this reminds me of the "they made a robot to peel a grape" thing a while back. the point wasn't to peel a grape. they were researching machines to aid in surgeries. as it turns out, peeling a grape without destroying it requires some very precise and delicate movements, much like performing a surgery.
Yeah. I mean the actual amount of fluid per unit makes sense, but there's just something _deeply_ upsetting about the phrase "a growler of bobcat piss"
Rats + bobcat urine commonly used in psych research to study traumatic stressors, so likely related to something like PTSD and addiction. So yeah, probs the VA. The VA does a lot of psych research.
I knew it would be actually important research! That will be so helpful for understanding the effects of trauma and stress on someone who's an alcoholic vs someone who isn't. And since veterans have an increased risk of substance abuse, this could really help us understand the long term effects of stress on our veterans!
Where do they get so much bobcat urine from? Aren't bobcats rare? Do they keep them (I don't think that's a thing) and give them bladder infections so they pee a lot? So many questions.
when you look at the actual published study and go to the acknowledgement section, look at the grant numbers, then look those up in NIH RePORTER yeah it turns out this stuff started in like 2017 and got a pretty good chunk of cash from then on until 2020-something
Very likely includes PI salary, PhD students' salary, lab manager salary. And these people are also doing different projects which are also probably useful.
Of course it was. But that doesn't make it 'not stupid.' Pretty much all government spending is from involuntary confiscation of wealth. If the only way to highlight the government wasting money on things people would otherwise never pay for is using hyperbole, well so be it. Or is hyperbole unacceptable now that the election is over?
@@mrvee5395 there is a difference between hyperbole and being intentionally and maliciously misleading. doing research in order to try and help veterans suffering from ptsd seems like a pretty good use of tax dollars to me. So yes it does make it not stupid. if you wanna cut spending maybe highlight things that are actually a waste of money.
This is a great method for figuring out information: if someone tells you something that makes you say "wow, thats crazy, why would they do that?" Go to the primary sources and read WHY THEY DID THAT FOR YOURSELF AND THEN YOULL KNOW
Yeah, frantic googling isn't the standard content for a science communication video, but it is a good example of how to actually do one's own research to check out a claim.
Yes, this, and even more generally: If you read a headline/tweet/quote that 1) seems designed to fill you with outrage, and 2) confirms your existing biases, then perhaps ask who wants you to feel outraged and to what end.
I appreciated that he tried to game it out himself (built a hypothesis) before he looked up the primary source. Shows the sheer intellectual laziness and lack of creativity of anyone buying this "government is wasting money on science" line-took Hank two minutes to come up with a plausible explanation for why this research was being conducted. And his hypothesis was right!
@@GSBarlev this could genuinely make a fun game. find seemingly absurd methods and then try to work backward to their aims. but yeah, it really does display how lazy people can be when the slightest amount of critical thinking is involved.
@@funthings5660 you don't think the US government should be conducting medical research? or that PTSD veterans should not be a priority target for such research?
@@funthings5660 The bigger point here is we have overspending on things like the defense budget. We don't need to be attacking actual research that makes up an inconsequential amount of our government spending when we could reorganize things like defense and healthcare to actually be better. Getting angry at research is a scapegoat to not actually change the real problems.
Because it's never been about the price tag. It's always been about power. When it's funded by a democratically elected government, it's not under the control of some billionaire.
"WE'LL CUT THE SCIENCE BUDGET BY THIRTY EIGHT POINT SIX NINE BILLION DOLLARS!" "then we'll increase the military budget by three hundred eighty six point nine billion dollars." "WE'LL CUT SOCIALIST EDUCATION AND HEALTHCARE BY FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS!" "then we'll cut taxes on the top 1% of the wealthy by five hundred billion dollars."
Why is my doctoral thesis catching strays from the redheaded libertarian? Hank, you talking about the field so clearly and enthusiastically feels like such a win!!!!
In New Zealand we also have a "department of government efficiency" and it has only existed for about a year. And so far in that time they have done nothing notable, except that the staff in that department are paid, on average 3x as much as any other government department, and are almost exclusively employ cronies from a minority political party. You should 100% be skeptical of having a department of efficiency and it absolutely will be a waste of time for everyone involved.
Er... Department of Transportation? That one quite literally exists to save commuting time, and in my experience transport-related workers are quite the hard workers too.
@@makelgraxDepartments of Transportation exist to manage transportation systems in the region including vehicle safety inspections, bridges, bike lanes, safety improvements, infrastructure maintenance, rapid transit systems, buses, and licensing, among many, many other things. Boiling it down to "reducing commute times for people who drive cars" is a heavily biased, vast oversimplification of an incredibly large and complex ministry.
The people that say you defund everything to help homeless veterans are always the first to complain that you're spending money helping homeless veterans.
no shes not. She mad that we probably overspent on something we never see the end result of; because big pharma will likely find a better and more cost effective solution to this than braindead government bureaucrats.
That's just oversimplification to make something fit your agenda. It's like saying NASA is spending millions of dollar to look at rocks. This is why it's important to listen to experts.
Calling it an oversimplification seems generous, to say the least. As best I can tell, that money was used for dozens of studies, not just that one single one.
You mean it's important to educate people on basic science and research. I love me some Hank Green but he is not an expert on this type of research. He is however quite capable of looking up and understanding basic scientific research and translating it into normal English. EVERYONE with a high school diploma from the last 10 years should be able to google this or use Google Scholar to figure this one out. We are just relying on Hank Green to do the typing and the thinking for us. #jobsecurity
You can make anything sound stupid if you explain it in the dumbest possible way. Houses are just a box you keep trash in. A library is just a place to store paper. Your body is a sack of meat, and when you go to the doctor, their job is to look at meat all day. Like, it's not hard to overly simply stuff into sounding like a complete waste of time!
Some US missiles cost one million dollars each. So she's mad we spent the equivalent of 4.5 missiles in an effort to help our struggling Veterans? Ridiculous.
Another phrasing of the tweet: “The government spent 2 Ten-Thousandths of a percent of its budget to ethically study the neurochemical comorbidities of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Alcohol Abuse Disorder in Veterans.”
Screw off. You could figure out the same thing with a little logical reasoning. Cut the studies, I have groceries, rent, and gas to pay for! You pay for the study!
@@dl2839 a "little logical reasoning" isn't evidence based treatments and therapies. it's one thing to know that veterans with PTSD often turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism, it's another to effectively treat both disorders at the same time that won't result in relapse. hence the need for these studies.
@@dl2839 You could figure out the chemical processes in the brain with a little logical reasoning? If you can do that, you obviously know more about neuroscience than anyone else on earth, so you should have no problem paying for groceries, rent, and gas.
@@tracejohnson6273 I know, that's why I'm so adamant. We shouldn't be forced to pay for it in the first place. Cancel every single one of these government studies!
This conversation is reminding me of this Radiolab podcast episode “Golden Goose”. It covers an award show that highlights scientific research that sounds trivial/laughable at face value but ends up changing the world. It’s a really great response to the whole tax money to science controversy. One of my favorite stories from Radiolab and extremely well done.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJrbecause companies are terrible at doing novel research due to their inherent risk aversion. They usually have to be incentivised by government just to do innovation (taking inventions that have already been developed and applying them in a commercial setting). Even the pharmaceutical companies need elaborate tax breaks and grant funding programmes to develop anything beyond the most lucrative medications. (Source: spending ten years working in managing corporate innovation programmes in Europe and the US). So is it your position that research is entirely unnecessary?
@@productjoe4069 My first response got auto-moderated. "So is it your position that research is entirely unnecessary?" For the most part, yes. Technological civilization should implode under its own mass for humanity's sake. A great majority of "innovation" does little to enrich people's lives, rather ceaselessly ratcheting up the degree to which humanity is alienated from itself, as evidenced by the grim psychometrics of advanced countries
Not gonna lie when I read "$4.5M to Spray Alcoholic Rats with Bobcat Urine" I thought I had arrived at the AI generated video title side of UA-cam but thankfully I'm saved by Hank and his organically generated mildly insane video titles.
