3 ms·

There's entirely too much good stuff on YouTube to ignore. I learn so much there, all for free.

Syonyk 6y ago
But what are the opportunity costs of learning stuff on YouTube, especially if you're watching hours of content? There is good stuff in there - don't get me wrong. It's just that the good stuff you want to find is often quite hidden, and I've on occasion spent more time trying to find some video that actually shows a tricky part of some bit of equipment maintenance than it would take to just do things the slow way (think "If you know the exact sequence of steps, you can slip the alternator out this hole between the engine and suspension - or you can just unbolt the exhaust and lower the alternator out that way" sort of tasks - if it takes longer to find a video with the steps clearly displayed than to just drop the exhaust, you've taken longer). I've also found that YouTube leads to a very poor, surface understanding of most issues - and this isn't the fault of YouTube specifically, it's just a limit of video. If I want to learn about a new topic, I'll typically try to find three or so books on it and read those. A single book can have biases and misunderstandings, but by the time you've read a few, it's usually clear enough what the consensus is. Does it take more time than an hour or two video? Certainly. But I also get a far, far better understanding of the material (which, if it's an area I care to learn about, is probably useful) than I would through videos. Plus, I use an awful lot less data in the process. I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such with regards to my preferences for text and images over video, and there may be part of it that's true - but I've weighed video versus the alternatives, and outside entertainment (which there's certainly some value in), I find video coming up wanting. Also, books don't keep (buy this!) interrupting the content (buy that!) to feed me ads for (vote for this person because their opponent eats babies!) whatever happens to (watch this movie!) be paying the best rates (check out this new online bank and stock trading app!) at the moment.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  I feel like I often have time saved on almost exactly the situation you described. Changing the alternator on our Honda CR-V, there's a method to remove the fan and fan support and pull the alternator out the front of the car and top instead of doing a lot more disassembly on the front of the engine (side of the car) and draining the coolant. I wouldn't have thought to do it that way if I hadn't been in the habit of watching 2 or 3 videos of new-to-me car repairs. I find myself watching zero mass-market television and a lot more YouTube (tech, electronics, machining, mostly) and think it a lot better value for entertainment time spent than TV ever was. (Sure, it's not as dense as reading a technical book, but after a day of work, I'm more up for the casual experience.)
- cbozeman 6y ago
  I consider YouTube a tool. It gives me, as you pointed out, surface level knowledge. Once I'm armed with that, I can go dig deeper and find the books or resources I need to gain expert-level knowledge.
- II2II 6y ago
  > I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such with regards to my preferences for text and images over video, and there may be part of it that's true - but I've weighed video versus the alternatives, and outside entertainment (which there's certainly some value in), I find video coming up wanting. I agree with your preference for books, but I am going to add a caveat: the quality of books varies considerably, with a good video being better than a mediocre book. That was not much of a problem when I lived in a big city. It was easy to walk into a bookstore or library to pick out something of value. Living in a small city limits the options. Buying online means buying sight unseen. In the worse case, ratings can be misleading. In the best case, recommendations are likely coming from someone with different needs. YouTube avoids the problem since there is no financial risk involved in making a choice, and decent quality content isn't too hard to find. (To give you an idea of what I mean: I live in a city of half a million people. The public library system's most advanced text on electronics is an old edition of the ARRL Handbook. The rest are projects books directed towards amateurs. Book sellers aren't much better since few want to stock technical titles. University libraries offer much better books, yet they are nearly impossible to borrow during the academic session.)
- DharmaPolice 6y ago
  I don't really see YouTube as an alternative to books. Where video shines is in shorter instructional practical stuff. Sure, if I want to understand the underlying mechanism of something then I'll read-up on it but usually I don't need that kind of knowledge. I just want to watch someone do the task I'm about to do. For anything IT related I usually dislike video guides as they're so slow to get to the point. But that's because I work in IT and don't need to be told that messing around with a disk partition could cause problems with my computer. With non-IT tasks I'm happy to be treated as a moron because I don't have anywhere near as much experience. When you say "Use an awful lot less data" - is that still an issue most of the time? That's depressing.
