> has anyone here ever used an electron microscope?
I am not a scientist, but yes. It’s not that hard to directly access most scientific tools. Verification takes effort, but random verification should reasonably give you confidence and can be a fun project on it’s own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVbdbVhzcM4
You really cannot trust what is presented on a screen. There really is no equivalent to personally testing science or any thesis personally. You will be illuminated, rather than falsely believing you 'know', when all you know is a story.
That is an example of an experiment. If that experiment reveals some truth then it should be repeatable. If it isn't repeatable it isn't going to be considered always true and has no particular value. Videos like this are made all the time for marketing, media, entertainment purposes. Anti-science propagandists make videos like this all the time - but they aren't accepted because they aren't typically repeatable or filled with flaws.
We trust the process because the process bears fruit - computers, cars, power, electricity, cell phones, cures of disease, antibiotics, etc. We experience all of these things daily. Now black holes and hawking radiation? Perhaps these things are a bit harder and require leaps of faith - but that is reality in a specialized modern society.
You trust the car mechanic to know what's wrong, although sometimes you encounter a fraud who will lie to make more money. That doesn't make all mechanics bad.
That video is making the false claim that individual aspects of a video can’t be independently falsified. A simple example is to track down the original referenced paper. Another is knowing that at the time the video was created, VFX wasn’t good enough to fake the shot. That’s not verification of say the amount of effort involved, as they could be scamming their backers or whatnot. But, it does demonstrate the difference between being skeptical and a conspiracy theorist.
A skeptic looks for individual evidence to support every independent assertion, where a conspiracy theory is based on the assumption that individual truths are linked. Using multiple different takes to make a video is independent of the accuracy of the experiment. A trained crow would be able to fake what a crow learning to solve a puzzle does.
With all respect, I think you missed the point. I am talking about how information is presented to us, and how we are put in a position of having to accept whatever is presented despite not being presented any evidence. This is not a conspiracy, it is logic.
The video is saying that information is presented to us in such a way that it is impossible to know whether it is true or false. When you edit the shots and do not present a single continuous shot, you have disabled the audience's ability to discern for themselves. And even if we were presented with an uncut edit, with CGI technology being as good as it is, we still cannot be sure nowadays.
The effect of being presented with endless streams of information like this, throughout our lives, in school and on TV, is that our ability to be clear about what we know is overwhelmed. And our nature is that we accept it all. We have been trained to sit back and accept whatever we are told. What's irritating to me is that we also have the front to call that 'knowledge'. When we see something like the crow 'science' in that film, we think we know. But we do not. We have the illusion of knowledge, but in reality we are in the dark. Without the deconstruction of that film, I think most would watch this and accept this as true.
This is a state worse than ignorance. At least an ignorant person knows they do not 'know'. Thinking you 'know' when you do not, is actually negative knowledge - its worse than ignorance.
When you reflect on this, you will see that this the default means of receiving information. We sit back and let the news/the scientists/whoever make a bunch of claims. And most will accept all these by default. Simply because its on TV! And everyone thinks they are cleverer that that... whilst having verified nothing!
> with CGI technology being as good as it is, we still cannot be sure nowadays.
CGI is still extremely limited. There is an ever expanding list of things that can be reasonably faked, but high definition turbulent flows for example are not one of them.
Now you personally may simply not know where that line is, but that doesn’t mean nobody does. Which is my point, your personal level of ignorance isn’t universal. Science is still surprisingly accessible, learning and verifying say thermodynamics can give you more confidence about say global warming than simple blind trust.
The same is true of a great many spurious claims from say kickstarts that can’t work as advertised. Which means a slick video on it’s own isn’t enough.
PS: I don’t mean for this as a personal attack, more a suggestion that if you find separating fact from fiction difficult there is a path forward.
You are engaging with my argument - it is not a personal attack, and I don't take it that way.
You say I'm ignorant. My response is that you are over-stating the level of your knowledge.
Do you really know what is possible with CGI? You may be an expert in the field, but can you really say that? Is it possible that the military, google, the Russians, or someone else, has an advance on what you believe to be the cutting edge?
The problem as I see it is that for most people a slick video IS enough. To accept all sorts of things that they have no evidence for. And they say 'they know' and that 'its true'.
I agree that for many people a slick video is enough. I personally devoted a significant chunk of my life to avoid that which simply isn’t tenable for most people. Still looking into the mechanics of say DNA deep doing to encounter chromatin means you can start to reason about what’s actually happening. Keep building a slightly more than superficial understanding of everything from Architecture to Quantum Mechanics and eventually you run out of major fields of study. It’s far from comprehensive and you really need to focus after that, but it’s something.
So sure, I don’t know the exact CGI line, but it’s something I know quite a lot about. Could a ‘deep fake’ style video effectively be good enough to be indistinguishable from someone actually talking? I suspect not yet, but I wouldn’t want to take the bet. But I know enough to realize the specifics around chaotic fluid simulation is a vastly higher hurdle due to the underlying computation involved.
Granted, drawing that line requires an understanding of what Military’s can pull off, which ultimately comes down to physics and economics. Now, I have actually done R&D for them so take of this what you will. It used to be military hardware had a huge leg up, but that’s far less the case today.
Getting to the point where you hear someone say “salt used to be worth as much as gold” and you think “that’s got to be BS” doesn’t take a deep understanding of history, just a supernatural understanding of a few related topics.
I am not a scientist, but yes. It’s not that hard to directly access most scientific tools. Verification takes effort, but random verification should reasonably give you confidence and can be a fun project on it’s own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVbdbVhzcM4
PS: One of the most famous experiments off all time is replicated whenever you can something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation