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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

I have had the YT algorithm "hunt me" for a weeks, keep recommending some what looks like a dumb-ass video, only when I finally cave in and watch it, I get it, I needed to see it. The thumbnail and the title didn't did it the opposite of justice. I even tried using the yt api to see if I could scrape the recommendations but they aren't in there. You would have to scrape the browser while logged in.

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Russ Roberts (host of Econtalk podcast) says: take the teacher, not the class, meaning (at least in economics) you'll get more value from a great teacher of a boring topic than from a poor teacher of an exciting topic.

I feel that describes my YouTube preferences: I'd prefer to see amazingly intelligent/engaging content on any topic than just average content on topics I'm ostensibly very interested in.

I can vouch for that idea. I dreaded taking statistics in college, because I'm just not a mathy person. But the teacher was fantastic. I actually enjoyed the class - which was 100% due to his passion for the subject, and deep interest in teaching it to the next generation.

I still remember, all these years later, how my CC statistics teacher “taught” us that airplanes don’t indeed fly by the Bernoulli principle producing lift but because the wind hits the underside of the wings and pushes it up into the air.

Totally random I know.

I can't tell why you're putting "taught" in quotes...? Your teacher was correct. Or you mean because it was outside their official subject matter?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-can-explai...

A good follow up by NASA https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/ber...

"So both “Bernoulli” and “Newton” are correct. Integrating the effects of either the pressure or the velocity determines the aerodynamic force on an object."

I had that experience with the Robert Sapolsky lectures on Human Behavioral Biology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PLtdr2qSB8H...

My take away is that everyone is probably interested in everything, only we let the messenger kill the message. By let, we seem to have a messed up pathology where we think they are the same, so much so that it is a huge cognitive flaw, easily used for sabotage.

Ah, that explains why teachers dislike students who are disinterested. Its not merely a disregard for the subject at hand, it tells them they're not the great teacher they'd like to believe they are. The best teachers I had, also had great humor. Great humor helps a lot.

You need the extension "Clickbait Remover" - it just grabs a random frame from the video and sets it as the thumbnail, will change your youtube life:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/clickbait-remover-...

Here's the Firefox version of the Clickbait Remover extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-rem...

This looks great. It's surprising how much mental energy is spent fighting these initial triggers like icons/clickbait.

Thank you for your recommendation. I'm tired in the world of marketing when everyone is trying to invest in click bait instead of making good contents.

I'd like this, but it doesn't work when using uBlock Origin. It does change case of video titles, though, so it's working: just not able to alter the thumbnails anymore. Would be great but I'm not disabling uBlock Origin for it…

working for me on firefox with uBlock Origin, maybe it's some other extension (or some custom rule)?

btw I think there is a browser extension that replaces default thumbnail with a random image from the video

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