Thunderf00t has lost last of his marbles and remaining bits of credibility

[EEVblog]

Except that even if I don't watch it I still have to deal with people who take TF bullshit at face value and blindly regurgitates it poisoning any discussion on certain topics.

Why do YOU personally have to "deal with" this?
Are you ok?

[vk6zgo]

Thunderf00t does come over as a Twat, with his really annoying voice, but Elon & SpaceX  even at a superficial perusal, do come across as not exactly the fountain of veracity.

You say that Thunderf00t repeats things which have been "debunked". If so, he is in good company.

Elon has been promising a Mars landing in the "near future" for years, continuously shifting the target date, along with a supposed capacity to move 100 people in a Starship, despite his figures being debunked multiple times.
Personally, I prefer the videos of Commonsense Skeptic, who does find things which cast severe doubt on Elon's narrative.

[EEVblog]

You say that Thunderf00t repeats things which have been "debunked". If so, he is in good company.

I'm talking about the style of his videos. He'll do a new video debunking some new news or whatever, but then goes back and repeats all the old info from previous videos. Sometimes it's 2/3's or whatever of the video is repeated material.
I understand why he does this, it's done because someone new might stumble across the video and hasn't seen all the previous videos. It's a common complaint about his videos.
I choose not to do that with my debunking videos, instead I'll just mention and link the previous video.
It is what it is, everyone has their own style.

[Psi]

Elon has been promising a Mars landing in the "near future" for years, continuously shifting the target date, along with a supposed capacity to move 100 people in a Starship, despite his figures being debunked multiple times.
Personally, I prefer the videos of Commonsense Skeptic, who does find things which cast severe doubt on Elon's narrative.

For truly massive projects requiring lots of new technology and constriction, like a mars base, when someone publicly states the planned date to have it done by I don't consider them to have failed if it's not done by that date.
It's not a verbal contract to do it within x months or you have to die by your own sword. It's an informal "this is the plan".  I only consider them to have failed if they give up and die never having done it.

If Elon suffers through the next 46 years with lots more failures but ultimately succeeds at getting a reasonably sized base on mars on his deathbed at 100 years old then I still consider him to have succeeded.
The time it takes doesnt really matter and isn't predicable due to unknown unknowns.

oh and i believe the 100 people thing was for a Starship point to point on earth, like a passenger jet with people crammed in for a pretty short trip. Rather than a mars mission, but I could be wrong.
And it may have been calculated using a future larger starship version. V4 etc.. I've not seen the TF video on that in ages but he was likely comparing the size to V1 and it grew in size for V3 and will again for V4.
It's pretty normal to be running numbers for future versions that will actually be used while actual production lags well behind.

[Yrouel86]

Except that even if I don't watch it I still have to deal with people who take TF bullshit at face value and blindly regurgitates it poisoning any discussion on certain topics.

Why do YOU personally have to "deal with" this?
Are you ok?

Of all that I wrote in that post that's what you chose to answer?
Not even trying to understand what the heck I was talking about when I said thunderf00t claimed Shuttle could stay docked to ISS indefinitely or have you fully realized how far off the rails he went that it didn't surprise you at all?

But anyway "deal with" as in wanting to talk about such topics because I like cool technology and Musk happens to be involved in quite a bit of it and "having" people chiming in with bullshit talking points you can directly trace to some TF (or CSS...) video.
Or wanting to participate in some discussion but seeing it has already been ruined by such individuals.

You might say that TF doesn't have such power and people would still spew all sort of nonsense due to their biases, in this case dislike for Musk, which is also true but what I noticed happen is that people seek content that validates those biases and helps them put their thoughts in words, in other words just as you have for example people repeating anti-gmo propaganda from Greenpeace you have people spewing for example SpaceX bullshit from TF videos.

Did you ever ask your Amp Hour co-host that "forbids" you from talking about Musk-related tech if one of his sources that fuels his EDS is indeed thunderf00t?

[EEVblog]

Of all that I wrote in that post that's what you chose to answer?

Yep.
Surprising that people can choose not to play your game, huh?

But anyway "deal with" as in wanting to talk about such topics because I like cool technology and Musk happens to be involved in quite a bit of it and "having" people chiming in with bullshit talking points you can directly trace to some TF (or CSS...) video.
Or wanting to participate in some discussion but seeing it has already been ruined by such individuals.

