5 ms·

I like Cal Newport and own all of his books, but this sort of commentary is ultimately just pretentious. Aristocrats back in the day had similar thoughts about

I like Cal Newport and own all of his books, but this sort of commentary is ultimately just pretentious. Aristocrats back in the day had similar thoughts about peasants even being literate. I assure you, by sheer virtue of quantity, no matter what criteria you use YouTube/TikTok/Shorts/etc has a [set of videos] which demonstrates quality similar to any novel or literary work. It's true there's more garbage out there than ever before, but this is an artifact of democratization of creation and this is good imho. I also reject the premise that time to creation is an indication of quality.

8n4vidtmkvmk 9mo ago
Time alone doesn't equate to quality, but you can't deny that creating something really good doesn't take a long while.
- thebiblelover7 9mo ago
  I think you mean "creating something really good doesn't take a short time"
  - hdjrudni 9mo ago
    Can't deny that it takes a long time... Pretty sure that's right.
YurgenJurgensen 9mo ago
That reasoning doesn’t make any sense. Half a billion litres of Coca Cola are produced every single day, but the chance of a bottle of Coca Cola being made whose quality is similar to that of a good imperial stout is exactly zero, even though they’re both brown carbonated beverages. No amount of quantity can overcome a process intended to standardise for something other than quality. If the algorithm aggressively selects for mediocrity, mediocrity is what will be produced.
- websiteapi 9mo ago
  I'm not sure I understand your analogy. YouTube has both diversity and quantity at levels tens of orders of magnitude higher than any high-quality-low-quantity good. Given the subjectivity of quality and amounts considered it's simply statistical fact that YouTube will always have things at the highest ends of subjective quality for any category. The algorithm doesn't select for mediocrity - it selects for viewership, but regardless there are millions of creators at there that aren't optimizing for views anyway. It's the same reason some set of random blog posts or comments on sites such as this one will have quality similar to snippets of the highest quality technical documentation. Sheer diversity and quantity will always win.
  - Yodel0914 9mo ago
    I don’t see how it’s is a statistical fact. There’s nothing I’ve seen on YouTube that compares even slightly to a high quality movie or TV series (unless it’s an unauthorised copy of a movie or TV series…).
    - websiteapi 9mo ago
      that's a funny example, because something like Cobra Kai literally began on YouTube, there are others like Hazbin Hotel. anyway, as for the statistics, for the case of YouTube since there are is no forced directive to which all videos must follow (creatively), you can treat all videos as random attempts. then it's just stats to show that such a distribution will have outliers that match or exceed in subjective quality the gate kept works (traditional tvs or literature).
      - YurgenJurgensen 9mo ago
        Well, you’ll never see an erotic film on YouTube, or a war documentary using real combat footage for example, so there are many categories where it’s simply not capable of competing. And even without straight-up banned content, ‘advertiser-unfriendly’ content is aggressively buried by the algorithm, which discourages people from making it, so the ‘quantity’ part might not be true. Some content might be so heavily punished by the algorithm that almost nobody thinks to make it. This is a problem for your position, as it’s not enough for YouTube to win in some categories; it has to win in every category.
mmooss 9mo ago
> no matter what criteria you use YouTube/TikTok/Shorts/etc has a [set of videos] which demonstrates quality similar to any novel or literary work. Could you provide some examples that match the best literary works? I'd love to see them. Edit: Here are some proposed examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388246 Nothing prevents the video medium from matching literature - full-length films, for example, are on that level. I think there are two drawbacks to short video: First, the amount of content - their length - limits what they can accomplish, like short stories are limited. Second, the medium hasn't had time to mature as an artform; novels and film, for example, were both around for a long time before there was much great art.

8n4vidtmkvmk 9mo ago

Time alone doesn't equate to quality, but you can't deny that creating something really good doesn't take a long while.

thebiblelover7 9mo ago
I think you mean "creating something really good doesn't take a short time"
- hdjrudni 9mo ago
  Can't deny that it takes a long time... Pretty sure that's right.

YurgenJurgensen 9mo ago

That reasoning doesn’t make any sense. Half a billion litres of Coca Cola are produced every single day, but the chance of a bottle of Coca Cola being made whose quality is similar to that of a good imperial stout is exactly zero, even though they’re both brown carbonated beverages. No amount of quantity can overcome a process intended to standardise for something other than quality. If the algorithm aggressively selects for mediocrity, mediocrity is what will be produced.

websiteapi 9mo ago
I'm not sure I understand your analogy. YouTube has both diversity and quantity at levels tens of orders of magnitude higher than any high-quality-low-quantity good. Given the subjectivity of quality and amounts considered it's simply statistical fact that YouTube will always have things at the highest ends of subjective quality for any category. The algorithm doesn't select for mediocrity - it selects for viewership, but regardless there are millions of creators at there that aren't optimizing for views anyway. It's the same reason some set of random blog posts or comments on sites such as this one will have quality similar to snippets of the highest quality technical documentation. Sheer diversity and quantity will always win.
- Yodel0914 9mo ago
  I don’t see how it’s is a statistical fact. There’s nothing I’ve seen on YouTube that compares even slightly to a high quality movie or TV series (unless it’s an unauthorised copy of a movie or TV series…).
  - websiteapi 9mo ago
    that's a funny example, because something like Cobra Kai literally began on YouTube, there are others like Hazbin Hotel. anyway, as for the statistics, for the case of YouTube since there are is no forced directive to which all videos must follow (creatively), you can treat all videos as random attempts. then it's just stats to show that such a distribution will have outliers that match or exceed in subjective quality the gate kept works (traditional tvs or literature).
    - YurgenJurgensen 9mo ago
      Well, you’ll never see an erotic film on YouTube, or a war documentary using real combat footage for example, so there are many categories where it’s simply not capable of competing. And even without straight-up banned content, ‘advertiser-unfriendly’ content is aggressively buried by the algorithm, which discourages people from making it, so the ‘quantity’ part might not be true. Some content might be so heavily punished by the algorithm that almost nobody thinks to make it. This is a problem for your position, as it’s not enough for YouTube to win in some categories; it has to win in every category.

mmooss 9mo ago

> no matter what criteria you use YouTube/TikTok/Shorts/etc has a [set of videos] which demonstrates quality similar to any novel or literary work. Could you provide some examples that match the best literary works? I'd love to see them. Edit: Here are some proposed examples: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388246 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46388246 Nothing prevents the video medium from matching literature - full-length films, for example, are on that level. I think there are two drawbacks to short video: First, the amount of content - their length - limits what they can accomplish, like short stories are limited. Second, the medium hasn't had time to mature as an artform; novels and film, for example, were both around for a long time before there was much great art.