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With a clickbaity title like that, I knew this would be Veritisium before I clicked it. And now, having verified that it is, I share this information with you.

kgwxd 5y ago
And if you're curious as to why it's clickbaity, there's a Veritasium video for that too :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
- ModernMech 5y ago
  I didn't watch the whole thing but is the ladder ever explained? I didn't understand why he's doing the video on a ladder. Is that part of the clickbait? You have to have a crazy face and be on a ladder, and that's how you make Youtube's algorithm happy? At this point it seems like a vicious spiral. Someone clicks on a guy on a ladder and all of a sudden you're being recommended guys on ladders, so now everyone needs to get on a ladder to get on the front page.
  - droopyEyelids 5y ago
    Youtube runs the thumbnails through a sentiment analysis AI and promotes videos more when they rate with a high likelihood of the bucket of emotions that have been found to correlate with ad impressions.
l33t2328 5y ago
Something about Veritasium absolutely rubs me the wrong way, and I generally like Youtube education creators, but his videos are borderline unwatchable for me. Does anyone have an explanation for what it is about his videos that is so grating?
- jebr224 5y ago
  same, It comes of as smug or some desire to prove he smarter, rather then genuinely trying to educate. The videos are of educational, high quality, and the content is accurate. But the presentation is not for me.
  - netizen-936824 5y ago
    I feel like its more the assertiveness on how right the information he's sharing is, when not everything he makes a video on is quite so correct but there isn't any of this nuance or doubt in his works. Doesn't feel like any of the professors I've spoken to, there's too much confidence. The only thing we can be that confident in is how wrong humans tend to be
- Brian_K_White 5y ago
  I don't know how to articulate it either. It's some form of uncanny valley type of thing where every detail or facet or property I might point out, there are other people exhibiting the same nominal qualities without bothering me. But something here is just slightly off in some way, but so subtly you can't say what it is. I honestly can't say he's doing anything actually wrong. I don't think even the most dumbed down ones are really guilty of being wrong. Not enough that I'd complain about it in a casual yt video. I can see some people maybe not liking his basic style of exposition. That slightly affected dreamy pondering thing. One thing I can observe is that another guy that just turns me right off even worse is the Smarter Every Day, and these two appear in each others videos at least a few times. Or maybe it was just one time and that one time just bugged me that much :) I don't know what it is but I frequently see a video from either of these guys where the topic they are presenting looks interesting, but then I do not like their video on that topic. I think it's down to the presentation just seems a bit too affected. And it's not even as bad as seeming fake or insincere. They both actually strike me as perfectly sincere.
  - jalgos_eminator 5y ago
    Its interesting you mention Destin from Smarter Every Day, because he always came off as a very earnest learner in his videos. Yeah, he's still putting on a show, but it does seem like he genuinely enjoys and revels in the things that he does. It seems to me like Veritasium has a more contrarian thread of: "Oh, you thought the world worked like that? Well you were wrong, and here's a 15 minute video all about how you were wrong." There's an Onion video making fun of Vox that touches on this perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQEq75y18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQEq75y18 I guess to summarize, with Destin it feels like you are learning with him and Veritasium feels like you are being lectured.
    - Brian_K_White 5y ago
      Hey, I also don't like chocolate all that much, and I seem to be some kind of inexplicable alien because of that. So, it's very possible "it's just me" that I don't like good things because curmudgeon. :) I see the distinction you make there now that you point it out.
- ah9dja 5y ago
  Same, but it wasn't this unbearable in the beginning. I think it's partly me thinking there's no way he understands such wide ranging subjects at such great depths without significant research and prep for the video, which contradicts how casually and confidently he's presenting everything. I'm used to expecting a more scripted presentation in these cases, which it probably is, but it doesn't sound like it.
  - boxed 5y ago
    He shows him doing conference calls with scientists explaining shit to him quite a bit though. So that just feels like you're cherry picking.
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    Veritasium used to do a lot less a/b testing on his videos and I guess maybe he just got too big too fast. The thing that bothers me the most though is that he went from almost exclusively explaining interesting scientific facts/experiments to a more "aggressive" style where a lot of his videos are about x being wrong and here is z reason why. And I personally just don't like that style, especially when it turns out that there is a lot more nuance than his titles would indicate. I mean what are the odds of an entire field being wrong , and the truth is actually in a 15 mins youtube video by a very general science channel?
- nodja 5y ago
  Can't say if it's the same feeling, but to me it's the fact that he plays everything off like he's doing a helpful thing and trying to inform you for your own benefit, but the reality is the motivations are warped and the video only exists because some company paid him money to do so. I've unsubscribed from this channel and smarter every day because while I believe the authors feel like they're doing the right thing. They let themselves be highly biased/influenced by their sponsors that I cannot watch the video and believe that they're being honest.
- eternityforest 5y ago