I have to do the meme.

You might say that TF doesn't have such power

Never put words into my mouth.

Did you ever ask your Amp Hour co-host that "forbids" you from talking about Musk-related tech if one of his sources that fuels his EDS is indeed thunderf00t?

Pretty sure he doesn't watch TF, he *hates* debunking videos. He thinks I shouldn't do debunking videos and I'm wasting my time doing them.
And no one "forbids" me about talking about anything. It's just that if your co-host has no interest in engaging in a topic then it makes for a boring show to bring it up. But I do still do it anyway occasionally just for kicks.

[Yrouel86]

Of all that I wrote in that post that's what you chose to answer?

Yep.
Surprising that people can choose not to play your game, huh?

You might call it choosing to not play my game (lol), but I would call it choosing to not acknowledge more explicitly the real issues in TF content preferring to keep throwing the argument on matters of style and attitude.

If someone is an asshole telling that 2+2=4 2+2 is still 4 no matter what, if someone is an asshole telling that 2+2=5 the problem is that he's telling that 2+2 is 5 not really that he's an asshole.

And anyway I said "more explicitly" because it's still rather obvious that you know full well what I'm talking about, and to clarify this is just my observation from reading what you wrote even just in this very thread.

I have to do the meme.

Sure, meme it. But still the "discourse" around anything Musk related has been poisoned also thanks to prominent figures in the bullshit factory such as TF (he is frequently cited as source alongside CSS) and it makes it unpleasant even for people that don't directly watch TF content (so again it's not that simple)

Never put words into my mouth.

I meant it more as a figure of speech given that of course people can dislike or even hate Musk despite TF and not because of his content but again he does help into providing the bs talking points and contributing to the misinformation.

And no one "forbids" me about talking about anything.

In fact it's in quotes.

Anyway perhaps I should add that I really just wanted to provide my perspective on this topic and not be confrontational.
I did follow TF once upon a time (after the Sarkeesian phase which I learned about afterwards and mostly before the Musk phase when his content was at least ok) that's why I'm familiar with the topic. When I got interested in what SpaceX was doing (because it's cool) I started to notice the disconnect between what TF was saying and the reality of things so I just kept track of all the bs (I guess as some form of morbid curiosity).
I do find it amusing seeing all the talking points crash and burn over the years as reality keeps going in the opposite direction of what TF would want you to believe though.
As it's also amusing seeing almost in real time how hard it's becoming for TF to keep selling his bs. I think the shortest time is in his Starship streams: from prediction of doom to actual success in mere minutes over and over 

I think all and all only Starship is the big thing left to give him oxygen and even that talking point doesn't have much left to live...

[PlainName]

I have to do the meme.

Wouldn't that apply to debunking videos too? And those take an awful lot more effort than typing in a few words.

[vk6zgo]

Elon has been promising a Mars landing in the "near future" for years, continuously shifting the target date, along with a supposed capacity to move 100 people in a Starship, despite his figures being debunked multiple times.
Personally, I prefer the videos of Commonsense Skeptic, who does find things which cast severe doubt on Elon's narrative.

For truly massive projects requiring lots of new technology and constriction, like a mars base, when someone publicly states the planned date to have it done by I don't consider them to have failed if it's not done by that date.
It's not a verbal contract to do it within x months or you have to die by your own sword. It's an informal "this is the plan".  I only consider them to have failed if they give up and die never having done it.

If Elon suffers through the next 46 years with lots more failures but ultimately succeeds at getting a reasonably sized base on mars on his deathbed at 100 years old then I still consider him to have succeeded.
The time it takes doesnt really matter and isn't predicable due to unknown unknowns.

oh and i believe the 100 people thing was for a Starship point to point on earth, like a passenger jet with people crammed in for a pretty short trip. Rather than a mars mission, but I could be wrong.
And it may have been calculated using a future larger starship version. V4 etc.. I've not seen the TF video on that in ages but he was likely comparing the size to V1 and it grew in size for V3 and will again for V4.
It's pretty normal to be running numbers for future versions that will actually be used while actual production lags well behind.

No, it wasn't for the "point to point' thing, it was for the Mars Starships.
Why "it may have been calculated using a future larger version"?------ Elon never said that!

