[foerbert]

Familiar to a greater or lesser degree with most, but not all of those. I'd take exception to a couple inclusions.

- Undecided w/Matt Ferrel

This one is probably the most questionable. I was always a bit leery due to the titles being a bit too accepting of anything you might find on r/Futurology, and then happened on a Thunderf00t Busted (not a regular viewer there either) about some of his videos and yeah. I think it's safe to say he's not doing much of a critical evaluation of anything as he is just reading whatever cool sounding press releases he finds. I'm usually fairly allergic to more absolute statements (part of the reason I'm not such a regular viewer of Thunderf00t's), but even with the limited amount I've seen I'm pretty confident in writing off Undecided w/Matt Ferrel. At the very least, it deserves the same kind of credibility as anything you might find on r/Futurology.

- Veritasium

Yeah, I know. But his repeated issues with basically doing ad-spots as videos, and his lack of acknowledging the issue, really soured me on him. If I'm learning about something through somebody like Veritasium, it's not a topic I'm well versed in to begin with and it's unlikely that I'm going to pursue it all that much further independently. That sort of format is also particularly prone to causing me to drop my more rigorous filters. All of that means credibility is particularly important there, and Veritasium completely lost my trust that he wouldn't try to slip advertising by me while pretending it's relatively unbiased information that's been checked in good faith.

Even before that, he seemed to me to tend a little too far towards fully selling high school style explanations, without making it clear that that's what he's doing. By high school style explanations, I mean those that are nearly outright lies, serve to help students work their way to the point that they can make use of the next more nuanced and complex explanation which is closer to the truth.

There's nothing inherently wrong with using those sorts of explanations, but when addressing such a wide audience with no expectation that they will be looking deeper later, I think it's very important to be clear about the limitations of the information provided. With Derek, you get exactly as much nuance as he thinks makes for a good story, and he does his best to leave you with the impression that's all there is.

[hansword]

I want to very much second excluding Veritasium. Whenever he talked about something I was knowledgeable in, he made mistakes. This combined with branding himself as 'the element of truth' and the increasing over-clickbaity titles and thumbs made me stop watching him.

It's an entertainment channel, and if you want light science entertainment, and expect to forget everything within a few hours, it's a good channel. If you want a science/learning/education channel, it isn't.

[bil7]

>the increasing over-clickbaity titles and thumbs

an unfortunate appeal to the recommendation algorithm that is now a must. You are leaving views on the table without employing these clickbait methods. One solution that many channels use including Veritasium is trying out various clickbait packaging for the first 24-48h, then swapping to something more descriptive.

When these videos represent not only one person's livelihood but also the salaries of a team of producers, camera operators, scriptwriters, etc it just makes unfortunate sense to appeal to the algorithm

[bison3]

To me it's more the topics he's covering that are clickbaity, I personally can live with the titles but I feel like Veritasium intentionally find topics that have some controversy(or fabricates some if they don't) like the physics debate one, and the "misconception" about electricity one. Instead of focusing on teaching and explain practically how things work in our world he chooses examples that are very abstract and frankly not relevant to most viewers. I feel like it's the Mr. Beast model of doing youtube and one that I'm not a fan of. This combined with the issues other commenters have noted about getting things wrong which in itself if fine but when others have called him out on it he hasn't handled the feedback well. I only noticed this trend the past few years, but really turns me off.

[hansword]

You are right. And I do understand why he does it. I can see his side.

But I sit on the other side. I hate it and will tell everyone how much I hate it.

--- Edit:

Or, if you prefer, in market terms: Because I am not alone, there is a market for non-clickbaity titles, non-exaggerated thumbs, and there are channels that cater to this market.

[BeefWellington]

I think the overwhelming majority of people on HN (and possibly elsewhere) would prefer if they could just have a homepage that was just reverse chronological ordered videos from their subscriptions, with a separate "Discover" tab, with no interference from their algorithm.

This thread might prove an excellent case study for YouTube. I was subscribed to all of the channels I listed and a few more along the same lines; my recommendations have never shown me videos from some of the other channels people have posted in this thread or in reply to my own post. If you want a good recommendations system, this thread has been better than YouTube's algorithm for discoverability on these kinds of topics.

I can't imagine anyone is actually happy with how YouTube works on this front.

[Kye]

I like the home page as it is, but I understand why it frustrates both video creators and people who don't mesh with the algorithm.

Absent action from YouTube, this appears to be what you're looking for on a different page: https://www.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions?flow=2

[gwd]

> the increasing over-clickbaity titles and thumbs made me stop watching him.

He actually talks about that here:

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

Apparently an early video of his about a spinning basketball originally had a non-clickbait title; someone else posted it with a clickbait title and got at least an order of magnitude more views. So now, he makes clickbaity titles.

[tinco]

Matt Ferrell's Undecided is great. Yeah he just explains interesting press releases, he isn't shy about that either. Why would he want/need to be critical about them? Unless he's reading press releases of companies that don't actually exist I don't see how this could be a bad thing.

