Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #20 on: June 19, 2019, 08:18:05 AM »
It's not unreasonable to imagine that a company would fake videos of their products in order to try to raise capital. Try to convince a bunch of investors that you're way farther along than you really are. There have been cases of fraud like that in recent years. However, in this case, I think the live stage demos are pretty convincing, don't you agree?

Now, are they making footage that shows their robots in the best possible light? Yep. Are they cutting out all the times the robot totally blew it? For sure. Are they totally fake? Naw.

And now. This is the hard one. How hard did you try to answer this question before arguing about it on the internet? I mean, maybe arguing on the internet is fun all by itself. I suppose so. But if you really want the answer, it's available. I guess what I'm saying is, "Instead of just accusing somebody of lying and faking stuff, maybe spend a few minutes looking for independent verification." Right?

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #21 on: June 19, 2019, 09:31:45 AM »
It's not unreasonable to imagine that a company would fake videos of their products in order to try to raise capital. Try to convince a bunch of investors that you're way farther along than you really are. There have been cases of fraud like that in recent years.
I think it's a bit unreasonable. Yes, I'm sure they are showing the robots in their best light and cutting out the times they fall on their arses (do robots have arses?)
But it's quite a leap to assert that the whole video is fake or composite...I think that mindset is interesting.
No actual evidence of fakery has been provided. Just a vague assertion that it "looks fake". What does that mean? That's completely subjective. On what basis is that being claimed? Where's the evidence?
This is my issue with the people claiming that space travel/the moon landings are fake. It's always people who clearly have no understanding of the subject and no qualifications or experience in photo/video editing or effects. They just make vague assertions that it "looks fake".

Boston Dynamics do seem to have some impressive kit and they clearly haven't seen any of the Terminator documentaries, but I suspect the tech they show off in their videos is nowhere near ready for commercial use, let along in people's homes. The robot butler is still a pipe dream for now.

Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #22 on: June 19, 2019, 03:03:21 PM »
It's not unreasonable to imagine that a company would fake videos of their products in order to try to raise capital. Try to convince a bunch of investors that you're way farther along than you really are. There have been cases of fraud like that in recent years.
I think it's a bit unreasonable. Yes, I'm sure they are showing the robots in their best light and cutting out the times they fall on their arses (do robots have arses?)
But it's quite a leap to assert that the whole video is fake or composite...I think that mindset is interesting.
No actual evidence of fakery has been provided. Just a vague assertion that it "looks fake". What does that mean? That's completely subjective. On what basis is that being claimed? Where's the evidence?
This is my issue with the people claiming that space travel/the moon landings are fake. It's always people who clearly have no understanding of the subject and no qualifications or experience in photo/video editing or effects. They just make vague assertions that it "looks fake".

Boston Dynamics do seem to have some impressive kit and they clearly haven't seen any of the Terminator documentaries, but I suspect the tech they show off in their videos is nowhere near ready for commercial use, let along in people's homes. The robot butler is still a pipe dream for now.
I argue that it is not unreasonable to imagine a company faking stuff. It would be foolish to discount the idea without research. Google "Theranos" for a recent example of this.
That said, I agree with the rest. It is one thing to imagine wrongdoing. The correct action would be to look into it. The part that bugs me is the jumping straight into the speculation and accusation.

*

Offline Dr David Thork

  • *
  • Posts: 5188
  • https://onlyfans.com/thork
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #23 on: June 19, 2019, 05:11:12 PM »
The part that bugs me is the jumping straight into the speculation and accusation.
You mean having the audacity to ask the question? To dare use a question mark in my OP? To even contemplate whether something that seems extraordinary might not be all that meets the eye? You've come to the wrong site, buddy.
Rate this post.      👍 6     👎 1

Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #24 on: June 20, 2019, 05:40:16 AM »
The part that bugs me is the jumping straight into the speculation and accusation.
You mean having the audacity to ask the question? To dare use a question mark in my OP? To even contemplate whether something that seems extraordinary might not be all that meets the eye? You've come to the wrong site, buddy.

