Science Communications on YouTube
blogs.memphis.edu
blogs.memphis.edu
By sticking to reading, am I missing out on content?
Edit: Not a criticism of watching video, I'm wondering if I'm missing substantial things. If I didn't read, for example, I'd miss a lot that doesn't exist in video or audio. Same thing with podcasts.
I find video more compelling, generally. Obviously video has more ways to communicate - graphically, empirically, etc. It's not that reading works more effectively, but far more efficiently.
Video also has communication modes that text/print lacks: dynamic graphics and empirical video (showing the thing itself happening), audio, speech and expression (as described above).
With all that, I find it quite frustrating to see it consume so much time that could be spent reading and processing several things. How do others on HN - intellectually curious and serious, often busy - reconcile that?
Though my question is really, am I missing things by not watching video - things I won't realistically get through print? I mean high-quality things - I want the equivelant of a paper, review paper, or book by a professional in the field.
-Confucius [1]
For certain concepts such as Linear Algebra, for instance books allow me to "do" and understand. Which is why I read more than I watch videos.
And for videos specifically, it can obviously help understanding in many cases to have animated visualizations
I found the same to be true with audiobooks, nothing serious can't be "just listened to". I've tried to "listen" to a good biology non-fiction on how live evolved from the primordial soup. Shit, in the first chapters there were covalency chemistry and other stuff that I needed to sit down and write to understand.
Too stupid to do it while doing chores I guess...
> not story telling like history or other humanities
Those are not serious humanities lectures. The serious ones are not storytelling, but serious examination of the evidence or of its analysis. There are far more factors, complexity, and uncertainty in an historical event or process than in a petri dish, and the event can't even be reproduced. It's impossible to use the same kind of scientific method and obtain the same kind of certainty, and requires far more critical thinking, judgment, and analysis.
What caused Andrew Jackson to be elected? There's a relatively simple story told, but the reality is enormously complex and uncertain.
Regardless, listening to something intently and doing mechanical actions are not exclusive.
Your brain can't hold the context long enough to go to the required level of abstraction, while you're multitasking (may be walking or something deeply automated doesn't count.
But mathematicians can talk to each other about arbitrarily abstract concepts, as long as they have enough shared background, and they don't (always) need a blackboard to do it.
Conversely, you can have conceptually very simple things that are basically impossible to follow just by listening, like multiplying two nine-digit numbers or following one of Euclid's proofs in plane geometry. The difficulty isn't about abstraction, but how many things you have to hold in working memory
If it's 'serious' and worthwhile, I often don't even have the bandwidth to keep up with the lecture or book. Why spend my time on anything less?
(I can suggest some if you are interested and give me a better idea.)
Besides, teaching videos and also books often share a common weakness: low information density. Youtubers and Authors both like to talk so damn much without saying anything. Give me a good story or documentation catalogue any day, but stop mixing the two.
Here we agree, but for books I don't need to read the low-density material. Review articles, for example, are fantastic. Scholarly books can be overwhelming due to density x size.
> Audio content at least allows you to absorb information while your hands and eyes can be busy with other things: cleaning, driving, etc.
Not with high-density content, IME.
Also, some of the videos are pretty dang entertaining.
If it is something I am interested in learning in depth, then I would agree that books are usually more efficient.
Well, with a caveat.
Some people appear to record themselves as they pursue their hobbies, then post it to YouTube. (Sometime's it's organic. Sometimes it's partially planned out.) In those cases it is a bit like a very one-sided mentorship. The host will either realize they're doing something that they would never write about, whether it is in a script or a blog or a book, then discuss it. Other times they don't make note of what they're doing, for the same reason they wouldn't write about it, but you see it because they are doing it. Written communication can be lossy.
That's a great insight.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@whatdamath
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@sixtysymbols
[3] https://www.youtube.com/@ScienceClicEN
[4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR2uRTQ53V_egXKFflMMaaw
[5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwg6_F2hDHYrqbNSGjmar4w
[6] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbnbBWJtwsf0jLGUwX5Q3g
Richard Behiel, Physics Explained, Dr Jorge Diaz
For mathematics, I really appreciate the simpl but effective format of Richard Borcherds (Fields medalist)
Behiel is to 3Blue1Brown as a popular children's cartoon is to its late sequel series that aged up with its audience.
Excellent work.
I especially like his more recent trend of going line by line through famous papers. EPR and Bell's Inequality to date.
Hopefully author reads HN.
I kind of wish they hadn't included Veritasium either. He seems to have gone downhill.
https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-majorit...
It's borne out of the mountains of disrespect women scientists have to deal with, something she talks about towards the end of her video on Richard Feynman.
My interest in his videos plunged after that, and it seemed like he was re-alinging for consistent high views over straight hard factual education. Frankly I wish I could purge him from my feed at this point (youtube still recommends all his videos incessantly, despite me not watching one for at least a year now. On paper I am the ideal viewer though, so...)
It's one of the very few things that actually work
I've heard this from a couple other people, though, which makes me wonder if the alleged "don't recommend channel" button is hooked up to different API calls in different UIs...
Just checked, and I don't see it in the suggestions under a particular video, only on the main feed. I don't know if they're hiding it or what.
[0] https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-majorit...