Disliking Veritasium because of some ads is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. If he manages to sneak in an ad without me noticing, all the better, he's getting paid and I wasn't annoyed. I watched all of his video and I don't remember any annoying ads. He also produces some of the greatest and most beautifully produced explanations of interesting maths and physics concepts on YouTube, all for free.

[foerbert]

> Disliking Veritasium because of some ads is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I don't think we're talking about the same things here. I'm talking about wholesale videos that are effectively a big, undisclosed ad. I don't mean I don't like how he does ad reads. I mean I don't like how he's created entire videos that are basically ads and then passed them off as his own original good-faith attempt to inform.

It's not so much actively annoying as is it actively deceitful.

[BeefWellington]

Do you have exact examples of that?

Whenever I've seen people trot this argument out in the past it's typically sourced from a couple of old Twitter threads and it's a 20/20 hindsight thing wherein he is talking about something exciting and new looks like a shill five years on because they were only talking about that one specific company's thing, ignoring the context of the video and the "at the time this was completely new" factor.

I've seen the same happen for things like ML as applied to a variety of things, most notably Tesla's autopilot features.

[foerbert]

Already posted in an earlier response to you.

But no, nothing like that. These were relatively recent videos about newish but well-established industries. In particular Waymo's self-driving cars and, to a lesser extent, some company doing consumer DNA testing.

These were pretty blatant immediately, no hind-sight or digging required. And full videos too, not ancillary comments like on Twitter.

[ShortStretto]

Matt also has a followup podcast about each episode where questions are answered. It's on youtube as well, https://www.youtube.com/c/StillTBDPodcast.

[Kirby64]

The issue at hand is that Undecided presents press releases as fact, without adding any fact checking or caveats that come along with them. One of his most recent videos about hydrogen storage disks basically highlights this more directly, since he presents this technology as if it's a solved problem when in actuality it's more so a barely formed idea with many many caveats.

[BeefWellington]

> This one is probably the most questionable. I was always a bit leery due to the titles being a bit too accepting of anything you might find on r/Futurology, and then happened on a Thunderf00t Busted (not a regular viewer there either) about some of his videos and yeah. I think it's safe to say he's not doing much of a critical evaluation of anything as he is just reading whatever cool sounding press releases he finds. I'm usually fairly allergic to more absolute statements (part of the reason I'm not such a regular viewer of Thunderf00t's), but even with the limited amount I've seen I'm pretty confident in writing off Undecided w/Matt Ferrel. At the very least, it deserves the same kind of credibility as anything you might find on r/Futurology.

I don't know what to tell you if you believe Thunderf00t's "debunking" is more valuable than your own viewing of any given channel. Thunderf00t is someone who is on his own very problematic and misleading.

The question posed was about things for the intellectually curious, not for "who is the most accurate science communicator on YouTube" so I think including people who cover topics in a simple way are useful.

I'd encourage you to look at many of his videos that cover basic things like how geothermal heating and heat pumps work.

Regarding Veritasium, that is an even weaker argument IMO. If we're going to try to pillory everyone trying to make a living off communicating STEM topics I'm not sure who we'll have left in the space. The boring altruistic rich people?

I'd love to see examples of him outright lying or misleading his audience if you have it, because that would certainly change my mind on recommending his channel to people.

[specialist]

Yup. Undecided is akin to Popular Mechanics. Surveys the field and builds awareness for casual learners like myself.

I appreciated the episodes on emerging solar cells and battery technologies. And now if I want to know more about perovskite solar cells, for example, I have a clue where to start.

I also like that Matt has some skin in the game, relating his own experience with roof top solar. It'd be most awesome if Matt chronicled his own new home like Matt Risinger's The Build Show just did. https://www.youtube.com/user/mattrisinger

[foerbert]

> I don't know what to tell you if you believe Thunderf00t's "debunking" is more valuable than your own viewing of any given channel.

I wasn't very inclined to view Matt Ferrel's videos much in the first place. I was too leery of the way they were presented to consider it worth my time to investigate further. I was wondering if I was missing out, but never decided to really try to find out first-hand as it just wasn't worth it to me.

It was at that point that I saw Thunderf00t's video, and I decided to see what his take was. As you note, I'm a bit wary of Thunderf00t as well. I don't watch his videos often and when I do I ensure to remain a little more actively critical. Based on what I saw there, I didn't feel inclined to further wonder if I was missing anything by avoiding Ferel's videos.

I'm sure that video, and the follow up, were probably some of the weakest from Ferel. However, it was less the actual content and rather the approach that didn't fit what I'd want to watch. Uncritical readings of pie-in-the-sky press releases isn't my thing, and the follow-up in particular made it clear that that was not where Ferel thought the problem was.

> Regarding Veritasium, that is an even weaker argument IMO. If we're going to try to pillory everyone trying to make a living off communicating STEM topics I'm not sure who we'll have left in the space.

Making a living is one thing. But that isn't my problem. I wouldn't recommend avoiding his channel if it was just a matter of him running ads and/or doing some ad-reads.

> I'd love to see examples of him outright lying or misleading his audience if you have it, because that would certainly change my mind on recommending his channel to people.

