctional.

Its also part of the human condition IMO. There is a human need to have an enemy. Back in WWII we were pretty much united because we had to defeat the Axis. In the Cold War we were mostly united because we had to defeat the Russkies. America kinda stands alone now. No other military on earth can really challenge us. Sure the Taliban and ISIS are a source of terrorism, but they're still not a real threat, they could never invade or occupy us.

So there just aren't any real big threats out there...and when that happens...that's when infighting begins. People need an enemy, and when you can't find one without, you find one within.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'avro, vulcan, bomber, aircraft, low, fly over, loud engines' to 'avro, vulcan, bomber, aircraft, cold war, low, fly over, loud engines' - edited by calvados

I'm fairly conflicted.

The issue with having an assassination program with virtually no oversight, run by a government whose people are all too willing to ignore the collateral damage it brings to foreigners is pretty obvious. You could argue that terrorists target the US because of genuine grievances (past blowback particularly from intervention during the Cold War motivated largely by opposing a communist threat over any moral considerations). From there you could argue that if only the US avoided foreign intervention, in time it would no longer be a terrorist target and have no need for such morally questionable action as using drones with significant civilian casualty risk.

I'm sceptical of this argument. For one I think the espoused goals of many terrorist organisations are often a sham. They may start as violent reactionaries to some genuinely held grievance. But mature organisations initiate a conflict with the US because notoriety brings financial support and more fighters which in turn improves their ability to project power, which is their ultimate goal. So I don't see US disengagement as a solution because terrorist attacks and beheadings of its nationals will continue to politically galvanise the US into action. At that point having being disengaged beforehand (lacking intel, ability to target leadership with drones) is just a disadvantage.

I also don't see a government other than the US capable and willing to rally a group of nations and take a leading role against a group like ISIS. It's fair to say that the US invasion of Iraq was largely responsible for destabilising an authoritarian government under Saddam that would have prevented the emergence of a Sunni group like this. But then, imagine if Saddam was still in power in reaction to the Arab Spring and the result was a situation like Syria today. It is all too possible that a similar group would have emerged in a power vacuum not caused by US intervention.

My point is, I agree it is horrible to see civilians being killed by drones and having to live under the constant terror of attack but I don't see a better solution. In fact it seems that drones are probably the solution with the least risk of civilian casualty. There is a reason why the Yemeni/Pakistani government tacitly support them even while publicly disavowing them.

Of course I would like to see them used more judiciously but I am sceptical that this is feasibly possible. I do not doubt that the CIA/Pentagon who run the program are familiar with blowback and the risks of inciting attacks on the US through the killing of innocents in these strikes. It is possible incentives for 'results' may lead to their overuse at the expense of civilian lives and the long term cost. Maybe more openness would be best. Then again more openness would serve as a rallying cry for existing terrorist organisations.

It's not so much racism as xenophobia. The Russians might be white, but during the cold war, they may as well have been Martians.

And no, I don't believe Americans support drone strikes because the "get" to kill brown people. It's simply that they don't care as much about them.

You're deluding yourself if you think otherwise. It goes way beyond terrorism. And it's not even a US issue either.

Look at other tragedies, natural disasters, etc.

Katrina killed 1800 people. Undoubtedly a significant event. The 2004 tsunami killed nearly a quarter of a million people, but which one got more media coverage in the developed world?

So, once again, answer the question. Would you have been ok with the British government drone striking Ireland in the 80s?

War & Human Nature: Crash Course World History 204 has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

The Cold War: Crash Course World History has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

Crash Course: World War II has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

Crash Course: World War I has been added as a related post - related requested by PlayhousePals.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/War-Human-Nature-Crash-Course-World-History-204

*related=http://videosift.com/video/The-Cold-War-Crash-Course-World-History

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Crash-Course-World-War-II

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Crash-Course-World-War-I

McDonald's milkshakes (er, I think officially just "shakes"), don't melt either. They just kind of dry up and solidify.

Astronaut ice cream doesn't melt either. I used to love that stuff when I was a kid, but I haven't seen it anywhere for a while. Probably the same stuff. So the moral is that it's probably NASA that invented that ice cream sandwich. How many food products can you buy that required a hundred million dollar engineering budget and won the Cold War?

There is a pretty large worldwide anti-nuclear movement out there, particularly in Japan, but it apparently doesn't have much traction in the U.S. In fact in 2013 the UN General Assembly 125 countries issued a joint statement calling the use of nuclear weapons inhuman and for total disarmament.