Thought you were talking about how Hank was “connecting” various bits of research and information to find the source of the info but then he literally started playing NYT Connections 😂
As a university grant manager, I can tell you that $4.5 million is a generous grant, but for a multi year project is far from unheard of. It takes time to study this stuff and time is money!!
Spending $10k on a CD that costs $5 even domestically, sounds pretty inefficient idk. Boeing overcharging on basic components/tooling that cost 100x less than it normally does, also sounds pretty inefficient. Most of the bureaucracy working on paper/fax instead of using basic software, also sounds inefficient. Lets also not forget. The Pentagon being unable to account for $2.3 Trillion purely because of accounting inefficiencies. Its a hard problem to handle thats gotten big enough to the point it warrants action. Maybe it shouldn't be a permanent thing, but it should be a thing regardless.
If they wanted to be efficient, they would have cut funding for the military industrial complex DECADES ago. Just another thinly veiled excuse to destabilize scientific credibility. Because the truth isn't on their side.
Having worked as an animal technician. People's lack of scientific literacy hurts my soul. It's so easy to go: "Huh, that doesn't sound like the full story. Maybe I won't speak openly about it with unearned confidence. " It costs $0. It's free to do 😭
Same here. 😭 And they don’t even care. 😭 I find myself asking deeper questions and considering science in even the most mundane daily scenarios. My friend: “I heard that people from ___ state are the happiest!” Me: “I wonder how they define and test for happiness.” Lmao.
Think about it harder. it does cost them zero dollars to not say stupid shit, HOWEVER it costs them negative dollars to say the dumbest stuff an uneducated public will believe. I don't really get x/twitter, but on youtube it's typical to get between 10 and 30 dollars per thousand view. If insulting science you don't understand makes over 10 thousand viewers stay on your video longer or click before critical thought tells them it isn't so smart, and that all rounds out to a few thousand extra views, you could get paid 50 bucks to say an extra dumb non fact or two. And measuring views in the low thousands is chump change. Even if you make zero dollars either way, stupid non-fact or keep your mouth shut, think about that. A few more uncritical followers, maybe even a like from elon, verses having nothing to post/having to put in actual work. It costs nothing to be respectful, yes, but we made an economic system that incentives being actively misinforming, so who cares that doing nothing is a neutral act?
@@chasemartin5777 You're right! People should just take everything others say at face value! It's so elitist to ask someone to do the barest level of critical thinking! Whoops. Was that too elitist for you?
This kind of content is so crucial right now. With so much misinformation online, it's incredibly important but difficult to be able to address it all. Thank you for tackling this one!!
I like how none of you actually got any evidence at all from this video that we needed to spend $4.5 million dollars on this. Hank just explained the context slightly and you're all like "oh yeah, okay, that makes perfect sense to spend more money than I'll ever have in my entire life on this."
I've worked in research for cocaine use disorder (also related to the VA) and rat models are surprisingly useful analogs for human disorders. This is absolutely research for PTSD and AUD in veterans and deserves the funding it got.
I really don't understand this argument. If you want people to get money, you should not make them do a pointless job for it. You should just give them the money.
Or women. Or black people. Or queer people. Or anyone who doesn't believe in their extreme bastardized version of Jesus. Anyone who isn't a white male evangelist billionaire, really.
How many are there? The OP picked this one because of the other examples pointing out government overspending are justified. Even this one is still a stretch as far as the spending was still a waste. "It's for the troops" stamp isn't a license to spend.
@@arcguardian I'm sure there are wasteful studies. But it's very hard to find them. That's why when they put out wasteful spending press releases it's full of full of stuff like this.
10 years ago my area sent out flyers with a picture of a little red shrimp wearing sneakers on a treadmill. The point was to complain about scientific spending, how crazy it was. So I looked it up to see what the study was about. It was a study about water pollution's effect on the health of shrimp so they had to build a shrimp treadmill.
We're guys, we Keep a little wee under my pillow for the peeman In case he comes to town Keep a little wee under my pillow for the pee man So he won't piddle around in his lair deep under the sea takes me to where he keeps his wee
"Pavlovian response experiment to reduce alcohol dependency?" was my immediate thought-- I'm wrong, and this was actually more interesting. Fun to learn about.
I thought it was going to be a treatment based study into a specific compound in the urine that was, and one of the treatment methods was a topical spray.
I love this format. You're sharing your thought process when you encounter misinformation, sharing your research process, ing some knowledge, and capping things off with a fun pallette cleanser 😊
Remember that back-ups and unused but necessary precautions (like the Office of Pandemic response) are all inefficiencies under capitalism. I want my government inefficient, so it remains functional in times of emergency
True story. Optimal efficiency and optimal resilience are opposite ends of a spectrum. The department of government efficiency could better be named the department of government fragility.
Yup. I live in the Netherlands and we have a really efficient health care system. So no things like excessive ER capacity, because ER capacity is really expensive. And then the pandemic hit...
It’s important to remember that attention-grabbing tweets are usually short, quippy, and wrong, while good research is often complex and hard to explain. It’s also generally true that incurious people crap on others’ accomplishments because they don’t have the mental capacity to make curious observations themselves. They diminish others’ achievements to bring others in line with themselves.
The problem with this idea is that the word "Efficiency" can be used to attack those institutions and policies that are effectively reducing a problem but are controversial policies and institutions, especially in partisan circles. A newly discovered to be inefficient policy could be shut despite positive outcomes if it doesn't meet partisan efficiency standards.
@UncommonDabfish unfortunately it will also be used as a loyalty test to Donald Trump in the military ranks to purge all the woke Military Officers because we all know that being WOKE so terrible.
It sounds nice but all it means is regulating or cutting spending, and depending on who controls it all, that means it can apply to anything. Just depends on what these people value.
@saltiestsiren they value absolute loyalty to The Nipplehead and anti common sense regulations if the regulations impinge on their delicate sensibilities
The government does need to be more efficient. When we poor this much into schools, only for them to hire a public speaker for a couple of millions.. That is wasted money. You might be shocked how many over paid speakers they get. This is all money that could have been used to increase salary of the teachers. This would still be cheaper and more effective, also resulting in a lower school cost for students. (trickle down). It's an example, there are many more we can do.
Until about 4:00 i understood "alcoholic" NOT as "dependent on alcohol" but as "containing alcohol" and i was so confused on how we discovered that consuming these specific rats would get us drunk
Also 4.5 million would include the salary of everyone involved, a majority of federal budgets are the salary of workers. A decent amount of NASAs budget goes to the brilliant workers there
Elon Musk says he’s going to cut 2 trillion dollars from the budget by firing people…. That’s significantly more than the total wages for every single federal government worker combined… so he’ll fail or um… the country will….
Do you think so-called skeptics and conspiracists in the past were also like “Why is Alexander Fleming wasting valuable time staring at bacteria on a table? Who will this ever benefit?”
Seems a prefectly reasonable study. That experiment was likely (certainly) but one small part of the research grant. 4-5 million is a pretty hefty grant, so there's got to be a lot of related studies under that umbrella.
"These people don't tend to be the highest paid people in the world" is an understatement. The person who actually did this research was a graduate student at LSU health. Its hard to find exact numbers, but there is reporting from LSU's paper that in 2022 stipends for graduate work were from $11,000-$27,000 a year. Some programs at LSU advertise as high as $32,000 now, but I couldn't find it listed for physiology (the department where this research was done). I might be biased but I also was in graduate school at the time and was making $21,500 a year, but science in academia is mostly performed by people who struggle to make rent.
I’d like to see that, but nothing was debunked here in the slightest. Absolutely 0 fact checking or rebuttal, just suggestions of what the scientific study could have been seeking to observe. Which is not even the point of the tweet, it wasn’t that the experiment was nonsensical, but that it costs 4.5 million to do the experiment. I would assume it is not due to the cost of actually performing the experiment, but instead due to inefficiencies.
