

Viral 'human bird wings' video fake, probably an ad, expert says - cjdrake
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/22/viral-human-bird-wings-video-fake-probably-ad-expert-says/

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wouterinho
The guy that did the video was just on Dutch TV. He said it is fake. He's a
movie maker and this was a 8-month long experiment.

~~~
joejohnson
Do you have a link for this? I can't find it on Google.

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danieldk
[http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5133/Media-
technologie/article/det...](http://www.trouw.nl/tr/nl/5133/Media-
technologie/article/detail/3229655/2012/03/22/Filmpje-vliegende-Nederlander-
blijkt-nep.dhtml)

Google Translate should do a decent job ;).

By the way, the real name of the guy is 'Floris Kaayk'.

~~~
angersock
Ah, a great shame. :(

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simplefish
_grins_ I hope some of the more credulous commenters here on HN[1] like the
taste of crow. Especially the ones that attacked other commenters as being
closed-minded for pointing out obvious problems with the video.

[1]: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3732385>

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strags
Some further analysis, and a theory that it's a viral marketing campaign for
Kid Icarus.

<http://metabunk.org/threads/480-Debunked-Human-Birdwings>

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jenhsun
Human bird winds project Jarno Smeets on Dutch TV said it's fake. Video is
here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OESwdRb48jM>

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mkramlich
I'm no "expert" but I concluded it was fake and probably a promotional stunt.
Too many wrong signals and clues to be otherwise.

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sh1mmer
However the "expert" was an expert on ads not engineering. Which perhaps
qualifies him to assess viral video but not physics.

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garbles
A new Pilot Wings game, maybe?

~~~
draggnar
Someone wants to give you wings maybe?

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hcarvalhoalves
OH RLY? Does anyone really thought it was real? I bet $ 100 it's a viral for
Red Bull :)

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dlikhten
I reject anything from fox news. If any other news source says it I'd even
read it. Sorry fox is dead to me.

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jff
What a close-minded person you are. This is essentially an ad-hominem attack,
as HN loves to point out--because it comes from a certain source, you dismiss
it immediately and attempt to discredit it.

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mistercow
Discounting based on a source repeatedly shown to be unreliable is not ad
hominem; it is proper evidential weighting.

It would be bad reasoning to say "because [source] says [claim] and [source]
is unreliable, [claim] is probably wrong." But it is correct reasoning to say
"[source] says [claim], but [source] is unreliable, so my beliefs about
[claim] are virtually unaffected."

Edit: of course, if you saw the original video, you should _already_ believe
it to be fake. An article from foxnews.com should not change that. And yes, I
realize that this is only being reproduced by foxnews.com, and is not their
original material. Still, "don't click [unreliable source].com links" is a
worthwhile policy to have because the human mind is not very good at tracking
sources.

~~~
lotharbot
> _"Discounting based on a source repeatedly shown to be unreliable is not ad
> hominem; it is proper evidential weighting."_

Consider the related approach of giving someone who is a known expert in field
X undue weight for their commentary in field Y. We recognize this as a mistake
because one's ability in field X does not necessarily correlate with their
ability in field Y.

In this case, you're suggesting we _completely ignore_ the statement of a
source which is known to be unreliable on a particular set of partisan topics,
and known to be reliable on non-partisan topics (such as sports scores), when
they are addressing a topic within the second category.

Proper evidential weighting takes into account not merely the "reliability" or
"unreliability" of a source in a generic sense, but the specific details of
that (un)reliability.

(The problem with the heavily-downvoted grandparent post is more than mere
improper evidential weighting. The larger problem is that it's _boring_ and
_off-topic_. Here on Hacker News, we prefer comments that add value to the
discussion.)

~~~
mistercow
>In this case, you're suggesting we completely ignore the statement of a
source which is known to be unreliable on a particular set of partisan topics,
and known to be reliable on non-partisan topics (such as sports scores), when
they are addressing a topic within the second category.

Perhaps it is not quite right to say that ignoring it completely is "proper
evidential weighting". What I mean is that it is a _better heuristic_ than the
ones your brain's native evidence-weighing routines will employ. And since it
is impossible to _completely_ override those instinctive heuristics, there is
some level of credibility below which the best course of action is to simply
disregard a source. The fact that we have limited investigative resources
further raises that bar.

Otherwise, I would have to spend all of my time weighing odds and researching
the plausibility of claims gleaned from Prison Planet, during which I could
learn much more information about the world by focusing my attention
elsewhere.

>(The problem with the heavily-downvoted grandparent post is more than mere
improper evidential weighting. The larger problem is that it's boring and off-
topic. Here on Hacker News, we prefer comments that add value to the
discussion.)

Well yes, it just bothers me quite a lot when people act like ignoring
disreputable sources is some kind of sin against rationality.

~~~
lotharbot
If you're looking for heuristics for evidence-weighting, I submit "this story
is getting significant votes on HN" should usually be enough to override the
low-credibility-score based heuristic you might otherwise use.