I think people in the U.S. have kind of forgotten about them since the cold war ended. I don't think anyone seriously believes we'll use them. "Deterrence" is really the only reason we still stockpile them, but it's a ludicrous notion. If someone is crazy enough to intentionally use nukes, they're crazy enough not to care what the repercussions to their own country will be both politically or militarily.

@Jerykk

I'll address by paragraph.

(1)

Wait, so I'm confused. Not enough research on my claim yet the death penalty apparently offers guaranteed results despite evidence to the contrary that I suggested?

Firstly I think you might be trying to make a bit of a straw man. I'm not saying that there should be no penalty. Some penalty obviously discourages some crime. But the argument is more over whether harsher sentences and mandatory minimums as this video discusses are helping, which I would argue they are not for the reasons outlined previously.

As for evidence of rehabilitation reducing recidivism, take for example:

http://ijo.sagepub.com/content/12/1/9.refs (see PDF)

Page 1
Finland, Norway and Sweden all have ~50-70 locked up per 100K, among the lowest. US has 716.

Page 2-3
Norway recidivism - 20%
US recidivism - 52%

I await your evidence to the contrary.

(2)

I'm talking per capita. Per capita the US certainly does have the highest among first world countries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate#By_country

Sort by per capita and find me a developed country higher than the US please.

Russia is not a first-world country (that's actually a Cold War term, more correctly not a a developed country). I'm Russian, I assure you, I would know

Russia's GDP/capita is $14K USD, versus the US's $52K. Not even a close comparison.

(3)

But do criminals proportionalise justice? Like I asked, do you think anything but a small minority (likely white collar criminals) accurately know the likely sentence of a crime before they commit it? If they don't what's the purpose of making them more severe?

Nobody is proposing there be no penalty. Even Scandanavian prisons are a penalty. The question is, does the threat of 30 over 15 years locked up (should they even be able to decipher legal code to know this) actually make a difference? I would argue not, hence the argument for harsher sentences is illogical.

People are generally good at gauging the likelihood of being caught (ie your pirating example) but that's not what I was talking about (the scale of punishment being a deterrent).

(4)

I don't think what you're proposing is practical or logical. No society is going to accept the death penalty as a punishment for speeding. It's an irrelevant argument to make.

Again, why the need for elaborate ideas never before attempted? Why not just adopt a model that has already worked, such as the Scandinavian one? It seems like you're trying to wrap your mind around a solution that fits your preconceived notion of incentives and no government assistance like I suggested in my first post.

(5)

Venezuela is a developing country. Crime is largely a result of economic mismanagement by Chavez leading to joblessness and civil unrest.

There are plenty of countries with which to compare the US with. Obvious choices would be Australia or the UK. Anglo-Saxon countries, similar culture, comparative income/capita. Or really any European country. Your comparison would suggest tp me you're trying to stretch your argument to fit.

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/the-uk-government-are-opening-thousands-of-secret-files-to-the-public

Cold war propaganda, Nazi prosecution files, Winston Churchill's secret recipe for baked beans... this is better than Disneyland!

You're conflating two different points.

1 - Is overpopulation a problem that needs to be addressed?
2 - If it is a problem, is it possible for us to address?

We've been competing for less and less resources ever since populations started growing. Nobody in this thread has offered any evidence for why suddenly at and above 7 billion it will really become a problem this time. My hypothesis is that the past shows that the change in living standards from increased populations will be gradual and not cause some kind of cataclysmic hunger or global food war. Where is your evidence to the contrary? I've shown examples recent and past where the world has dealt with respectively, (1) high commodity prices and (2) dealt with proportionately much higher population growth than what we are experiencing today.

Society has continually shown the ability to drastically grow agricultural yields, tap deeper and harder to access water and energy reserves and substitute different inputs when a commodity becomes scarce or expensive. With global birth rates barely above replacement and global population plateauing, where is your evidence that with the ingenuity of the many people that have come out of poverty since the end of the Cold War, that we won't be able to handle a historically relatively mild proportionate growth in population?

Every time I see someone channelling Malthusian scare mongering such as this video, I always see the same tropes -

(1) The word exponential bounded about with some kind of mystical reverence;
(2) An over-abundant use of analogies while being absent of any historical basis for their argument; and
(3) A complete lack of plausible solutions to the problem because their argument is grounded in emotion and intuition rather than practicality.