@@justinfoster1040 except he then went on to read the study which tells us exactly what it was trying to achieve and what results it observed, and the tweet was very clearly making the claim that the entire study was an "inefficiency" when the research is genuinely valuable even if the concept seems silly
@@ThaTash..what do you see as valuable because this probably isn't the first study to be done that was similar and it won't be the last and we will get the same results and nothing in the real world will change
Yeah I’m about to unsub to this dude. I liked the scientific stuff he posts, but I got enough politics in my feed. He should’ve just stuck to talking about gravity.
@@franny5156 Also this is objectively still a scientific video. It’s only tangentially related to politics and most of that is a framing device which drops off 20 seconds into the video. The point was to figure out the merits of a study which someone, whether intentionally or not, lacked the sufficient context to appreciate; and that’s a valuable topic to discuss irrespective of political circumstances.
Friendly reminder that playing Connections right now is crossing a picket line! The NYT Tech Guild is currently on strike, and has asked people not to play the NYT games or use the cooking section until they get a fair deal. EDIT: See below; the guild has called an end to the strike! Carry on.
I have to say that the Tech strike really confused me. They seem to have set everything up well enough that it all kept working without them, which seems to be, uh, not the result you want when you threaten to stop working. And then they ended the strike without having gotten any material concessions. So basically they walked out for a week and proved to management that they aren't required to run things? Is this good labor strategy? I don't know!
What's the worst about DOGE for me is that America already had it. It's called GAO, Goverment Accountability Office, and their role is literally in investigating goverment waste and giving recommendations to Congress how to fix it. They actually have good record, their suggestions works, and they are even listened to by politicans. From their own website, in 2023 they saved Americans 70.4 Bilions Dollars. If DOGE takes their funding....
$70 billion...? Stop being a moron. The government wastes hundreds of billions every single year. The GAO is obviously grossly incompetent - and likely corrupt.
This is 100% one of those "But what will we ever use this for?" people from school. Some people will never use it. And then they'll complain about why nobody ever gives THEM a high-skill job.
Yep, it’s to help people with PTSD and alcoholism (another mental illness). The thing is, people like that don’t care about disabled or sick people either, they wouldn’t care that they made a mistake
And how much help has it actually done? Reasons aren't justifications. "I shot that guy in the head because he insulted my grandmother." That's definitely a reason why the guy shot someone in the head, but does it justify it? If this is the sort of thing everyone started doing, would we be better or worse off? Worthwhile scientific studies get done without the Federal Government's help all the time.
Not sure why but "Department of Government Efficiency" screams at me as the one ministry that becomes the basis of the ruling oligarchy in a dystopian novel (Sort of like INGSOC per se. Especially strikes me as like the "Ministry of Knowledge" in starbound)
Sounds like it will be able to influence every other agency, including NASA, and the DoT. I wonder if Musk will make his government contracts inflate with that power
"Why do we need a Department of Government Efficiency?" We already do. It's the Government Efficiency Commission and it's not run by the world's worst businessman.
It's insane how much weird stuff Trump is already doing, and it feels like the media is accepting it already. As far as I know he hasn't even signed the ethics agreement yet.
I would love a series where Hank finds things like this and replies to the original poster the answer to their question so that anyone reading it can at least have the opportunity to learn.
@@spldrong Sure, that might be the argument, and it's plausible I suppose. But within the context of what Trump says he's going to do, he is planning on attempting to expand the executive powers in ways that have never been attempted before, and are almost certainly unconstitutional. The one thing Trump has never attempted to do is operate the government efficiently. Robert Higgs hypothesized in "Crisis and Leviathan" that in times of crisis, the scope of the government's power ratchets up, but when the crisis is over, it never reverts to its previous scope. That seems to be what's happening. Trump is inventing crises to justify expanding the scope of his own power (think "migrant crime"). So the separate argument that this is a good-faith effort to reign in bureaucracy seems unlikely given that it's logically inconsistent with everything else Trump does, and the much more rational explanation is that this is a thinly veiled act of patronage. I studied economics and political science in undergrad, and I'm currently in law school, so I do feel qualified to have this conversation, but I'm not an "expert." But I'm still just some guy, so I could easily be wrong.
@@spldrong It won’t eliminate other departments. It’s not even an official department. It’s an advisory commission headed by two very contradictory billionaires who just care about money and nothing else.
If we’re being honest… and maybe my almost daily use of Google makes me biased here… he’s not doing a great job at googling. This is like near boomer levels of typing in random words related to what you want and hoping Google magically understands the context you’re not giving it.
Yeah, i gotta admit i was surprised when he just took the Google AI summary as fact and then moved on without checking anything else first. Also for anyone interested, if you add -ai to the end of your google search, itll run the search without its AI overview!
Getting a prompt like “why did the us government douse rats in bobcat urine” sounds like a good gameshow plot, trying to figure out what the experiment possibly could have been
Hank i am so glad you make youtube videos like this. They're extremely casual in vibes, and it's super satisfying to see you have the same thought process that I do when faced with something that doesn't really sound right. Also, just like when you play connections. You're way better at it than I am.
What saddens me is that no amount of good information is going to change the larger population's minds. There's just no immediate gratification to critical thinking compared to feeling smug and pressing your thumb on other people.
Isn't the intent of the department ultimately the same thing as what is already done by the Government Accountability Office? Doesn't that mean that this is a responsibility of Congress and not the President?
A huge part of trump's platform is concentrating power, so an individual radical president can push a lot harder that one constrained by congress and judges and whatnot.
Ngl, you can make several scientific researches seem dumb/weird when you simplify them enough, like the time they put human neurons in a rat or how they digitalice a full worm and fly brain into a computer.
"making golden pills for medicine" is something I've done personally. It was investigating the use of gold nanoparticles as a pathway for medicine. It's not quite feasible yet... But there's some potential promise.
I Google the value of Twitter and it gave me its value in 2022. When I asked the value of X it said it was a variable in an equation. Elon Musk is an idiot/child
that entire thread shown at the beginning really makes sure to exclude the reasoning behind all of those studies to make them seem way more useless than they are, huh? It's not like weird sounding studies like the ones listed are how we make so many of our important discoveries nowadays or something.
Those who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes always take every expenditure out of context, counting on their base not to read the details. Works every time.
@rickyl7231 I'm no economist or accountant, but if 55 of the largest corporations and I don't know how many individuals like Bezos can pay zero, then something is obviously wrong. The point here is all the fake and completely out-of-context talking points conservatives rely on to cheat their way out of helping the rest of us who can't afford an army of attorneys.
Hank, no. Don't use google's AI overview when you search. Have you not seen how unreliable it is? In a video where the entire theme is "Researching claims made on the internet", it is incredibly ironic to use AI (a tool that is prone to hallucinations).
I also believe a lot in answering question with actual data, and am usually appalled by how it is to get what I'm looking for. I think maybe AI could be a solution here. But I agree whatever Hank was using obviously doesnt work. And to be fair, statistics always has a danger of hallucinations too (aka read the wrong thing out of it), but it still is a better tool than gut feeling, which is hallucination on steroids. Or said differently, there just still isnt a failproof algorithmn for truth.
this is one of those things that gets my hackles up, because of course someone who knows little and cares less will decide something that was doing good work needs to go just because someone spoke reductively ad absurdio, and forced the work to justify its own existence. imagining the world where curious, energetic individuals and teams have all the time and resources to explore their passions, where happy accidents lead to miraculous discoveries that no lab in the world would've been able to predict at the outset to justify the work done, and reflecting on the material needs of the real world, makes me cry
Yes, we should definitely be spending more on science. It's so easy to make an experiment sound stupid if you describe it without context. It takes a bit more work, but still isn't overly difficult, to maker the complainer sound stupid by describing what the experiment is actually about.
I love how you show your logic and reasoning when approaching questions you don't know the answer to 🙏 teaching all us how to better research and inform ourselves
this is all conjecture on my part, but I have my doubts that literally that exact action in particular cost that much. I think it's much more likely that doing the specific action only cost the material cost of bobcat urine and maybe alcohol. I think probably more of that money went to things like paying scientists their wage so they can continue to live, paying for the janitorial staff who work in the building where this is happening, keeping the lights on in the building in which it happened... etc.