People are very impressed by Starship being "so large", which it indeed is, compared to other rockets. but 9m in diameter in any other situation is far from huge. OK, its internal space is three dimensional, but just looking at its cross sectional area, we get around 63 square metres on each level -----as a comparison, a typical 1950s 3 bedroom Australian house has 100 sqm of floor space.

 Much of the space is going to be occupied by the requisites needed for that 100 people to survive for a months long trip, so the living quarters are going to be seriously "Squeezy"!

If Elon had said we should have "some sort of base" on Mars in 46 years, I would have no argument, but the continuing over optimistic predictions get a bit wearing after a few years.

[Yrouel86]

the continuing over optimistic predictions get a bit wearing after a few years.

Do you feel the same about overly pessimistic predictions?

[Psi]

No, it wasn't for the "point to point' thing, it was for the Mars Starships.

OK.  As I said, I wasn't sure. My mistake.

Why "it may have been calculated using a future larger version"?------ Elon never said that!

I never said he did.
I'm saying people just assumed he meant the current sized ship. It's unlikely SpaceX would ever run the numbers to figure out sleeping size on a ship that is only a smaller prototype. They would run the numbers and create designs for the bigger version planned to actually go to mars.
 
SpaceX are also likely planning for emergencies, you may want a version of starship that's just a huge array of 100 sleeping pods where people can go to shelter during a solar storm. The plan was to send many ships at once with human movement between the ships. Or you may have a ship that has 100 pods but you're only in it while sleeping and you leave to a different ship during the day.

Sounds like people assumed the plan was to trap people in tiny pods for 9 months which is obviously absurd.
Musk maybe eccentric and a bit weird but he's not stupid.

If Elon had said we should have "some sort of base" on Mars in 46 years, I would have no argument, but the continuing over optimistic predictions get a bit wearing after a few years.

Yes, I do agree, optimistic predictions can get annoying. Like a 24/7 overly happy person. That's fair.
But optimistic goals also get employees fired up to do work. It's hard to get passionate about something if it's understood that it's only going to happen in 40 years. If there's one thing I know about myself as an engineer it's that the amount of work I can get done when I'm passionate about something is 10x what I get done when I'm indifferent about it. And if I'm bored by it its 1/10 that. Being an engineer himself Musk knows this.

[Bud]

I am still waiting for my tourist ticket to the Moon "by 2018". Where are all those passionate engineers 10 years late? Did not they have enought time to cut me my ticket?

[wilfred]

Except that even if I don't watch it I still have to deal with people who take TF bullshit at face value and blindly regurgitates it poisoning any discussion on certain topics.

Why do YOU personally have to "deal with" this?
Are you ok?

In the words of John Donne "No man is an island. Entire of itself" ... "Never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee". What goes on around us affects each of us and we cannot shrink from becoming involved. The answer to "Am I my brothers keeper?" Is yes.

Apart from it being easy content why did you feel it necessary to get involved in Batteriser and Solar Roadways to the extent that you did? With the passage of time you might wonder why did I bother to set aside producing some enduring content  to waste time on them. Their inherent lack of merit would have lead to a natural death just as quickly.

These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer since you've said so previously.

[EEVblog]

You might call it choosing to not play my game (lol), but I would call it choosing to not acknowledge more explicitly the real issues in TF content preferring to keep throwing the argument on matters of style and attitude.

\

I don't care.

And anyway I said "more explicitly" because it's still rather obvious that you know full well what I'm talking about

Of course I understand exactly what you are are talking about. And again, I don't care. I choose not to engage you on it.

[EEVblog]

Wouldn't that apply to debunking videos too? And those take an awful lot more effort than typing in a few words.

The things I debunk often aren't exactly "wrong". In fact most of them are "true" to some extent. But usually they are taking people's money with demonstrably impractical promises.
I enjoy making debunking video, and they go way beyond "they are wrong, I am right". What they do it teach people critical thinking skills. They are educational IMO, that's why I make them.

[Yrouel86]

I am still waiting for my tourist ticket to the Moon "by 2018". Where are all those passionate engineers 10 years late? Did not they have enought time to cut me my ticket?

