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

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

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

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could quibble over the details of the experiment, such as what sort of lamp to use, but Maxwell's laws would have to be repealed for the experiment to not work essentially as Veritasium claimed.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".

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)

Veritasium may not have mentioned either inductance or displacement current; I don't recall. He did, however, talk about an even more abstract concept which subsumes the effect of both: the Poynting vector. Pedagogically speaking, it was probably a mistake to go there without covering the prerequisites in considerable detail, but that does not, IMHO, make it clickbait: for someone who has some background, this could be food for thought.

Whether the distant end of the loop is closed or not makes a difference eventually, where 'eventually' means once the initial EM wave has reflected from the end and returned to the load.

> Pedagogically speaking, it was probably a mistake to go there without covering the prerequisites

And considering the fact that Derek has a Ph.D. in physics education research [1] that seems like an odd mistake for him to make, unless it was intentional.

As another commenter pointed out [2] Derek's content lately seems to be tailored to the maxim of "Make people believe they're thinking and they'll love you. Make them actually think, and they will hate you." It seems intended to invoke incredulity rather than understanding, presumably because he's decided the former is more marketable - because providing incomplete understanding and phrasing things in a way that's just technically correct enough to invite flame wars boosts engagement and therefore virality.

Yet another commenter [3] invoked https://xkcd.com/169/, which I think is apt.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Muller#Early_life_and_ed...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30558859

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30559815

I remember seeing that video. It was an insta-click for me because I understand very, very little about circuits and electricity. Something that actually bugs me quite a bit.

I understood even less after watching it I think..

You appear to have seen way more of Veritasium's videos than I have, which seems rather odd, given that you dislike them so much.

I've been following him for a long time. His videos didn't used to be this bad.

No, you’re wrong. If you hook an ohmmeter to a 10 light-second long piece of LOSSLESS coax, you’ll measure the characteristic impedance (50 or 75 ohms, probably) of the cable for 20 seconds.

I have done this personally with shorter coax and TDR.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

I guess to summarize, with Destin it feels like you are learning with him and Veritasium feels like you are being lectured.

Funny. Veritasium actually has some videos talking about why he has this approach :)

I saw something similar all the time as a dance teacher: explaining stuff and showing over and over made the students feel like they learned a lot. But they just didn't. It was mostly a total waste of time. I switched to showing ONCE then they had to try. Then I showed again. The speed of learning went up dramatically. The problem I had then was that the students didn't like it!

"Make people believe they're thinking and they'll love you. Make them actually think, and they will hate you."

See, I’ve heard that, but I like being challenged. I like to have to “pause and ponder” as the excellent Youtuber 3Blue1Brown puts it, but Vertiassium is just annoying.

Challenged? Or feel like you're being challenged?

It'd be nice with a real scientific test! There's a lot of subjective feeling here and not anything very solid. Veritasium at least backs up his position with his own thesis research. I find that more compelling as an argument than having a position not backed up by anything at all.

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.

To me the videos feel like a sustained form of clickbait. I keep expecting a payoff at the end of the video, but instead he sort of weaves together a grand narrative that nevertheless feel unfulfilling to my analytical mind. Take this video for instance. In the beginning he talks about analog computers and how they differ from digital computers. Then he talks about how neural networks work. Then he explains how neural networks could be better if they used analog values. But he doesn't ever get around to proving the title of the video ("we're building computers wrong"). He doesn't even convincingly show that we could build an analog neural network given current technology. His video format is just a lofty premise, a middle full of glossed-over science, and a disappointing conclusion with no hard takeaways.

I did like the impossible to measure the speed of light one, even though it has Smarter Every Day.

Ok that one has something I can identify clearly: The way Justin (Smarter Every Day) seems to be just badly hamming up the whole "this is so weird and hard to visualize" as though to pander to the audience who are expected to be baffled by the idea being presented. That was Justin though not Veritassium.

I agree with what you point out about this one.

Destin not Justin sorry. Derpyderpderp.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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/

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.

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.

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

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRr1kaXKBsU

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng

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)_/¯

Doesn't he have some things that seem a bit "In this moment I'm euphoric"?

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.

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.

Committed to, actually. He made a video about how they were going to start doing it more: https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=1035. Also, more recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng.

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.