Not sure if Hank recorded this before the NYT strike (unlikely) or if he just doesn't know about this, but the NYT staff are currently in a union battle to try and reach a more equitable position in their employment, and they've asked everyone to boycott the NYT's online games (and cooking app) until they reach this deal! So please, refrain from jumping on Wordle or Connections until these workers succeed in improving their position, and don't cross the picket line!
Glad someone mentioned it, was confused cause it feels like something that Hank would definitely be aware of, but also makes sense if it just slipped past him
In this context 'alcoholic rats' does not mean rats with alcohol substance use disorders, but rather rats which cannot legally be served to minors in the US and which also are taxed differently from virgin mojito rats.
In that case the three agencies should be consolidated (or at least the relevant components) so as to reduce inter-agency inefficiency caused by communication delays and differing managerial goals.
@@notyetdeleted6319 The GSA helps with logistics and equipment acquisitions for other government services, so it doesn't have much overlapping responsibility with the other two. The GAO is under the legislative branch so it is intentionally redundant as a check on the executives' power.
7:06 Maintenance of lab rats is not cheap, Hank. But, researchers are fairly cheap for sure. Salary of a post-doctoral researcher could be as low as $48,000 per annum.
Imagine concerning yourself with how one half of one percent of the budget is spent and not on the portion of the budget that goes to servicing debt. I bet if we stopped cutting taxes on the top we could make a dent in that number.
In Norway we have an instagram personality that calls himself something akin to the department of government efficiency. His main bugbear is public funding for art and culture, but the playbook is more or less the same as this one: twist a normal thing into a ridiculous-sounding (for those not in the field) headline while still remaining technically true (the best kind of true)
this reminds me of the "they made a robot to peel a grape" thing a while back.
the point wasn't to peel a grape. they were researching machines to aid in surgeries. as it turns out, peeling a grape without destroying it requires some very precise and delicate movements, much like performing a surgery.
they did surgery on a grape! a classic meme with a cool backstory
the peeled grape was also done remotely in some tests, so the best surgeon could be in a different country operating on a patient where the robot is
Getting animal piss by the growler is not the unit of measurement for that fluid I would have ever guessed
Well, 64oz is half a gallon, so yes, calling it a growler is reasonable, if slightly odd.
Yeah. I mean the actual amount of fluid per unit makes sense, but there's just something _deeply_ upsetting about the phrase "a growler of bobcat piss"
Considering the dude's sense of humor lead to calling himself "the peeman", I don't think that's accidental.
anything but the metric system /s
I mean... predators growl. Seems like a deliberate marketing choice to me. 🤷♂️
Rats + bobcat urine commonly used in psych research to study traumatic stressors, so likely related to something like PTSD and addiction. So yeah, probs the VA. The VA does a lot of psych research.
I knew it would be actually important research! That will be so helpful for understanding the effects of trauma and stress on someone who's an alcoholic vs someone who isn't. And since veterans have an increased risk of substance abuse, this could really help us understand the long term effects of stress on our veterans!
Where do they get so much bobcat urine from? Aren't bobcats rare? Do they keep them (I don't think that's a thing) and give them bladder infections so they pee a lot? So many questions.
@@dfleck9210bobcats aren’t that rare. I mean it’s not an everyday thing but I’ve seen more than a couple.
True. The funding for this research came from joint grants awarded by the NIH and the VA
@@dfleck9210maybe from bobcats in zoos or sanctuaries?
It's also possible that this $4.5 million is a multi-year grant, or that it covers more than one stage of this study.
probably
when you look at the actual published study and go to the acknowledgement section, look at the grant numbers, then look those up in NIH RePORTER yeah it turns out this stuff started in like 2017 and got a pretty good chunk of cash from then on until 2020-something
Very likely includes PI salary, PhD students' salary, lab manager salary. And these people are also doing different projects which are also probably useful.
I was thinking the same thing - over now many years was the money spent. How convenient for her that she left out that piece of information. 😅
Yes, but the government is also known for thousand dollar screws, so I don't know how far I can carry that theory.
yeah my immediate thought was "that sounds like it was intentionally simplified to sound stupid" and it turns out I was right.
Of course it was. But that doesn't make it 'not stupid.' Pretty much all government spending is from involuntary confiscation of wealth. If the only way to highlight the government wasting money on things people would otherwise never pay for is using hyperbole, well so be it. Or is hyperbole unacceptable now that the election is over?
@@mrvee5395 there is a difference between hyperbole and being intentionally and maliciously misleading.
doing research in order to try and help veterans suffering from ptsd seems like a pretty good use of tax dollars to me. So yes it does make it not stupid.
if you wanna cut spending maybe highlight things that are actually a waste of money.
@@mrvee5395 lying makes you a liar for eternity
This is a great method for figuring out information: if someone tells you something that makes you say "wow, thats crazy, why would they do that?"
Go to the primary sources and read WHY THEY DID THAT FOR YOURSELF AND THEN YOULL KNOW
Yeah, frantic googling isn't the standard content for a science communication video, but it is a good example of how to actually do one's own research to check out a claim.
Yes, this, and even more generally: If you read a headline/tweet/quote that 1) seems designed to fill you with outrage, and 2) confirms your existing biases, then perhaps ask who wants you to feel outraged and to what end.
I appreciated that he tried to game it out himself (built a hypothesis) before he looked up the primary source. Shows the sheer intellectual laziness and lack of creativity of anyone buying this "government is wasting money on science" line-took Hank two minutes to come up with a plausible explanation for why this research was being conducted. And his hypothesis was right!
@@GSBarlev this could genuinely make a fun game. find seemingly absurd methods and then try to work backward to their aims. but yeah, it really does display how lazy people can be when the slightest amount of critical thinking is involved.
@@modalmixturegood luck getting even one single person to do that. Including you, and including myself.
the disappointment in “guys is that what were mad about “ 😭
wasted tax payer dollars. Yes of course struggling Americans are pissed about that.
@@funthings5660 you don't think the US government should be conducting medical research? or that PTSD veterans should not be a priority target for such research?
@@funthings5660 did you even watch the video or does any money spent not coddling your sorry lazy ass constitute as "wasted"?
@@funthings5660 The bigger point here is we have overspending on things like the defense budget. We don't need to be attacking actual research that makes up an inconsequential amount of our government spending when we could reorganize things like defense and healthcare to actually be better. Getting angry at research is a scapegoat to not actually change the real problems.
Did you even watch the video?@@funthings5660
Science is the SMALLEST PORTION OF THE FED BUDGET, and they are complaining that it is too much!?
Because it's never been about the price tag. It's always been about power. When it's funded by a democratically elected government, it's not under the control of some billionaire.
Well yeah, they're anti-empiricism.
"WE'LL CUT THE SCIENCE BUDGET BY THIRTY EIGHT POINT SIX NINE BILLION DOLLARS!"
"then we'll increase the military budget by three hundred eighty six point nine billion dollars."
"WE'LL CUT SOCIALIST EDUCATION AND HEALTHCARE BY FIFTY BILLION DOLLARS!"
"then we'll cut taxes on the top 1% of the wealthy by five hundred billion dollars."
They hate science, it's that simple. They want to bad teaching evolution in schools. They want to teach that dinosaur bones were planted by Satan.
Typical Elon/Trump enjoyer mindset
Why is my doctoral thesis catching strays from the redheaded libertarian? Hank, you talking about the field so clearly and enthusiastically feels like such a win!!!!
"why would they spray an alcoholic rat with bobcat urine?" Seems like a segment on an episode of Lateral Thinking with Tom Scott
Seems like a question Jonathan Frakes would ask you.
In New Zealand we also have a "department of government efficiency" and it has only existed for about a year. And so far in that time they have done nothing notable, except that the staff in that department are paid, on average 3x as much as any other government department, and are almost exclusively employ cronies from a minority political party. You should 100% be skeptical of having a department of efficiency and it absolutely will be a waste of time for everyone involved.
Exactly.
Sounds like literally every government department 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Er... Department of Transportation? That one quite literally exists to save commuting time, and in my experience transport-related workers are quite the hard workers too.
@@makelgraxDepartments of Transportation exist to manage transportation systems in the region including vehicle safety inspections, bridges, bike lanes, safety improvements, infrastructure maintenance, rapid transit systems, buses, and licensing, among many, many other things.