Consider... perhaps that's why I came to this site?

But I DO think I've overstated my position on this. Please allow me to soften it.

You saw something fishy. It's fishy, so I do not fault you. It is perfectly reasonable to come to a place like this and say something like, "Hey guys, this looks fishy. What do you think?" I do not fault you for this.

So what's my gripe? My gripe is how you transitioned from, "Is this fishy?" to defending a claim that it was fishy. It really wasn't hard to show it's not very fishy, but you don't seem to have looked for that information. You settled into a defensive position right away.

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #25 on: June 20, 2019, 04:03:18 PM »
So what's my gripe? My gripe is how you transitioned from, "Is this fishy?" to defending a claim that it was fishy. It really wasn't hard to show it's not very fishy, but you don't seem to have looked for that information. You settled into a defensive position right away.

Exactly this. Perfectly reasonable to question whether “they” are up to something. And, to an extent, they are in this instance. They’re clearly showing the best “take” to show their robots in their best light. But where Thork gets the tin foil hat out is the confident assertions that the videos are actually fake. No evidence is presented, just claims that they “don’t look right”.
This is the problem with people with no experience or expertise in analysing photos or videos being over-confident in their ability to do so. That leads to them basing opinions on their faulty analysis and so believing wrong things. In this instance, as you say, it’s very easy to get to the truth of the matter.
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

*

Offline stack

  • *
  • Posts: 3583
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #26 on: June 21, 2019, 01:32:02 AM »
Such an interesting depiction of where we all land based upon our levels of skepticism, I guess. Thork kinda fell into the "Look how easy it is to fake this seemingly remarkable technology and began as the skeptic questioning motives, business models and perhaps zero independent affirmation existed so maybe this thing is all smoke and mirrors" thing. For me, on the flipside, it's never even crossed my mind that BD has 'faked' anything. Making the best of the best demos, sure, what company wouldn't, but I've never skeptically questioned the technology they market/display. Just more sorta like, "Yeah, the tech seems amazing, yet reasonable and yeah, the skynet robots taking over the world thing will probably, most definitely happen." It's all contextual and dependent on one's POV going in.

I will say this, if our team on this thread were dropped behind enemy lines to infiltrate whathaveyou, I'd want Thork on point to suss out the friends versus enemies. A hyper vigilant level of skepticism bodes well in that context.

Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #27 on: June 21, 2019, 08:32:48 PM »
I know BD is not faking at all. 

First, I saw personally one of the robots working.

Second, my personal budget is waaaaay below BD, million times lower, and even so I was able to build a self standing and driving two wheels and one arm robot, with accelerators and gyros chips, infrared and ultrasound sensors for obstacles, no image camera yet (working on it), and a simple space orientation beacon based on 3 ultrasound emitters in the long room.  When he wants to make sure about location, it stops, shuts off its own ultrasound obstacle avoidance, blinks its strong IR LEd upwards in a certain sequence of pulses, this trigger the 3 emitters, then listen to them.  The first emitter beeps, the second hear such beep and issue its own beep, the third does it too.  The robot listen for the 3 beeps and measures time between them following its own IR flash.  As the time delay between each emitter  is known, the robot calculates the delays from what he hear, and with certain accuracy he can tell where he is in the room, walks a foot and repeat, now he even knows the direction.  This was home made (as many others in the world), using 8 simple AVR AtMega microcontrollers (including the emitters) a half size car battery, MosFET drivers, motors, etc.  Boston D uses much more advanced processors, memories, programming, drivers, actuators, engines, and millions of dollars.  If they can? Of course they can, much more even, talk about the military contracts we shouldn't know.

*

Online AATW

  • *
  • Posts: 6488
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #28 on: June 22, 2019, 11:35:26 AM »
I will say this, if our team on this thread were dropped behind enemy lines to infiltrate whathaveyou, I'd want Thork on point to suss out the friends versus enemies. A hyper vigilant level of skepticism bodes well in that context.
He’d probably declare you an enemy spy and shoot you...