Are you also that sensitive to "promises" from other entities (companies/space agencies)?
Because for example Artemis I was supposed to happen about a decade ago, Artemis II few years ago and we should be expecting a landing (Artemis III) right about now (and they were called Exploration Mission, EM, back then)

The entire space industry is riddled with delays and cancelled programs, but for some reason it becomes this super big problem only when Musk is involved.

And just as a reminder SpaceX over time has grown to be the biggest launch provider *in the world* barely rivaled only by an entire country (China) and it's the only domestic way for the US to send astronauts to and from the ISS and provides all sorts of other services to the government (like Starshield), so it's not like they accomplished nothing in the meantime...
And preemptively: yes they launch mostly Starlink *on top* of launching basically everything else for everyone on the planet (and Starlink makes them a boatload of money).

And if you look at Tesla AFAIK only the Roadster is the big thing left to deliver, everything else has already been released (like the Semi or Cybertruck) or it's in active development/testing (like Optimus or Cybercab).


UNRELATED EDIT TO AVOID ANOTHER POST:

Tesla just updated the official specs for the Semi now including the curb weight:

Standard range: ~325 miles with a curb weight of less than 20000 lbs
Long range: ~500 miles with a curb weight of 23000 lbs
Both with a Gross Combination Weight of 82000 lbs (EVs have a 2000 lbs allowance)

And using the proper units:
Standard range: ~520km with a curb weight of less than ~9t
Long range: ~800km with a curb weight of ~10t
Both with a Gross Combination Weight of ~37t (EVs have a ~900kg allowance)

This is relevant to this topic because the weight of the Semi and more specifically the weight of its battery and its cargo capacity have been prominent in TF narrative for a while (he made 3 videos about it where he first claimed the Semi needed a 16t battery and could haul only 5t, then he repeated that it could haul only 5t instead of the typical 20t of a diesel by picking small 500kg concrete barriers for his calculation and then since he calculated the cost of the battery it now magically weighted 5t likely because otherwise the cost figure would've been too absurd even for his not so brilliant viewers).

And Tesla not having publicly disclosed the curb weight figure was a key point for the various bullshitters to make their most pessimistic (and disingenuous) case about the Semi performances and viability rejecting any more sane estimates.

Now Tesla has published that data that officially obliterates all those arguments (and you didn't really need it to debunk TF bullshit in the first place).

Will thunderf00t have the integrity to make a followup video addressing the Semi figures using this official data?

[Psi]

Will thunderf00t have the integrity to make a followup video addressing the Semi figures using this official data?

Personally I would think much more highly of him if he did issue a correction video, and have more respect for him.
Like the way Louis Rossmann does correction videos when he gets stuff wrong.

But no, TF will never do that.
A large % of his audience want to hate Tesla/Elon, so admitting he was wrong and that the Tesla semi is good would cause a drop in subscribers.

[Yrouel86]

Will thunderf00t have the integrity to make a followup video addressing the Semi figures using this official data?

Personally I would think much more highly of him if he did issue a correction video, and have more respect for him.
Like the way Louis Rossmann does correction videos when he gets stuff wrong.

One of the biggest signs of integrity is when someone has no issues in admitting their mistakes and issuing corrections.
There's nothing wrong in making a mistake in good faith and it's commendable when that's addressed.

Needless to say thunderf00t has no integrity and he doesn't just make honest mistakes, it would be beyond naive to still think that.

But no, TF will never do that.
A large % of his audience want to hate Tesla/Elon, so admitting he was wrong and the Tesla semi is good would cause a drop in subscribers.

Yeah of course mine was just a rhetorical question. When he "addresses" such critiques he just says he was correct no matter what or just throws the conversation by misinterpreting the comment and/or mocking and belittling the person and/or providing a non answer like "And you believe that??"

And yes you hit the nail on the head, both when his focus was Sarkeesian and now that it's Musk he just tells his audience what they want to hear regardless of reality. So indeed he can't acknowledge anything positive for anything Musk related.
The usual framing is that when something is undeniably positive is not because of Musk but say NASA or it becomes not impressive or he just doesn't address it and quietly drops a talking point.

