Oh come on, it’s a very well made video and it made perfect sense to start with Game of Life.

There are many bizarre visualizations that are solely cosmetic and serve no purpose other than to attract the eyes. I've noticed the same pattern with many other videos churned out by popular science channels. The visual editing is delirious and the narration is devoid of much intellectual substance. Hard to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with it, it's just extremely bland and borderline uncanny valley.

This video is targeted at the general public, not computer scientists or mathematicians. I think it does a great way of explaining complex concepts for lay people and make mathematics feel accessible and interesting. I can imagine my teenage step-daughter watching this video without getting bored to death, and seeing math as something interesting, a task in which I've been failing miserably so far.

That’s because those things make the video more interesting to watch. It’s targeted at a more general audience, not at scientists.

It’s a big bowl of sugar.

veritasium used to be a really good channel, but a few years ago he tasted what it was like to have a viral video. since they he basically admitted (somewhere near the end of https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8 ) that from then on he will be making clickbait style videos

Clickbait is more about titles and thumbnails and less about the content itself. The content of this video is hardly what I would consider clickbait.