  - Syonyk 6y ago
    > When you say "Use an awful lot less data" - is that still an issue most of the time? That's depressing. I don't see a particular point in pulling down a few hundred megabytes that contains radically less actual useful content than a megabyte or two of compressed text and images. HN is particularly nice on that front, as the pages are tiny and gzip down to a rounding error (this reply page is a whopping 15kb of transfer). They don't load half a Windows 95 worth of tracking Javascript either. Up until fairly recently, I had two rural WISP connections that mostly didn't meet rated speeds during the day, were borderline unusable during the evening (that Netflix can stream video tolerably on a lossy 1-2Mbit connection is quite impressive, the few times we tried it), and despite that have been working remotely full time on those connections. I'd signed up for the Starlink beta some months back, and we have that as our secondary connection now (it's still exceedingly erratic - I'll go from 5Mbit to 150Mbit and back over the course of a minute and then it'll break my connections as there's no satellite overhead - but this is the point of a beta, and it's better than the 5/1 that mostly delivered about 3/0.5). I like it, but the power consumption on the dish is quite obscene. It idles a hair under 100W, and consumes 2.2kWh/day, per my measurements. I hope that improves over time. It's not that I can't transfer a lot of data, it's just that I prefer not to when I can avoid it. And, there are, often enough, times when it simply won't work. Not a big deal, we live out here willingly, but, yes, it's still a thing. I keep a cheap cell plan too, because I just don't need to be streaming content on my phone.
- aksss 6y ago
  I can't stand video as casual content generally (e.g. news stories), but in terms of how-to information, a video is truly worth a million words at least. Compare watching five videos on doing a somewhat complex maintenance job on your truck compared to reading the Chiltons manual, and you get an idea.
- CapricornNoble 6y ago
  >>I've also found that YouTube leads to a very poor, surface understanding of most issues - and this isn't the fault of YouTube specifically, it's just a limit of video. Try watching TIK's BattleStorm Stalingrad series (link below). Exceptionally well-researched and the videos are information-dense. I own one of the books cited in his series, the 700-page "Armageddon in Stalingrad" by David Glantz. His video format communicates a fairly high understanding of the play of events, of the people involved, and other nuances, in less time than pouring over ALL of the source material would take. He mixes tactical/operational maps with dialogue bubbles of key commanders, tables of equipment readiness/casualties, quotes from people who fought there or from books, and lately he's been adding photos showing where on the battlefield they were taken. So a lot of it is book content (and many of the authors comment on his videos, praising his work), but he steps through the battle in almost real-time, and it provides a better view of scope, scale, and even decision-making by key leaders than digesting static maps in a book would. I would challenge the assertion that reading all of the books oneself would yield a significantly higher comprehension of the battle, and it certainly wouldn't be time-efficient to do so. Hence video as a communication medium is not inherently flawed. Like any other medium it is reliant upon exceptionally well-produced content. Most YT content isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAfo5mse-ag&list=PLNSNgGzaledi9jQeOzCUtBP2pxYdCYiXX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAfo5mse-ag&list=PLNSNgGzale...

But what are the opportunity costs of learning stuff on YouTube, especially if you're watching hours of content? There is good stuff in there - don't get me wrong. It's just that the good stuff you want to find is often quite hidden, and I've on occasion spent more time trying to find some video that actually shows a tricky part of some bit of equipment maintenance than it would take to just do things the slow way (think "If you know the exact sequence of steps, you can slip the alternator out this hole between the engine and suspension - or you can just unbolt the exhaust and lower the alternator out that way" sort of tasks - if it takes longer to find a video with the steps clearly displayed than to just drop the exhaust, you've taken longer). I've also found that YouTube leads to a very poor, surface understanding of most issues - and this isn't the fault of YouTube specifically, it's just a limit of video. If I want to learn about a new topic, I'll typically try to find three or so books on it and read those. A single book can have biases and misunderstandings, but by the time you've read a few, it's usually clear enough what the consensus is. Does it take more time than an hour or two video? Certainly. But I also get a far, far better understanding of the material (which, if it's an area I care to learn about, is probably useful) than I would through videos. Plus, I use an awful lot less data in the process. I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such with regards to my preferences for text and images over video, and there may be part of it that's true - but I've weighed video versus the alternatives, and outside entertainment (which there's certainly some value in), I find video coming up wanting. Also, books don't keep (buy this!) interrupting the content (buy that!) to feed me ads for (vote for this person because their opponent eats babies!) whatever happens to (watch this movie!) be paying the best rates (check out this new online bank and stock trading app!) at the moment.

sokoloff 6y ago
I feel like I often have time saved on almost exactly the situation you described. Changing the alternator on our Honda CR-V, there's a method to remove the fan and fan support and pull the alternator out the front of the car and top instead of doing a lot more disassembly on the front of the engine (side of the car) and draining the coolant. I wouldn't have thought to do it that way if I hadn't been in the habit of watching 2 or 3 videos of new-to-me car repairs. I find myself watching zero mass-market television and a lot more YouTube (tech, electronics, machining, mostly) and think it a lot better value for entertainment time spent than TV ever was. (Sure, it's not as dense as reading a technical book, but after a day of work, I'm more up for the casual experience.)
cbozeman 6y ago
I consider YouTube a tool. It gives me, as you pointed out, surface level knowledge. Once I'm armed with that, I can go dig deeper and find the books or resources I need to gain expert-level knowledge.