Boiling it down to "reducing commute times for people who drive cars" is a heavily biased, vast oversimplification of an incredibly large and complex ministry.
Sounds like you need a department of "department of government efficiency" governance efficiency
She’s mad we are trying to help PTSD veterans. What a great patriot she is.
She is mad that science exists; at all. These people literally want to burn our books of knowledge and return to the dark ages.
The irony is an excellent flavor in this one. It's giving "I care about veterans! But I don't want MY tax dollars to go toward homelessness relief!"
The people that say you defund everything to help homeless veterans are always the first to complain that you're spending money helping homeless veterans.
no shes not. She mad that we probably overspent on something we never see the end result of; because big pharma will likely find a better and more cost effective solution to this than braindead government bureaucrats.
And the day after Veterans Day too. Truly a red white and blue blooded American through and through.
That's just oversimplification to make something fit your agenda. It's like saying NASA is spending millions of dollar to look at rocks.
This is why it's important to listen to experts.
Everything taken off context to fit an oppinion wil always convey it
Calling it an oversimplification seems generous, to say the least.
As best I can tell, that money was used for dozens of studies, not just that one single one.
Experts cannot be trusted according to our Vice President Elect.
You mean it's important to educate people on basic science and research. I love me some Hank Green but he is not an expert on this type of research. He is however quite capable of looking up and understanding basic scientific research and translating it into normal English. EVERYONE with a high school diploma from the last 10 years should be able to google this or use Google Scholar to figure this one out. We are just relying on Hank Green to do the typing and the thinking for us. #jobsecurity
You can make anything sound stupid if you explain it in the dumbest possible way. Houses are just a box you keep trash in. A library is just a place to store paper. Your body is a sack of meat, and when you go to the doctor, their job is to look at meat all day. Like, it's not hard to overly simply stuff into sounding like a complete waste of time!
Some US missiles cost one million dollars each. So she's mad we spent the equivalent of 4.5 missiles in an effort to help our struggling Veterans? Ridiculous.
Yes, it is ridiculous.
Unless you can explain that a whole lota lots of other things were also paid for with that 4.5m
Another phrasing of the tweet:
“The government spent 2 Ten-Thousandths of a percent of its budget to ethically study the neurochemical comorbidities of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Alcohol Abuse Disorder in Veterans.”
Screw off. You could figure out the same thing with a little logical reasoning. Cut the studies, I have groceries, rent, and gas to pay for! You pay for the study!
@@dl2839 I already did! And so did you. You know who didn't? Billionaires. The ones who don't have groceries, rent, and gas to pay for.
@@dl2839 a "little logical reasoning" isn't evidence based treatments and therapies. it's one thing to know that veterans with PTSD often turn to alcohol as a coping mechanism, it's another to effectively treat both disorders at the same time that won't result in relapse. hence the need for these studies.
@@dl2839 You could figure out the chemical processes in the brain with a little logical reasoning? If you can do that, you obviously know more about neuroscience than anyone else on earth, so you should have no problem paying for groceries, rent, and gas.
@@tracejohnson6273 I know, that's why I'm so adamant. We shouldn't be forced to pay for it in the first place. Cancel every single one of these government studies!
This conversation is reminding me of this Radiolab podcast episode “Golden Goose”. It covers an award show that highlights scientific research that sounds trivial/laughable at face value but ends up changing the world. It’s a really great response to the whole tax money to science controversy. One of my favorite stories from Radiolab and extremely well done.
Thanks for the recommendation! I love Radiolab.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJr You wouldn't be yapping on the internet if governments didn't do research on communications technology.
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJrbecause companies are terrible at doing novel research due to their inherent risk aversion. They usually have to be incentivised by government just to do innovation (taking inventions that have already been developed and applying them in a commercial setting). Even the pharmaceutical companies need elaborate tax breaks and grant funding programmes to develop anything beyond the most lucrative medications. (Source: spending ten years working in managing corporate innovation programmes in Europe and the US).
So is it your position that research is entirely unnecessary?
@@productjoe4069 My first response got auto-moderated. "So is it your position that research is entirely unnecessary?" For the most part, yes. Technological civilization should implode under its own mass for humanity's sake. A great majority of "innovation" does little to enrich people's lives, rather ceaselessly ratcheting up the degree to which humanity is alienated from itself, as evidenced by the grim psychometrics of advanced countries
@@AnacreonSchoolbagsJrIf the university research grants are tiny, why are you complaining about them?
Not gonna lie when I read "$4.5M to Spray Alcoholic Rats with Bobcat Urine" I thought I had arrived at the AI generated video title side of UA-cam but thankfully I'm saved by Hank and his organically generated mildly insane video titles.
lol, I love the term "organically generated" for something that was made by a human as opposed to AI
Dispelling a popular political myth followed by playing a game of connections is quickly becoming my favorite genre of video
+
+
Thought you were talking about how Hank was “connecting” various bits of research and information to find the source of the info but then he literally started playing NYT Connections 😂
As a university grant manager, I can tell you that $4.5 million is a generous grant, but for a multi year project is far from unheard of. It takes time to study this stuff and time is money!!
Department of Government Efficiency-- AKA-- "If I like it, it's efficient, if I don't like it, it's an obvious waste"
Spending $10k on a CD that costs $5 even domestically, sounds pretty inefficient idk.
Boeing overcharging on basic components/tooling that cost 100x less than it normally does, also sounds pretty inefficient.
Most of the bureaucracy working on paper/fax instead of using basic software, also sounds inefficient.
Lets also not forget. The Pentagon being unable to account for $2.3 Trillion purely because of accounting inefficiencies.
Its a hard problem to handle thats gotten big enough to the point it warrants action.
Maybe it shouldn't be a permanent thing, but it should be a thing regardless.
If they wanted to be efficient, they would have cut funding for the military industrial complex DECADES ago. Just another thinly veiled excuse to destabilize scientific credibility. Because the truth isn't on their side.
@@honkhonk8009 that is not just inefficient, it is corruption
yeah but its just gonna be used to redirect corruption money from one place to another @@honkhonk8009
@@honkhonk8009yep now look at what they are calling out. It's science they are attacking they don't care the pentagon is a money black hole
Having worked as an animal technician. People's lack of scientific literacy hurts my soul.
It's so easy to go: "Huh, that doesn't sound like the full story. Maybe I won't speak openly about it with unearned confidence. "
It costs $0. It's free to do 😭
Same here. 😭 And they don’t even care. 😭
I find myself asking deeper questions and considering science in even the most mundane daily scenarios. My friend: “I heard that people from ___ state are the happiest!” Me: “I wonder how they define and test for happiness.” Lmao.
Please keep being elitist. At this rate, California is going to be red by 2028, lol.
Think about it harder. it does cost them zero dollars to not say stupid shit, HOWEVER it costs them negative dollars to say the dumbest stuff an uneducated public will believe. I don't really get x/twitter, but on youtube it's typical to get between 10 and 30 dollars per thousand view. If insulting science you don't understand makes over 10 thousand viewers stay on your video longer or click before critical thought tells them it isn't so smart, and that all rounds out to a few thousand extra views, you could get paid 50 bucks to say an extra dumb non fact or two. And measuring views in the low thousands is chump change. Even if you make zero dollars either way, stupid non-fact or keep your mouth shut, think about that. A few more uncritical followers, maybe even a like from elon, verses having nothing to post/having to put in actual work. It costs nothing to be respectful, yes, but we made an economic system that incentives being actively misinforming, so who cares that doing nothing is a neutral act?
Current animal tech, at the VA no less, and samesies.
@@chasemartin5777 You're right! People should just take everything others say at face value! It's so elitist to ask someone to do the barest level of critical thinking!
Whoops. Was that too elitist for you?
“I’m trying to do something new here so bare with me”
*Looks at title*
HANK NOOOOOOOOO
It’s been a minute since a comment literally made me laugh out loud but this one did it.
2 million subscriber special where he does all of these experiments by himself
This kind of content is so crucial right now. With so much misinformation online, it's incredibly important but difficult to be able to address it all. Thank you for tackling this one!!