For example when confronted about his analysis of Amos 6 long after the root cause was found he responded that his explanation "coincided with the crash report" which is flat out false.
As a reminder the cause was solid oxygen being trapped under the carbon liner of the COPV (filled with helium) that ignited it and caused the explosion, while TF explanation was just him weaving a bullshit narrative of SpaceX essentially being run by incompetent morons (as he has later literally called the employees) that made rookie mistakes on things NASA had figured out decades prior. This of course to fit the overarching narrative that Musk is a fraud and his companies are scams.

(this is incidentally when I realized how much bullshit TF was spewing given the stark difference with the same event analyzed for example by Scott Manley)

Also that's the same reason for example for why he claimed Shuttle could stay docked indefinitely to ISS (couldn't acknowledge Crew Dragon being good) or why he had to create an imaginary Semi to bust instead of investigating the real one because otherwise he would've been forced to admit the product made sense (which for example Engineering Explained did when he calculated basically the same things but appropriately scaled)

[Psi]

Anyone can choose to make a change and do the right thing. The emotional effort required simply gets larger and larger the deeper you have dug yourself in.

[EEVblog]

Apart from it being easy content why did you feel it necessary to get involved in Batteriser and Solar Roadways to the extent that you did? With the passage of time you might wonder why did I bother to set aside producing some enduring content  to waste time on them. Their inherent lack of merit would have lead to a natural death just as quickly.

I did it because:
a) Everyone was asking for it, I was literally getting hundreds of emails and comments about it. Literally the first sentence in my first video on solar roadways I said this.
b) It looked like fun. It might be a shock to know this, but I do videos for fun.
c) Once you have done one video and everyone loves it, when new news (or more ridiculous claims come along) another video is even more fun. Then another solar freak'n whatever pops up and it's even more fun to do it again.
and of course:
d) I think they educational in terms of critical thinking an analysis. In this aspect they are "evergreen" content.

As for Solar Roadways "fading away", you do know that they are still going after something like 18 years now, right? Still collecting US tax dollars and gullible private investors.

If you don't like debunking videos, you don't have to watch them. But I ton of people do like them, and I like making them.

In fact I could ask the same thing of you. You have done awful lot of critiquing of me other the years, why? Why are you wasting time on doing this instead of producing enduring technical content on the forum?

[wilfred]

If you don't like debunking videos, you don't have to watch them. But I ton of people do like them, and I like making them.

In fact I could ask the same thing of you. You have done awful lot of critiquing of me other the years, why? Why are you wasting time on doing this instead of producing enduring technical content on the forum?

I recognise and accept my views don't reflect all your viewers. However for a long time I thought feedback from me might be useful. Hence, whilst ever I thought it my be helpful to you to receive feedback from a variety of perspectives I did not consider it a waste of my time. Responses like this one does suggest I am perhaps wasting my time. But that is not a realisation I have suddenly come to.

I stopped watching debunking videos quite some years ago so there is that. I think making them because it is fun is likely to diminish the important educational value a few well crafted videos would have and consequently lowers the collective value of the body of EEVblog videos if an excessive amount of fun pulp videos dilute it. The current thread on Thunderf00t is an example of how a channel doing that when taken to the extreme just becomes irrelevant for anything other than tabloid entertainment with no lasting value. For longer than I probably should have I did not want that fate to befall the EEVblog. But For perhaps 10 years I have largely accepted your priorities differ. As is your right. But I will hold to the view it demeans you whether you enjoy them or not.

[EEVblog]

I stopped watching debunking videos quite some years ago so there is that. I think making them because it is fun is likely to diminish the important educational value a few well crafted videos would have and consequently lowers the collective value of the body of EEVblog videos if an excessive amount of fun pulp videos dilute it. The current thread on Thunderf00t is an example of how a channel doing that when taken to the extreme just becomes irrelevant for anything other than tabloid entertainment with no lasting value.

Hence why I've said many times, I don't understand how FT can continue to do this at the exclusion of all other content. I can't imagine doing 24 Solar Roadways videos in a row. A half dozen spread out over 15 years as a running gag is fine.
Common Sense Skeptic is another example. I like his work, and I follow him on X, but I had to unfollow him at one point because his entire feed was just him responding to every Elon and Tate post, there was nothing else.

For longer than I probably should have I did not want that fate to befall the EEVblog. But For perhaps 10 years I have largely accepted your priorities differ. As is your right. But I will hold to the view it demeans you whether you enjoy them or not.

