Tom Scott
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2022–2023
6:44 · 5M views · Dec 19, 2022
Tom Scott's correction video on his earlier claim that 18th-century insurance firefighters let uninsured buildings burn. After a historian looked into it, he concludes the story was wrong and explains how the error happened.
HN mentions it as an example of a prominent creator publicly correcting a popular myth, and of the fire brigade myth itself.
3 comments from Hacker News
> Usually commonly held widely believed oral histories emerge for a good reason. So if it was commonly believed that insurance companies let un-insured buildings burn, then it is likely to be true at least part of the time. Yes, oral histories emerge for a reason, but that reason doesn't have to be "because it was literally true". There are countless oral traditions that are complete nonsense! Urban legends existed 200 and 2000 years ago just as much as they do today, and no historian would ever claim that you should take every oral history at face value. > Also, lets look at the source -- he is an "archive and heritage consultant", i.e. someone that solicits money for his research. Is he getting paid for this article? Is he writing this in the hopes that he will advertise his services for insurance companies? He was paid by a prominent YouTuber to find out whether a video said YouTuber made several years ago was incorrect[0]. That doesn't scream "conflict of interest" to me. [0] this video
> one major problem is VPNs are advertised or promoted as if they're synonymous with antivirus software. Famously described by Tom Scott — [How it started [LINK] [How it's going] this video
Tom Scott did a video[1] about this. For the UK at least, this may have been an urban myth rooted in the fact that only the fastest fire brigades were paid[2]. [1] this video [2] [LINK]