I like how none of you actually got any evidence at all from this video that we needed to spend $4.5 million dollars on this. Hank just explained the context slightly and you're all like "oh yeah, okay, that makes perfect sense to spend more money than I'll ever have in my entire life on this."
I agree although what might work a wee bit better is if you teach people how to approach everything. Kinda like the teach a man to fish proverb.
@@twelvecatsinatrenchcoatAnd your point is…?
@@twelvecatsinatrenchcoat exactly. he didn't dispel any misinformation or really even argue that it should cost 4.5 million.
@@harvestedvoltage4324 he didn't adress any misinformation. nor did he give a good reason why this would cost 4.5 mil.
I've worked in research for cocaine use disorder (also related to the VA) and rat models are surprisingly useful analogs for human disorders. This is absolutely research for PTSD and AUD in veterans and deserves the funding it got.
Re 5:30 it's important to note that veterans are far from the only people with traumatic stress disorders.
Oh thank god Hank is screaming into the void with me
I FEEL LIKE IM SCREAMING INTO THE VOIS ALSO , THE VOID CAN DANSE 🕺 CHA CHA CHA
There's just something comforting about one of the sanest people I can think of also going crazy because Google/the internet kind of sucks sometimes
@@VictorFortier-lt3wdthe void has style, the void has class
@@moleware THE VOID WEARS TEAR AWAY PANTS
Also, $4.5M of federal spending represents hundreds of private and public sector jobs that are getting funded. This shit doesn’t happen in a vacuum.
Only children nepotism benefits from it and you know it
They're the sorts of people to whom nuance and context are pointless.
I really don't understand this argument. If you want people to get money, you should not make them do a pointless job for it. You should just give them the money.
@@Ludix147 scumbag republicans types say weather phenomena study joba that predict hurricane pathes are pointless jobs
@@Ludix147the jobs aren’t pointless? Who has advocated for creating pointless jobs?
It's shocking how many of these "wasteful" studies are either about helping veterans or making soldiers safer.
Or women. Or black people. Or queer people. Or anyone who doesn't believe in their extreme bastardized version of Jesus.
Anyone who isn't a white male evangelist billionaire, really.
Maga says no to helping the weak. Those days are over.
How many are there? The OP picked this one because of the other examples pointing out government overspending are justified.
Even this one is still a stretch as far as the spending was still a waste.
"It's for the troops" stamp isn't a license to spend.
@arcguardian it kinda is a stamp to spend. Especially since its such a little amount of money
@@arcguardian I'm sure there are wasteful studies. But it's very hard to find them. That's why when they put out wasteful spending press releases it's full of full of stuff like this.
10 years ago my area sent out flyers with a picture of a little red shrimp wearing sneakers on a treadmill. The point was to complain about scientific spending, how crazy it was. So I looked it up to see what the study was about. It was a study about water pollution's effect on the health of shrimp so they had to build a shrimp treadmill.
Petition to rename this channel Talkin’ With The Pee Man 3:04
"Talkin' with the Pee Man" is now my new phrase for saying I have to the bathroom.
Needs to become a carter vail song.
We're guys, we
Keep a little wee under my pillow for the peeman
In case he comes to town
Keep a little wee under my pillow for the pee man
So he won't piddle around
in his lair deep under the sea
takes me to where he keeps his wee
@@MyChevySonic Keep a little pee under my pillow for the pee man
Didn't know I would get an answer to "How much does Bobcat urine cost?" today, but I am relatively sure I am better for it!
And see a website proudly showing talk with the pee man
"Pavlovian response experiment to reduce alcohol dependency?" was my immediate thought-- I'm wrong, and this was actually more interesting. Fun to learn about.
I thought it was going to be a treatment based study into a specific compound in the urine that was, and one of the treatment methods was a topical spray.
I love this format. You're sharing your thought process when you encounter misinformation, sharing your research process, ing some knowledge, and capping things off with a fun pallette cleanser 😊
These studies are a hideous waste of my money! I need to pay for food, not stupid studies! Cut the budget immediately!
3:52 To me it sounds like it's probably research into the combination of alcohol and stress. Maybe on behaviour, maybe on physical health.
Remember that back-ups and unused but necessary precautions (like the Office of Pandemic response) are all inefficiencies under capitalism. I want my government inefficient, so it remains functional in times of emergency
True story. Optimal efficiency and optimal resilience are opposite ends of a spectrum. The department of government efficiency could better be named the department of government fragility.
Yup. I live in the Netherlands and we have a really efficient health care system. So no things like excessive ER capacity, because ER capacity is really expensive. And then the pandemic hit...
But won't you think of the shareholders?
@@mamotalemankoe3775i am the shareholders! XD
Know how hospitals don't have any IV fluid for surgeries now?
Because the system was super efficient and then a hurricane took out the manufacturer.
It’s important to remember that attention-grabbing tweets are usually short, quippy, and wrong, while good research is often complex and hard to explain. It’s also generally true that incurious people crap on others’ accomplishments because they don’t have the mental capacity to make curious observations themselves. They diminish others’ achievements to bring others in line with themselves.
You say this then have to call help when you need an oil change 😂
@@Storm-j8uCouldn’t think of anything to say?
@@花乃きのこ can’t read?
@@Storm-j8u Great, so you still have nothing to say. Got it.
@@花乃きのこ great, you can’t read 😂😂😂😂 this is why your kind is never taken seriously
The problem with this idea is that the word "Efficiency" can be used to attack those institutions and policies that are effectively reducing a problem but are controversial policies and institutions, especially in partisan circles. A newly discovered to be inefficient policy could be shut despite positive outcomes if it doesn't meet partisan efficiency standards.
fucking eloquently said, thank you very much Dennis
@UncommonDabfish unfortunately it will also be used as a loyalty test to Donald Trump in the military ranks to purge all the woke Military Officers because we all know that being WOKE so terrible.
It sounds nice but all it means is regulating or cutting spending, and depending on who controls it all, that means it can apply to anything. Just depends on what these people value.
@saltiestsiren they value absolute loyalty to The Nipplehead and anti common sense regulations if the regulations impinge on their delicate sensibilities
The government does need to be more efficient.
When we poor this much into schools, only for them to hire a public speaker for a couple of millions..
That is wasted money. You might be shocked how many over paid speakers they get.
This is all money that could have been used to increase salary of the teachers. This would still be cheaper and more effective, also resulting in a lower school cost for students. (trickle down). It's an example, there are many more we can do.
Being frugal is a mindset. If you care about saving money at low levels, you’ll do the same everywhere. Also, science is good.
Until about 4:00 i understood "alcoholic" NOT as "dependent on alcohol" but as "containing alcohol" and i was so confused on how we discovered that consuming these specific rats would get us drunk
Also 4.5 million would include the salary of everyone involved, a majority of federal budgets are the salary of workers. A decent amount of NASAs budget goes to the brilliant workers there
Elon Musk says he’s going to cut 2 trillion dollars from the budget by firing people…. That’s significantly more than the total wages for every single federal government worker combined… so he’ll fail or um… the country will….
NASA is the biggest money waster. 4.5 billion for 1 launch SLS rocket. They don’t even vertically integrate
@@Storm-j8ucan you?
I’m confused why he replied that
@@fido8542 easily. Answering a question with a question shows you don’t know the answer however.
Do you think so-called skeptics and conspiracists in the past were also like “Why is Alexander Fleming wasting valuable time staring at bacteria on a table? Who will this ever benefit?”
Na, too busy on the farm and factorys thinkin about fairies and trolls to even know about what the lab-coats were doing.
I highly doubt people with this mindset have ever heard of Fleming, or anyone else not completely surrounded by Pop Sci Publications.
Absolutely.
Seems a prefectly reasonable study. That experiment was likely (certainly) but one small part of the research grant. 4-5 million is a pretty hefty grant, so there's got to be a lot of related studies under that umbrella.