Blindly believing everything anyone tells you is silly but it’s equally silly to go full tin foil hat and treat everyone and everything with extreme suspicion. Both can lead to errors as Thork has shown in this thread.

A combination of a natural distrust of everyone and everything and his over-estimation of his own ability to detect fakery in videos has led him to a false conclusion.
He may want to consider what else he might have got wrong because of this...
Tom: "Claiming incredulity is a pretty bad argument. Calling it "insane" or "ridiculous" is not a good argument at all."

TFES Wiki Occam's Razor page, by Tom: "What's the simplest explanation; that NASA has successfully designed and invented never before seen rocket technologies from scratch which can accelerate 100 tons of matter to an escape velocity of 7 miles per second"

*

Offline Tumeni

  • *
  • Posts: 3179
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #29 on: June 24, 2019, 10:21:02 PM »
Well, what a coincidence. Boston Dynamics prepares to launch first commercial dog ...

=============================
Not Flat. Happy to prove this, if you ask me.
=============================

Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #30 on: June 25, 2019, 12:55:52 PM »
Well, what a coincidence. Boston Dynamics prepares to launch first commercial dog ...
Jesus, have we descended to the level of copy-pasting links to automatically generated youtube "news" stories with a text-to-speech "newsreader"?

No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely.
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

*

Offline Tumeni

  • *
  • Posts: 3179
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #31 on: June 25, 2019, 02:40:10 PM »
Well, what a coincidence. Boston Dynamics prepares to launch first commercial dog ...
Jesus, have we descended to the level of copy-pasting links to automatically generated youtube "news" stories with a text-to-speech "newsreader"?

No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely.

Is this moderation or personal contribution?
=============================
Not Flat. Happy to prove this, if you ask me.
=============================

Nearly all flat earthers agree the earth is not a globe.

Nearly?

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #32 on: June 25, 2019, 03:15:37 PM »
Is this moderation or personal contribution?
A personal comment. You're not strictly forbidden from citing terrible sources, but I'm still inclined to point out how terrible they are.
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #33 on: June 25, 2019, 04:15:14 PM »
Well, what a coincidence. Boston Dynamics prepares to launch first commercial dog ...
Jesus, have we descended to the level of copy-pasting links to automatically generated youtube "news" stories with a text-to-speech "newsreader"?

No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely.

This is kind of my point once more. Let's investigate.
1) Tumeni links a video claiming Boston Dynamics is planning a commercial release.
2) Pete finds this link dubious. (I agree. It's weak.)
3) At this point we could...
  a) Look for more information
  b) Attack the quality of the link and reject the veracity of the claim.

I'll give you a moment.

Ok... so what happens if we take just 5 minutes to try out option a)?
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/5/18653710/boston-dynamics-first-commercial-robot-spot-demo-amazon-remars-conference-marc-raibert
https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/11/boston-dynamics-will-start-selling-its-dog-like-spotmini-robot-in-2019/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/04/18/boston-dynamics-latest-video-shows-herd-robotic-dogs-hauling-massive-truck-with-ease/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1a80d33b9a38
https://bgr.com/2019/06/05/boston-dynamics-robot-spot-going-on-sale/
https://www.wired.com/story/what-boston-dynamics-rolling-handle-robot-really-means/

Interesting, right?

What's the take-away? Well Tumeni's video link was IMO pretty crappy. Text-to-speech? Seriously?
But does that make the claim false? No.

So I agree with Pete that it's a poor link. Sure. But then Pete goes on with this...
"No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely." (emphasis mine)

Criticizing the video link is fair. Maybe I'm misreading this, but it sure sounds to me like Pete is discounting the facts based on the quality of the video WITHOUT even checking for corroborating evidence one way or the other.

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #34 on: June 25, 2019, 05:57:39 PM »
Ah, I think you're reading far too much into what I said, perhaps making assumptions about my mindset due to your association with "the opposite tribe"?

Let's look at my quote once again, keeping your emphasis: "No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely."