  Doesn't he have some things that seem a bit "In this moment I'm euphoric"?
- chowells 5y ago
  All of his videos that I've seen have a weird thing where he challenges people to explain something, and then he reveals he was talking about something else and their explanation isn't relevant. This is just https://xkcd.com/169/ https://xkcd.com/169/ His videos don't strike me as intending to educate. They strike me as intending to show how much more clever he is than you - and it's entirely that he came up with some weird gotcha that people logically assume he couldn't be talking about because it's nonsense. It's like watching a smug teenager who never grew out of it. No thanks, I don't need that reminder of how grating I was.
  - droidist2 5y ago
    That comic reminds me of all the times I've seen someone pose the Monty Hall Problem without mentioning that the host always reveals a goat on first round.
- fsh 5y ago
  I think he is easily one of the smartest people on YouTube and is producing some of the very best videos. He is also a brilliant educator. For examples, his videos on special [1] and general relativity [2] were real eye-openers for me, even though I have studied physics and have seen this stuff explained a million times before. What I really don't like are the new video titles. At some point he started A/B testing them to maximize his revenue. He even made a video about it [3]. Of course, this selects for the most outrageous clickbait in order to get that sweet engagement. I am starting to wonder if he took into account, how much this is starting to alienate long-term followers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTn6Ewhb27k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTn6Ewhb27k [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
- aroundtown 5y ago
  The two things that bother me about Veritasium are his brand of pseudo-intellectual (smugness maybe?) and the fact that his videos often aren't telling the whole picture.
- dabernathy89 5y ago
  I really enjoy his content, and I don't expect it to be exhaustive or cover all angles and approaches to a topic. To each his own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
tronster 5y ago
I'm subscribed to his channel, as he's covered some great science topics in the past. I skipped this video based on the title - it doesn't tell me anything about the content and "feels" more like a plea for the video to be watched than some good science broken down. I imagine that, over time, this may shift his target audience. But if a new audience is comprised of a demographic he's aiming to reach, and it gets him the views, I can't fault his decision on how he titles the videos, even if they have me skipping them.
- tacitusarc 5y ago
  He updated the title. I watched it when he posted it, at that time it ended in “(for AI)” I think he’s experimenting with clickbait.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - CSSer 5y ago
    Committed to, actually. He made a video about how they were going to start doing it more: https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=1035 https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=1035. Also, more recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng.
  - lIIIllllIIII 5y ago
    I thought it was actually just native advertising for Mythic. Besides that I think the topic is prescient; there's a company local to me in Australia called Brainchip that is doing something similar I think. Given that NNs are just a bunch of matrix multiplications it's a promising approach. I occasionally used to watch Smarter Every Day then he started doing a lot of this stuff, I think one of them might have been for an oil or defense company which I found utterly gross and I've avoided watching the channel ever since.
autokad 5y ago
One thing about Veritasium is that they do get things wrong. They did one on electric circuits where if you had a circuit that was miles long with the energy source sitting right next to you, you would get current as soon as you turned on the electrical circuit because 'electricity doesnt follow the wire' or something along those lines. This has been disproven by people doing experiments
- etskinner 5y ago
  Can you share the experiments that disprove it? The one video I saw proved it. Someone set up some long wires over a farm field, and measured the time to first current flow, which was faster than if the current had to travel the whole wire length. Granted, the full current flow doesn't appear until later, but the first little bit of current is there, which is exactly what Derek said in the Veritasium video
  - autokad 5y ago
    I believe this is the same video, the author theorized (probably correctly) that it was because there was residual 'power' on the wire, as it acts like a giant capacitor, among other things. this is because the wire that immediately showed up was extremely small and dissipated very quickly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8
- mannykannot 5y ago
  One could quibble over the details of the experiment, such as what sort of lamp to use, but Maxwell's laws would have to be repealed for the experiment to not work essentially as Veritasium claimed. Check out "electromagnetic induction" and "displacement current".
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    The problem is that he frames the whole whole experiment as if the inductive current is a property of the circuit rather than a property of two separate wires being next to each other - he heavily implies the inductance is result of the current "starting" to travel through the loop, and IIRC never once uses the term "inductance" (which seems odd for a video purporting to promote understanding rather than just be clickbait). (The fact that the loop is closed can't be relevant by simple thought experiment, because otherwise it implies you could get ftl signaling by having a switch on the physically distant checking whether the "tiny current" flows when you close the source)

kgwxd 5y ago

And if you're curious as to why it's clickbaity, there's a Veritasium video for that too :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