"These people don't tend to be the highest paid people in the world" is an understatement. The person who actually did this research was a graduate student at LSU health. Its hard to find exact numbers, but there is reporting from LSU's paper that in 2022 stipends for graduate work were from $11,000-$27,000 a year. Some programs at LSU advertise as high as $32,000 now, but I couldn't find it listed for physiology (the department where this research was done). I might be biased but I also was in graduate school at the time and was making $21,500 a year, but science in academia is mostly performed by people who struggle to make rent.
1:26 I don't know why, but my hometowns property tax pie chart popping up randomly made me lose it for a solid minute.
I am enjoying Hank’s new hobby of debunking attention-grabby tweets
I’d like to see that, but nothing was debunked here in the slightest. Absolutely 0 fact checking or rebuttal, just suggestions of what the scientific study could have been seeking to observe. Which is not even the point of the tweet, it wasn’t that the experiment was nonsensical, but that it costs 4.5 million to do the experiment. I would assume it is not due to the cost of actually performing the experiment, but instead due to inefficiencies.
@@justinfoster1040 except he then went on to read the study which tells us exactly what it was trying to achieve and what results it observed, and the tweet was very clearly making the claim that the entire study was an "inefficiency" when the research is genuinely valuable even if the concept seems silly
@@ThaTash..what do you see as valuable because this probably isn't the first study to be done that was similar and it won't be the last and we will get the same results and nothing in the real world will change
what an attention grabber of a title, hank.
I love how your the first comment and you did say "first" I am crying tears of joy😭
Yeah I’m about to unsub to this dude. I liked the scientific stuff he posts, but I got enough politics in my feed. He should’ve just stuck to talking about gravity.
@@Shiestey he definitly didn't start out as the science guy. He started out as a youtuber talking about whatever sounded interesting
@@franny5156
Also this is objectively still a scientific video. It’s only tangentially related to politics and most of that is a framing device which drops off 20 seconds into the video. The point was to figure out the merits of a study which someone, whether intentionally or not, lacked the sufficient context to appreciate; and that’s a valuable topic to discuss irrespective of political circumstances.
Hank*
As a person with PTSD I’m so glad people are doing neuroscience research on it! ❤
Friendly reminder that playing Connections right now is crossing a picket line! The NYT Tech Guild is currently on strike, and has asked people not to play the NYT games or use the cooking section until they get a fair deal.
EDIT: See below; the guild has called an end to the strike! Carry on.
(the rest of the video: interesting and useful! adding this to not just come across as a scold!)
That’s really good to know! As of now, my research says they seem to have ended the strike but it’s always good to check and support others!
@@lizzykatieschindele6265 oh wow! glad to be not-up-to-date here; thanks for letting me know!
I have to say that the Tech strike really confused me. They seem to have set everything up well enough that it all kept working without them, which seems to be, uh, not the result you want when you threaten to stop working. And then they ended the strike without having gotten any material concessions. So basically they walked out for a week and proved to management that they aren't required to run things? Is this good labor strategy? I don't know!
What's the worst about DOGE for me is that America already had it. It's called GAO, Goverment Accountability Office, and their role is literally in investigating goverment waste and giving recommendations to Congress how to fix it. They actually have good record, their suggestions works, and they are even listened to by politicans.
From their own website, in 2023 they saved Americans 70.4 Bilions Dollars.
If DOGE takes their funding....
$70 billion...? Stop being a moron.
The government wastes hundreds of billions every single year.
The GAO is obviously grossly incompetent - and likely corrupt.
This is 100% one of those "But what will we ever use this for?" people from school. Some people will never use it. And then they'll complain about why nobody ever gives THEM a high-skill job.
Literally not even remotely the same people say those two sentiments
@@Storm-j8uI think you're one of the folks complaining...
@ that’s rich coming from the amoeba that doesn’t know what a woman is
Yep, it’s to help people with PTSD and alcoholism (another mental illness).
The thing is, people like that don’t care about disabled or sick people either, they wouldn’t care that they made a mistake
There is so much straw there I almost didn't see the man
And how much help has it actually done? Reasons aren't justifications. "I shot that guy in the head because he insulted my grandmother." That's definitely a reason why the guy shot someone in the head, but does it justify it? If this is the sort of thing everyone started doing, would we be better or worse off? Worthwhile scientific studies get done without the Federal Government's help all the time.
Not sure why but "Department of Government Efficiency" screams at me as the one ministry that becomes the basis of the ruling oligarchy in a dystopian novel (Sort of like INGSOC per se. Especially strikes me as like the "Ministry of Knowledge" in starbound)
starbound mentioned :0
they gonna do eugenics on us and make us super-apes
The fact that it is a backronym for a fucking shitcoin is certainly a factor for me.
Sounds like it will be able to influence every other agency, including NASA, and the DoT. I wonder if Musk will make his government contracts inflate with that power
the experience of googling something specific and absolutely not getting it is so real and funny
Google had noticeably worsened as a product in the last 20 years. I have noticed. And it is enraging
I’m more concerned about the efficient hardworking Lina Khan losing her job because Lord Emerald doesn’t like being sued for all his violations!
How am I supposed to react when I get a notification with that as a title
Excited cause Hank obviously posted a new video! It's a very Hank title!
"Why do we need a Department of Government Efficiency?"
We already do. It's the Government Efficiency Commission and it's not run by the world's worst businessman.
It's insane how much weird stuff Trump is already doing, and it feels like the media is accepting it already. As far as I know he hasn't even signed the ethics agreement yet.
I mean I don't like the guy but I'm pretty sure I'm a worse businessman than Elon
@@Ludix147if you're willing to admit other people know more than you, you might be better off than you think
see also Government Accountability Office
@@plwadodveeefdv And your saying this because? Do you seriously intend to defend the original posts claim that Elon is the world worst businessman?
I would love a series where Hank finds things like this and replies to the original poster the answer to their question so that anyone reading it can at least have the opportunity to learn.
A libertarian claiming to be in favor of the existence of a new executive agency is almost definitely not, in fact, a libertarian
If the argument this that the creation of 1 new dept will eliminate many other depts.... then why would they not??
@@spldrong Sure, that might be the argument, and it's plausible I suppose. But within the context of what Trump says he's going to do, he is planning on attempting to expand the executive powers in ways that have never been attempted before, and are almost certainly unconstitutional. The one thing Trump has never attempted to do is operate the government efficiently. Robert Higgs hypothesized in "Crisis and Leviathan" that in times of crisis, the scope of the government's power ratchets up, but when the crisis is over, it never reverts to its previous scope. That seems to be what's happening. Trump is inventing crises to justify expanding the scope of his own power (think "migrant crime"). So the separate argument that this is a good-faith effort to reign in bureaucracy seems unlikely given that it's logically inconsistent with everything else Trump does, and the much more rational explanation is that this is a thinly veiled act of patronage. I studied economics and political science in undergrad, and I'm currently in law school, so I do feel qualified to have this conversation, but I'm not an "expert." But I'm still just some guy, so I could easily be wrong.
@@spldrong It won’t eliminate other departments. It’s not even an official department. It’s an advisory commission headed by two very contradictory billionaires who just care about money and nothing else.
@thenablade858 i guess we will see
Thank you for continuously being a voice of reason for all of us, Hank
Why does google suck? Because google isnt about getting good results but selling ads. The quality has been declining for ages.
Enshittification strikes again
If we’re being honest… and maybe my almost daily use of Google makes me biased here… he’s not doing a great job at googling. This is like near boomer levels of typing in random words related to what you want and hoping Google magically understands the context you’re not giving it.
Facts. Thats what I love about AI. I just hope we get open source variants so we arent enslaved to Microsoft.
Do you have a fave alternative search engine?
hank please be careful with the use of llms. The propensity for hallucination is still great
Yeah, i gotta admit i was surprised when he just took the Google AI summary as fact and then moved on without checking anything else first.
Also for anyone interested, if you add -ai to the end of your google search, itll run the search without its AI overview!
It hallucinates just as much as people do.
Lets be real here lol
"TALKIN WITH THE PEEMAN!!?!?" Made me literally laugh out loud
underrated superhero
Getting a prompt like “why did the us government douse rats in bobcat urine” sounds like a good gameshow plot, trying to figure out what the experiment possibly could have been
Sounds like a line for QI
Hank i am so glad you make youtube videos like this. They're extremely casual in vibes, and it's super satisfying to see you have the same thought process that I do when faced with something that doesn't really sound right.
