HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

There is a great Linus Tech Tips and Smarter Every Day Youtube video about this. Highly recommended!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olRF5Ckaga0

⬐ sixothree

Ever since I learned Destin from Smarter Every Day works in defense I have lost interest in his channel. That was a disappointing discovery, though I did suspect it.

⬐ keanzu

Destin was, until late 2018, a full-time Missile Flight Test Engineer at Redstone Arsenal. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Alabama Huntsville advised by Kavan Hazeli.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destin_Sandlin

⬐ kick

The source Wikipedia cites says he's still employed there:

https://mmee.uah.edu/people/destin-sandlin

Destin is studying Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama and an M.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. While an undergraduate, he was awarded the University of Alabama's Outstanding Senior Award. He is a full-time Missile Flight Test Engineer at Redstone Arsenal.

⬐ ThisIsTheWay

What industry would you prefer he support? Every industry is corrupt, depending on who you ask...

⬐ kick

While both are bad, there's a difference between "This abstractly might harm someone," and "I'm helping develop something that is absolutely going to kill someone and of which the intent is to kill someone."

⬐ Rebelgecko

Uber has killed more people than every American ICBM ever

⬐ kick

Conflating "missile" with "ICBM" is a bad habit.

⬐ Rebelgecko

What type of missile does he work on?

⬐ kick

ATEC handles basically everything under the sun.

I'm not that familiar with him, but he mentions a couple of types he's helped test for ATEC in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Strike_Missile

Judging by the video's contents, he's worked on more than just missiles.

I'm not trying to absolve Uber or something, for the record: the people who work for Uber aren't innocent, either. It just seems clear that they're a lesser evil. Malpractice versus malfeasance.

⬐ scottLobster

Consider that the US military, particularly the Navy, with its missiles, has facilitated safe global trade since the end of WWII. That in turn has lifted more people out of poverty than any previous single measure in human history. The US Navy has done more good than Uber could ever hope to achieve.

On the other side, consider for instance what Iran and Saudi Arabia would start doing to each other if the recently energy-independent US disengaged completely from the middle east. You can look at Syria in the wake of Trump's withdrawal for a tiny sample of the kind of violence that would occur in such a power vacuum.

Now none of that erases the various abuses and misadventures of the US military, but you're reducing a highly complex equation stretching over 70 years to a single simple variable: "Do the machines kill people or not?"

If every engineer in the US simply refused to build missiles as it appears you desire, the second, third and fourth order effects of that choice might kill even more people than if the missiles had just been built and potentially used. I'd argue it isn't clear at all whether Uber or the US defense industry is the lesser evil, and in fact there's a lot more history to take pride in in the defense industry.

⬐ kens

That's a pretty random comparison. The Titan II missile killed 54 that I know of, while Uber killed 58 people in 2018, but I'm not sure what that tells us about core memory.

⬐ Rebelgecko

I just think that it's silly to boycott someone's videos about the a launch vehicle just because they work in missile testing. Especially when you consider the heritage of launch vehicles in general, and the Saturn V in particular

The Saturn V's F-1 engines were originally designed for the Air Force. Would you boycott a video about the Saturn V made by someone who actually worked on the thing, because they worked on a part of the Saturn V when it was still a military project? I feel like that is a ridiculous purity test.

The Titan series of ICBMs, with light modifications, was a workhorse for America's civilian space program. The Atlas, Delta, and Minotaur families of rockets were also originally ICBMS. AFAIK the only deaths from the Titan II were industrial accidents, which can happen just as easily for a civilian rocket program (although silo conditions did exacerbate the accidents). I don't think it's fair to say that someone who worked on testing the rocket contributed to those deaths— if anything, competent testing should reduce the number of accidents.