ModernMech 5y ago
I didn't watch the whole thing but is the ladder ever explained? I didn't understand why he's doing the video on a ladder. Is that part of the clickbait? You have to have a crazy face and be on a ladder, and that's how you make Youtube's algorithm happy? At this point it seems like a vicious spiral. Someone clicks on a guy on a ladder and all of a sudden you're being recommended guys on ladders, so now everyone needs to get on a ladder to get on the front page.
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  Youtube runs the thumbnails through a sentiment analysis AI and promotes videos more when they rate with a high likelihood of the bucket of emotions that have been found to correlate with ad impressions.

l33t2328 5y ago

Something about Veritasium absolutely rubs me the wrong way, and I generally like Youtube education creators, but his videos are borderline unwatchable for me. Does anyone have an explanation for what it is about his videos that is so grating?

jebr224 5y ago
same, It comes of as smug or some desire to prove he smarter, rather then genuinely trying to educate. The videos are of educational, high quality, and the content is accurate. But the presentation is not for me.
- netizen-936824 5y ago
  I feel like its more the assertiveness on how right the information he's sharing is, when not everything he makes a video on is quite so correct but there isn't any of this nuance or doubt in his works. Doesn't feel like any of the professors I've spoken to, there's too much confidence. The only thing we can be that confident in is how wrong humans tend to be
Brian_K_White 5y ago
I don't know how to articulate it either. It's some form of uncanny valley type of thing where every detail or facet or property I might point out, there are other people exhibiting the same nominal qualities without bothering me. But something here is just slightly off in some way, but so subtly you can't say what it is. I honestly can't say he's doing anything actually wrong. I don't think even the most dumbed down ones are really guilty of being wrong. Not enough that I'd complain about it in a casual yt video. I can see some people maybe not liking his basic style of exposition. That slightly affected dreamy pondering thing. One thing I can observe is that another guy that just turns me right off even worse is the Smarter Every Day, and these two appear in each others videos at least a few times. Or maybe it was just one time and that one time just bugged me that much :) I don't know what it is but I frequently see a video from either of these guys where the topic they are presenting looks interesting, but then I do not like their video on that topic. I think it's down to the presentation just seems a bit too affected. And it's not even as bad as seeming fake or insincere. They both actually strike me as perfectly sincere.
- jalgos_eminator 5y ago
  Its interesting you mention Destin from Smarter Every Day, because he always came off as a very earnest learner in his videos. Yeah, he's still putting on a show, but it does seem like he genuinely enjoys and revels in the things that he does. It seems to me like Veritasium has a more contrarian thread of: "Oh, you thought the world worked like that? Well you were wrong, and here's a 15 minute video all about how you were wrong." There's an Onion video making fun of Vox that touches on this perfectly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQEq75y18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQEq75y18 I guess to summarize, with Destin it feels like you are learning with him and Veritasium feels like you are being lectured.
  - Brian_K_White 5y ago
    Hey, I also don't like chocolate all that much, and I seem to be some kind of inexplicable alien because of that. So, it's very possible "it's just me" that I don't like good things because curmudgeon. :) I see the distinction you make there now that you point it out.
ah9dja 5y ago
Same, but it wasn't this unbearable in the beginning. I think it's partly me thinking there's no way he understands such wide ranging subjects at such great depths without significant research and prep for the video, which contradicts how casually and confidently he's presenting everything. I'm used to expecting a more scripted presentation in these cases, which it probably is, but it doesn't sound like it.
- boxed 5y ago
  He shows him doing conference calls with scientists explaining shit to him quite a bit though. So that just feels like you're cherry picking.
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Veritasium used to do a lot less a/b testing on his videos and I guess maybe he just got too big too fast. The thing that bothers me the most though is that he went from almost exclusively explaining interesting scientific facts/experiments to a more "aggressive" style where a lot of his videos are about x being wrong and here is z reason why. And I personally just don't like that style, especially when it turns out that there is a lot more nuance than his titles would indicate. I mean what are the odds of an entire field being wrong , and the truth is actually in a 15 mins youtube video by a very general science channel?
nodja 5y ago
Can't say if it's the same feeling, but to me it's the fact that he plays everything off like he's doing a helpful thing and trying to inform you for your own benefit, but the reality is the motivations are warped and the video only exists because some company paid him money to do so. I've unsubscribed from this channel and smarter every day because while I believe the authors feel like they're doing the right thing. They let themselves be highly biased/influenced by their sponsors that I cannot watch the video and believe that they're being honest.
eternityforest 5y ago
Doesn't he have some things that seem a bit "In this moment I'm euphoric"?
chowells 5y ago
All of his videos that I've seen have a weird thing where he challenges people to explain something, and then he reveals he was talking about something else and their explanation isn't relevant. This is just https://xkcd.com/169/ https://xkcd.com/169/ His videos don't strike me as intending to educate. They strike me as intending to show how much more clever he is than you - and it's entirely that he came up with some weird gotcha that people logically assume he couldn't be talking about because it's nonsense. It's like watching a smug teenager who never grew out of it. No thanks, I don't need that reminder of how grating I was.
- droidist2 5y ago
  That comic reminds me of all the times I've seen someone pose the Monty Hall Problem without mentioning that the host always reveals a goat on first round.
fsh 5y ago
I think he is easily one of the smartest people on YouTube and is producing some of the very best videos. He is also a brilliant educator. For examples, his videos on special [1] and general relativity [2] were real eye-openers for me, even though I have studied physics and have seen this stuff explained a million times before. What I really don't like are the new video titles. At some point he started A/B testing them to maximize his revenue. He even made a video about it [3]. Of course, this selects for the most outrageous clickbait in order to get that sweet engagement. I am starting to wonder if he took into account, how much this is starting to alienate long-term followers. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTn6Ewhb27k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTn6Ewhb27k [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng
aroundtown 5y ago
The two things that bother me about Veritasium are his brand of pseudo-intellectual (smugness maybe?) and the fact that his videos often aren't telling the whole picture.
dabernathy89 5y ago
I really enjoy his content, and I don't expect it to be exhaustive or cover all angles and approaches to a topic. To each his own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tronster 5y ago