I maintain that what I said is true: that source alone does not make Tumeni's argument sound likely. I'd go so far as to say his approach was foolish. I suspect that he found the first result that matched his hypothesis and posted it without listening to the content, and I base this on the assumption that one wouldn't post this video after reviewing it.

It follows that I believe we shouldn't be using bad sources here. It does not follow that bad source => information is unequivocally false.

I have no strong position on Boston Dynamics, and my default stance would be not to assume foul play unless strong evidence was presented. So far, no strong evidence has been presented.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2019, 06:00:03 PM by Pete Svarrior »
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #35 on: June 25, 2019, 06:01:08 PM »
Ah, I think you're reading far too much into what I said, perhaps making assumptions about my mindset due to your association with "the opposite tribe"?

Let's look at my quote once again, keeping your emphasis: "No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely."

I maintain that what I said is true: that source alone does not make Tumeni's argument sound likely.

It follows that I believe we shouldn't be using bad sources here. It does not follow that bad source => information is unequivocally false.

I have no strong position on Boston Dynamics, and my default stance would be not to assume foul play unless strong evidence was presented. So far, no strong evidence has been presented.
Excellent. I agree with this completely. I was wondering if perhaps I wasn't reading your intent properly.
I agree that the link presented was weak. I also stand by my statement that the information presented in the link was easily corroborated with better links.

*

Offline markjo

  • *
  • Posts: 7849
  • Zetetic Council runner-up
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #36 on: June 25, 2019, 07:45:55 PM »
Ah, I think you're reading far too much into what I said, perhaps making assumptions about my mindset due to your association with "the opposite tribe"?

Let's look at my quote once again, keeping your emphasis: "No, the nice bot lady saying it's totally happening does not make it sound likely."

I maintain that what I said is true: that source alone does not make Tumeni's argument sound likely.
I think that at least part of the problem is that pointing out the "nice bot lady" makes your comment sound an awful lot like a style over substance fallacy. 
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #37 on: June 25, 2019, 09:48:31 PM »
I think that at least part of the problem is that pointing out the "nice bot lady" makes your comment sound an awful lot like a style over substance fallacy.
And why would you think that? Do you not support the use of reputable sources over automatically-generated clickbait?
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume

*

Offline markjo

  • *
  • Posts: 7849
  • Zetetic Council runner-up
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #38 on: June 25, 2019, 10:37:28 PM »
I think that at least part of the problem is that pointing out the "nice bot lady" makes your comment sound an awful lot like a style over substance fallacy.
And why would you think that? Do you not support the use of reputable sources over automatically-generated clickbait?
Being "automatically-generated clickbait" doesn't automatically make it wrong, especially when "reputable sources" say the same thing.
https://www.cnet.com/news/boston-dynamics-spotmini-robot-dog-goes-on-sale-in-2019/
https://www.foxnews.com/tech/boston-dynamics-creepy-robot-dog-is-going-up-for-sale
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/spotmini-robots-boston-dynamics-spot-release-date-price-a8946871.html
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/may/14/spotmini-robotic-dog-sale-2019-former-google-boston-dynamics
Abandon hope all ye who press enter here.

Science is what happens when preconception meets verification.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge. -- Charles Darwin

If you can't demonstrate it, then you shouldn't believe it.

*

Offline Pete Svarrior

  • e
  • Planar Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 16073
  • (◕˽ ◕ ✿)
    • View Profile
Re: Is Boston Dynamics fake?
« Reply #39 on: June 26, 2019, 01:34:23 AM »
Being "automatically-generated clickbait" doesn't automatically make it wrong, especially when "reputable sources" say the same thing.
I'm other words, you're entirely in agreement with me. I'm going to have to ask you to stop trying to detail upper fora threads. You're a veteran, so I'll give you one last warning before condemning you back to you-know-where.
Read the FAQ before asking your question - chances are we already addressed it.
Follow the Flat Earth Society on Twitter and Facebook!

If we are not speculating then we must assume