Also, just like when you play connections. You're way better at it than I am.
I’m loving this format of debunking right wing misinformation and then playing connects
Yall are way to confident for someone that doesn’t know what a woman is
@@Storm-j8ubro has 100+ comments on this channel 💀
if youre gonna troll then change accounts from time to time to not be so obvious
@ I’ll change my account when you can correctly define what a woman is
@ this is why you lost the election. You think people disagreeing with your nonsense is “trolling”
@@little-rat-timikr, their account was created 1 week ago 💀 how attention starved can you be
What saddens me is that no amount of good information is going to change the larger population's minds. There's just no immediate gratification to critical thinking compared to feeling smug and pressing your thumb on other people.
They want to do what they did to the National Endowment for Arts in the 90s to basically everything helpful the federal government does.
She could make it sound silly by leaving out information. That's more important to her than helping vets with PTSD and alcoholism.
Dude, don't use google's AI summary for your insight on what you searched. YOU of all people should know that is a bad idea
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Isn't the intent of the department ultimately the same thing as what is already done by the Government Accountability Office? Doesn't that mean that this is a responsibility of Congress and not the President?
A huge part of trump's platform is concentrating power, so an individual radical president can push a lot harder that one constrained by congress and judges and whatnot.
Seemingly the GAO is ensuring that money given is used efficiency, and the DGE would be determining how much money should be given
@@notyetdeleted6319no congress controls that.
Ngl, you can make several scientific researches seem dumb/weird when you simplify them enough, like the time they put human neurons in a rat or how they digitalice a full worm and fly brain into a computer.
Wait those don't sound dumb/weird
"making golden pills for medicine" is something I've done personally.
It was investigating the use of gold nanoparticles as a pathway for medicine. It's not quite feasible yet... But there's some potential promise.
Rename this video to *"Google Doesn't Work Anymore (It Sucks)"* 😂
I Google the value of Twitter and it gave me its value in 2022. When I asked the value of X it said it was a variable in an equation. Elon Musk is an idiot/child
I wouldn't have clicked the video with a title that boring. Give me mildly insane titles any time of the day.
skill issue
that entire thread shown at the beginning really makes sure to exclude the reasoning behind all of those studies to make them seem way more useless than they are, huh?
It's not like weird sounding studies like the ones listed are how we make so many of our important discoveries nowadays or something.
As I saw posted elsewhere any department of efficiency that requires two head bosses is an oxymoron with emphasis on moronic
I was reading alcoholic rats the same way as "alcoholic beverages" and I was really struggling to figure out what the tweet even meant
Came for the bob cat urine, stayed for the bob cat urine. Well worth the $125!
Those who don't want to pay their fair share of taxes always take every expenditure out of context, counting on their base not to read the details.
Works every time.
Please define what a “fair share” means? Preferably in percentage terms.
@@rickyl7231 That's up to the House of Representatives to decide. And you, since you're voting your representative in.
@rickyl7231 I'm no economist or accountant, but if 55 of the largest corporations and I don't know how many individuals like Bezos can pay zero, then something is obviously wrong.
The point here is all the fake and completely out-of-context talking points conservatives rely on to cheat their way out of helping the rest of us who can't afford an army of attorneys.
Define “fair share”
@@General12th you are not owed anyone else’s money
Hank, no. Don't use google's AI overview when you search. Have you not seen how unreliable it is? In a video where the entire theme is "Researching claims made on the internet", it is incredibly ironic to use AI (a tool that is prone to hallucinations).
I also believe a lot in answering question with actual data, and am usually appalled by how it is to get what I'm looking for. I think maybe AI could be a solution here. But I agree whatever Hank was using obviously doesnt work. And to be fair, statistics always has a danger of hallucinations too (aka read the wrong thing out of it), but it still is a better tool than gut feeling, which is hallucination on steroids. Or said differently, there just still isnt a failproof algorithmn for truth.
I love that you found bobcat urine so much faster than you found the US budget.
I think the American society needs a new Carl Sagan, and I think the only possible candidate could be Hank Green. You need a show like Cosmos.
3:27 ofcourse its maine. Stephen king really wasnt exaggerating
this is one of those things that gets my hackles up, because of course someone who knows little and cares less will decide something that was doing good work needs to go just because someone spoke reductively ad absurdio, and forced the work to justify its own existence.
imagining the world where curious, energetic individuals and teams have all the time and resources to explore their passions, where happy accidents lead to miraculous discoveries that no lab in the world would've been able to predict at the outset to justify the work done, and reflecting on the material needs of the real world, makes me cry
Yes, we should definitely be spending more on science. It's so easy to make an experiment sound stupid if you describe it without context. It takes a bit more work, but still isn't overly difficult, to maker the complainer sound stupid by describing what the experiment is actually about.
I love how you show your logic and reasoning when approaching questions you don't know the answer to 🙏 teaching all us how to better research and inform ourselves
this is all conjecture on my part, but I have my doubts that literally that exact action in particular cost that much. I think it's much more likely that doing the specific action only cost the material cost of bobcat urine and maybe alcohol.
I think probably more of that money went to things like paying scientists their wage so they can continue to live, paying for the janitorial staff who work in the building where this is happening, keeping the lights on in the building in which it happened... etc.
as usual, Redheaded Libertarian brings up an example trying to prove one thing, winds up proving the exact opposite.
She's one of the worst
That IS the Libertarian brand.
Not sure if Hank recorded this before the NYT strike (unlikely) or if he just doesn't know about this, but the NYT staff are currently in a union battle to try and reach a more equitable position in their employment, and they've asked everyone to boycott the NYT's online games (and cooking app) until they reach this deal! So please, refrain from jumping on Wordle or Connections until these workers succeed in improving their position, and don't cross the picket line!
Bump for the unions ✊✊
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Glad someone mentioned it, was confused cause it feels like something that Hank would definitely be aware of, but also makes sense if it just slipped past him
The tech guild ended their strike two days ago!
@@hankschannelthanks 👍
Hank Green for Secretary of Education, 2028.
When checking your sources and googling well is considered a wild, new direction.
In this context 'alcoholic rats' does not mean rats with alcohol substance use disorders, but rather rats which cannot legally be served to minors in the US and which also are taxed differently from virgin mojito rats.
I'm supposed to be studying for my psychology exam but clearly bobcat urine is more important
"why does google suck" is a brave thing to say on youtube.
Hanks google ads algorithm in shambles after he views "64 ounce bobcat urine growler"
not to mention it already exists! OMB/GSA/GAO is essentially the Department of Government Efficiency
GAO as well I'd think
@@John-fz3ij yup! left that out! i'll add it to the og post
In that case the three agencies should be consolidated (or at least the relevant components) so as to reduce inter-agency inefficiency caused by communication delays and differing managerial goals.
@@notyetdeleted6319 The GSA helps with logistics and equipment acquisitions for other government services, so it doesn't have much overlapping responsibility with the other two. The GAO is under the legislative branch so it is intentionally redundant as a check on the executives' power.
I like the way you explained this without being condescending. I also found the google image frustration very relatable. Thanks Hank
iconic title as always
7:06 Maintenance of lab rats is not cheap, Hank. But, researchers are fairly cheap for sure. Salary of a post-doctoral researcher could be as low as $48,000 per annum.
48k is not a lot of money
Imagine concerning yourself with how one half of one percent of the budget is spent and not on the portion of the budget that goes to servicing debt. I bet if we stopped cutting taxes on the top we could make a dent in that number.
I love people who've never attended a science class judge the 1% of the already measly budget Science budget our country has
In Norway we have an instagram personality that calls himself something akin to the department of government efficiency. His main bugbear is public funding for art and culture, but the playbook is more or less the same as this one: twist a normal thing into a ridiculous-sounding (for those not in the field) headline while still remaining technically true (the best kind of true)
I doubt that the claim here was even technically true. (I'd assume most of the money was not spent on "spraying x with y".)