I'm subscribed to his channel, as he's covered some great science topics in the past. I skipped this video based on the title - it doesn't tell me anything about the content and "feels" more like a plea for the video to be watched than some good science broken down. I imagine that, over time, this may shift his target audience. But if a new audience is comprised of a demographic he's aiming to reach, and it gets him the views, I can't fault his decision on how he titles the videos, even if they have me skipping them.

tacitusarc 5y ago
He updated the title. I watched it when he posted it, at that time it ended in “(for AI)” I think he’s experimenting with clickbait.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- CSSer 5y ago
  Committed to, actually. He made a video about how they were going to start doing it more: https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=1035 https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=1035. Also, more recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng.
- lIIIllllIIII 5y ago
  I thought it was actually just native advertising for Mythic. Besides that I think the topic is prescient; there's a company local to me in Australia called Brainchip that is doing something similar I think. Given that NNs are just a bunch of matrix multiplications it's a promising approach. I occasionally used to watch Smarter Every Day then he started doing a lot of this stuff, I think one of them might have been for an oil or defense company which I found utterly gross and I've avoided watching the channel ever since.

autokad 5y ago

One thing about Veritasium is that they do get things wrong. They did one on electric circuits where if you had a circuit that was miles long with the energy source sitting right next to you, you would get current as soon as you turned on the electrical circuit because 'electricity doesnt follow the wire' or something along those lines. This has been disproven by people doing experiments

etskinner 5y ago
Can you share the experiments that disprove it? The one video I saw proved it. Someone set up some long wires over a farm field, and measured the time to first current flow, which was faster than if the current had to travel the whole wire length. Granted, the full current flow doesn't appear until later, but the first little bit of current is there, which is exactly what Derek said in the Veritasium video
- autokad 5y ago
  I believe this is the same video, the author theorized (probably correctly) that it was because there was residual 'power' on the wire, as it acts like a giant capacitor, among other things. this is because the wire that immediately showed up was extremely small and dissipated very quickly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vrhk5OjBP8
mannykannot 5y ago
One could quibble over the details of the experiment, such as what sort of lamp to use, but Maxwell's laws would have to be repealed for the experiment to not work essentially as Veritasium claimed. Check out "electromagnetic induction" and "displacement current".
- LordDragonfang 5y ago
  The problem is that he frames the whole whole experiment as if the inductive current is a property of the circuit rather than a property of two separate wires being next to each other - he heavily implies the inductance is result of the current "starting" to travel through the loop, and IIRC never once uses the term "inductance" (which seems odd for a video purporting to promote understanding rather than just be clickbait). (The fact that the loop is closed can't be relevant by simple thought experiment, because otherwise it implies you could get ftl signaling by having a switch on the physically distant checking whether the "tiny current" flows when you close the source)