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.