Adam Savage’s Tested
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2022–2023
45:08 · 1.1M views · Jan 4, 2022
Adam Savage shows a set of Mitutoyo ceramic gauge blocks and uses them to explain metrology, the science of measurement. He argues that accuracy and precision work differently than most people assume, which changes how you think about every measuring tool.
Recommended as a thoughtful, enjoyable 45-minute dive into measurement and the appreciation of precision.
4 comments from Hacker News
Your post reminded me of one of my favorite Adam Savage videos where he touches upon this idea you're exploring. I encourage folks to see it, he articulates it so well. I linked to the start of the video where he begins to build the idea. TLDR is he mentions Monet painting Impression Sunrise and how it was something that people have never seen before and it took a bit of time for it to blow people away--they needed to develop "new eyes" to see the genius. Adam then dives into this idea of "new eyes". I'm sure many of us have experienced this in our life and it was so nice to hear Adam unpack it. this video
Adam Savage has an interesting (45m!) video entitled "Epiphany on the Science of Measurement!" where he gets a bit philosophical on accuracy and precision (using gauge/Johansson blocks as jumping off point): * this video
I think you will thoroughly enjoy Adam Savage's (of Mythbusters fame) recent video on measurement. this video
I'd say there are two different types of "obsession" here. One is the attitude that that you need to use the best tools possible and by doing that you will get a good result. The other type is old fashion geakery. If you look at Adam, he is two things: a maker, and a tool geek. These aspects certainly intersect, but when he is making things, you do not see him reach for the most sophisticated tool in his toolbox. A great example of this is this video [0] where he geeks outs over his new measurement tool: guage blocks (and corresponding guage). The thing is, I don't think I have ever seen him do a build where he uses them, because they are simply beyond what his work demands. I'm a similar way with programming languages. I'm a PL geek, and enjoy geeking out about the fine details of various programming languages, and pointing out flaws in langauges. But, at the end of the day, when it comes time to pick a language for a project, I typically reach for a combination of Java/C++/python/m4. There is nothing to geek out about those languages (except for how bad they are), but pragmatically speaking, they are typically the best tool available for very boring reasons. [0] this video