A view held by seemingly very few people.
What gave you the impression that I would suddenly go "full TF" and do 24 debunking videos in a row, let alone on the same topic?
I (famously) do something like 20 different types of videos, debunking is just one of them, yet you seem to think that one type of content is so bad that it destroys my channel? 

[Yrouel86]

Hence why I've said many times, I don't understand how FT can continue to do this at the exclusion of all other content.

I think it's both ego and audience capture.
Ego because TF likes to put himself on a pulpit and dispense his word to his audience and audience capture because as he focused more and more on Musk (this time) he progressively lost the people that were there for his other content and gained the people that just want to hear how bad Musk is.
At least initially Musk most likely gave him also a boost in engagement so both more ego stroking and financial incentive and nowadays he simply doesn't have anyone left that would watch other content.
Now there's also likely some personal component and he might be drunk on his own cool-aid but that's neither here nor there, if he was obsessed but correct there wouldn't be much else to say.

Common Sense Skeptic is another example. I like his work, and I follow him on X, but I had to unfollow him at one point because his entire feed was just him responding to every Elon and Tate post, there was nothing else.

CSS is a different matter altogether than TF. I think there's genuinely some mental health issue there.
He posted really awful hateful stuff related to Musk and not (I mean really dark stuff not just "mean" things).

He's also quite dumb and I mean this literally not "haha you're dumb", as an example he claimed that Starship had to deploy the Starlink satellites while "perpendicular to the Earth" otherwise they'll be "shot out into space or fired right back at the planet".

When Neuralink started he was losing his mind about the risks of exposing the brain to air, like not about the risk of the surgery but of literally exposing the brain to air and if I got it right that bullshit comes from him completely misunderstanding the title of a book called When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery which is basically a memoir from a neurosurgeon.
Oh and he was also losing his mind about the use of a dye during the procedure to highlight the blood vessels.

Another example he's convinced that HLS Starship is meant to land on the Moon on its engines, like no legs engine nozzles plopping into the regolith...
When the NOVA-C mission was announced he was also convinced that Musk wanted to land Dragon on the Moon.
He's also convinced that Blue Origin lander is a two stage lander like the Apollo LEM simply because if SpaceX does a single stage lander and SpaceX being a Musk company their decision *must* be bad somehow and so Blue Origin which is good and perfect can't possibly have made the same decision...



So while thunderf00t can be clever in selling his bullshit (when he wants, he also just vomits low effort word salad nonsense from time to time), CSS has no rime or reason other than "if Musk then bad", no other rationale, reasoning or even...common sense... behind his take and garbage content.

[EEVblog]

At least initially Musk most likely gave him also a boost in engagement so both more ego stroking and financial incentive and nowadays he simply doesn't have anyone left that would watch other content.

Some time back I looked at TF's video views before/after he started doing Musk videos, and they didn't seem to do any better than the other content. So I'm not convinced it's that.

When Neuralink started he was losing his mind about the risks of exposing the brain to air, like not about the risk of the surgery but of literally exposing the brain to air and if I got it right that bullshit comes from him completely misunderstanding the title of a book called When the Air Hits Your Brain: Tales from Neurosurgery which is basically a memoir from a neurosurgeon.

I don't know what that's about, but coincidentally my father had pioneering brain surgery back in the early 1980's. He had to have multiple surgeries and they didn't want the trauma of having to replace the skull they removed multiple times, and didn't expect him to live anyway,  so they just sent him home with a quarter of his skull missing and just the flap of skin and maybe something else covering it. Front of his head was caved in.
Eventually finished the surgeries and put the skull back and he lived almost 20 years after that.

[Yrouel86]

Some time back I looked at TF's video views before/after he started doing Musk videos, and they didn't seem to do any better than the other content. So I'm not convinced it's that.

I remember the opposite and also the fact that he used at least in one occasion Musk in a thumbnail of a video completely unrelated (it was about a gold battery) which looks like clear bait.

I don't know what that's about

Yeah well as I said it's just "if Musk then bad", when you realize it's really just that it all fits.
Anyway I stopped paying close attention some time ago but when I did it fascinated me how much nonsense like that he produced on a daily basis...in-between posting stuff like defending slavery or insinuating there was something nefarious about the death of Musk first son.