I won't go too much into the less wholesome background of the Saturn V, which had multiple former Nazis in leadership positions, all of whom had previously worked on rockets like the V-2. The head of the Saturn V program office even gave up his US citizenship in the 80s as part of a deal with the government to avoid prosecution for war crimes and abuse of prisoners during the Holocaust. I don't understand why someone would be willing to accept that, but not accept involvement from a random test engineer at Redstone Arsenal.

⬐ DonHopkins

People don't ride around town on ICBMs every day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snTaSJk0n_Y

And planes still occasionally drop ICBMs that destroy people's houses.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/frozen-exc...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_(aviation)

Steve Wozniak likes to put stickers in airport bathrooms that say "DANGER: DO NOT FLUSH OVER CITIES".

https://twitter.com/stevewoz/status/912498392223252481

https://webfactory.mk/2018/05/28/do-not-flush-over-cities/

⬐ DanBC

I used to work in sub-contract electronic engineering and I told my bosses that I didn't want to do defence work. So I ended up building a bunch of equipment for coal mining and civil aviation. This has killed far more people than the defence work would have done.

⬐ kubanczyk

Did these civil aviation devices helped anyone move more efficiently from place A to place B? I often move from place A and place B and happily accept all the risk involved. Absolved! Next!

⬐ clSTophEjUdRanu

Why are you disappointed?

⬐ tic_tac

I suppose you think we should not defend ourselves?

⬐ daeken

The Department of Defense is 99.9% offense, 0.1% defense. You can use the argument that the best defense is a good offense, but that doesn't really excuse the number of (largely unprovoked) attacks on and occupation of other sovereign nations.

⬐ tic_tac

US military dominance is an ever present defense for nations around the world who would otherwise be harrassed or attacked by aggressive neighbors. US military involvement in the Middle East doesn't change that.

Of course you can argue we shouldn't be involved in the Middle East, and there are some reasons to think we shouldn't be, but we can agree on that point and still believe the US should have the world's dominant military.

⬐ pinkfoot

The UK is being harassed by Ireland, the Faroe Islands, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France?

> but we can agree [that] the US should have the world's dominant military.

Who is "we"? It's not me.

⬐ a1369209993

> and occupation of other sovereign nations.

Not that I disagree with the sentiment, but if you're (successfully) occupying a nation, it is by definition not sovereign anymore.

⬐ pirate_dev

This exactly.

⬐ AnimalMuppet

0.1% defense in terms of actions, but not in terms of capabilities. It's just that attacks on the US are very rare, because it's so capable of defense.

⬐ 205guy

Upvoted you because I got turned off his channel by a similar but different issue last year: firearms.

He was doing a lot of episodes involving rifles, such as viewing the bullet's turbulence with polarization (iirc) and slo-mo. It was still scientific, but just a lot about guns. Then in the intro to one episode (sorry, I can't be bothered to go reference all of these), he said something like: people have criticized me because I talk a lot guns, but they're just so cool. In other words, "sorry not sorry." I closed the tab and never went back to his channel.

I'm in the US and I know guns are mainstream in the US, and he was actually good at studying them (not even really glorifying them). But there had been a lot of high profile shootings (Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, Florida, etc.), so it just seemed off. And frankly, I'm not into guns myself (just like I'm not into the foodie trend), so since he stated clearly he was going to focus on firearms, I just stopped following.

It's a youtube channel, and we all have limited time, so I see nothing wrong with stating a reason for giving up on it--even if it's a politically or culturally charged issue. It's not like the parent comment or I are criticizing the channel or even arguing he shouldn't do what he does.

⬐ scottLobster

They kinda are though.., or at least it's the most obvious implication. The entire comment is them saying they stopped watching after finding out he worked in the defense industry. Nothing to do with the content of the linked video, nothing to do with the original article. Just a statement that they think working in the defense industry is bad enough to stop watching the channel. If they aren't implying that we shouldn't watch SmarterEveryDay because of his career background, then they should have more clearly stated their point. As it stands the comment sounds like the classic "phrase a controversial point as an obvious implication so when people call you out on it you can backtrack and say they misinterpreted".