II2II 6y ago
> I'm perfectly happy to be called a curmudgeon or such with regards to my preferences for text and images over video, and there may be part of it that's true - but I've weighed video versus the alternatives, and outside entertainment (which there's certainly some value in), I find video coming up wanting. I agree with your preference for books, but I am going to add a caveat: the quality of books varies considerably, with a good video being better than a mediocre book. That was not much of a problem when I lived in a big city. It was easy to walk into a bookstore or library to pick out something of value. Living in a small city limits the options. Buying online means buying sight unseen. In the worse case, ratings can be misleading. In the best case, recommendations are likely coming from someone with different needs. YouTube avoids the problem since there is no financial risk involved in making a choice, and decent quality content isn't too hard to find. (To give you an idea of what I mean: I live in a city of half a million people. The public library system's most advanced text on electronics is an old edition of the ARRL Handbook. The rest are projects books directed towards amateurs. Book sellers aren't much better since few want to stock technical titles. University libraries offer much better books, yet they are nearly impossible to borrow during the academic session.)
DharmaPolice 6y ago
I don't really see YouTube as an alternative to books. Where video shines is in shorter instructional practical stuff. Sure, if I want to understand the underlying mechanism of something then I'll read-up on it but usually I don't need that kind of knowledge. I just want to watch someone do the task I'm about to do. For anything IT related I usually dislike video guides as they're so slow to get to the point. But that's because I work in IT and don't need to be told that messing around with a disk partition could cause problems with my computer. With non-IT tasks I'm happy to be treated as a moron because I don't have anywhere near as much experience. When you say "Use an awful lot less data" - is that still an issue most of the time? That's depressing.
- Syonyk 6y ago
  > When you say "Use an awful lot less data" - is that still an issue most of the time? That's depressing. I don't see a particular point in pulling down a few hundred megabytes that contains radically less actual useful content than a megabyte or two of compressed text and images. HN is particularly nice on that front, as the pages are tiny and gzip down to a rounding error (this reply page is a whopping 15kb of transfer). They don't load half a Windows 95 worth of tracking Javascript either. Up until fairly recently, I had two rural WISP connections that mostly didn't meet rated speeds during the day, were borderline unusable during the evening (that Netflix can stream video tolerably on a lossy 1-2Mbit connection is quite impressive, the few times we tried it), and despite that have been working remotely full time on those connections. I'd signed up for the Starlink beta some months back, and we have that as our secondary connection now (it's still exceedingly erratic - I'll go from 5Mbit to 150Mbit and back over the course of a minute and then it'll break my connections as there's no satellite overhead - but this is the point of a beta, and it's better than the 5/1 that mostly delivered about 3/0.5). I like it, but the power consumption on the dish is quite obscene. It idles a hair under 100W, and consumes 2.2kWh/day, per my measurements. I hope that improves over time. It's not that I can't transfer a lot of data, it's just that I prefer not to when I can avoid it. And, there are, often enough, times when it simply won't work. Not a big deal, we live out here willingly, but, yes, it's still a thing. I keep a cheap cell plan too, because I just don't need to be streaming content on my phone.
aksss 6y ago
I can't stand video as casual content generally (e.g. news stories), but in terms of how-to information, a video is truly worth a million words at least. Compare watching five videos on doing a somewhat complex maintenance job on your truck compared to reading the Chiltons manual, and you get an idea.
CapricornNoble 6y ago
>>I've also found that YouTube leads to a very poor, surface understanding of most issues - and this isn't the fault of YouTube specifically, it's just a limit of video. Try watching TIK's BattleStorm Stalingrad series (link below). Exceptionally well-researched and the videos are information-dense. I own one of the books cited in his series, the 700-page "Armageddon in Stalingrad" by David Glantz. His video format communicates a fairly high understanding of the play of events, of the people involved, and other nuances, in less time than pouring over ALL of the source material would take. He mixes tactical/operational maps with dialogue bubbles of key commanders, tables of equipment readiness/casualties, quotes from people who fought there or from books, and lately he's been adding photos showing where on the battlefield they were taken. So a lot of it is book content (and many of the authors comment on his videos, praising his work), but he steps through the battle in almost real-time, and it provides a better view of scope, scale, and even decision-making by key leaders than digesting static maps in a book would. I would challenge the assertion that reading all of the books oneself would yield a significantly higher comprehension of the battle, and it certainly wouldn't be time-efficient to do so. Hence video as a communication medium is not inherently flawed. Like any other medium it is reliant upon exceptionally well-produced content. Most YT content isn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAfo5mse-ag&list=PLNSNgGzaledi9jQeOzCUtBP2pxYdCYiXX https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAfo5mse-ag&list=PLNSNgGzale...