The largest straw for me was probably the one on self-driving cars with Waymo. For an in-depth look, Tom Nicholas did a pretty good job[1] covering it from what I recall. In particular the comments on that video from Veritasium really shook my trust, IIRC.

Around the same time I also took issue with several of his other videos. The one that I recall now was about some kind of DNA testing company. It was another one where the company both sponsored the video and provided exclusive access. There my issue was largely with how he soft-balled the interviews and even outside of them didn't bring up what I felt were the most pertinent - and well-known - arguments against such companies in general, as well as (again, IIRC) that specific companies actions. These ones weren't, as far as I know, as extreme as the Waymo one. But they - and the lack of any sort of response from Veritasium when many people brought the issue up - were enough to already have me teetering on the edge when the Waymo one nailed the coffin shut.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc

[BeefWellington]

> The largest straw for me was probably the one on self-driving cars with Waymo. For an in-depth look, Tom Nicholas did a pretty good job[1] covering it from what I recall. In particular the comments on that video from Veritasium really shook my trust, IIRC.

Thanks for the follow-up, I'll give it a watch (and a read, as I see there was some back and forth in the comments).

[BeefWellington]

After watching the full video and reading the comments exchanged, I don't believe Veritasium there is guilty of anything more than believing studies with questionable funding sources and buying into autonomous cars too soon.

Tom Nicholas' set of arguments are in general good fodder for discussion but the premise is ultimately undermined by the video clickbait title and thumbnail calling several different creators' works abject propaganda. I get it, there's a counterculture cottage industry to be had going after larger creators.

To pick one example of problematic information: Tom presents his argument that the figure of 94% of accidents being caused by human error is a misleading statistic and argues an example scenario that would seem to assign blame to the driver unfairly (a hedge or tree branch obscures a stop sign, road markers have been worn away, etc.).

The issue with this presentation is that as a counterargument to the roughly 2.1 million accidents being compared to, it utterly fails on its face. There's no possible way that represents a substantial enough portion of the accidents to be more than a rounding error. I haven't poured over the NHTSA/CDC data around that, obviously but this just doesn't pass the smell test of "how likely is the described counter-scenario?" However, the overwhelming majority of accidents have been shown to occur close to home during a daily commute, in areas you are likely familiar with.[1] Additionally, it also doesn't square with the evidence that shows the majority (~55%) of fatal car accidents are single vehicle accidents.[2] It's an example of a contrived example that is so contrived so as to be meaningless. In a section of the video with the title "Lying with Statistics" it's an interesting choice to Lie without Statistics instead.

If you don't believe the researchers of the Waymo-funded study were ethical based wholly on where their money comes from and its lack of peer review, that's very reasonable. However, the funding source is less problematic to me than the lack of peer review because the system of scientific study is broken throughout the world, and we often see companies commissioning studies for whatever their particular area of operation is because they're the only ones with a vested interest in examining it. I'd love to see a separate solution for that.

Another example: In his text responses to Veritasium, Tom responds with:

    It is, again, completely disingenuous to refuse to mention the maps which Waymo vehicles rely on when it suits your argument during your initial video but to now hold them up as a vital part of the technology. You spoke as though those maps didn’t exist in the video and so it was only fair, in critiquing your video, to respond in kind.

    A further point for consideration here is the extent to which creating maps/scans for the entirety of even the United States (let alone other countries too) is practical. That seems like a highly intensive task which would be very costly, possibly to the point it’s unworkable.

I would hope the flaw in this concept is obvious to anyone here but there are OPEN SOURCE high-quality sources of mapping information, let alone maps that could be built by someone with funding.

Secondly, the idea of crying foul that because Veritasium didn't mention the maps "enough" in their video when they they responded to him about it is a further example of goalpost shifting. Furthermore, if you're trying to get to the source of truth, don't you think it's wise in terms of critique to you know, BE ACCURATE about what you're saying? This kind of thing should be unacceptable for someone proclaiming to be exposing "the extent to which a creator signing up to one of these sponsorship deals results in them compromising the editorial content of their videos to the point where education becomes misinformation."

I'm not going to rehash the entire argument between them. I think the primary thing Veritasium is guilty of here is of overstating and over-believing how ready for use autonomous cars are. I get it, Derick's ridden in one, so that likely leaves an impression (the psychology of "I wouldn't have done this if it was unsafe" at play). I disagree though, as I've said in other threads on HN, I'm staunchly against putting these things on the road until they're better than humans. It certainly doesn't rise to the level of propaganda in my opinion, even though I disagree with Veritasium on how ready the things are.

This is a good example of why I'd recommend the channel though. Veritasium actually responded to the criticism video with their own points and responded to Tom Nicholas when he sent them requests for comment. If nothing else this at least demonstrates a willingness to engage.

[1]: https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2108966/survey-finds-vehicle-... (I can only find contemporary articles, not the survey itself, though this particular fact is repeated here in Australia/New Zealand with an actual study: https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/yes,-car-crashes-are-more-li...)

[2]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/urban...

[foerbert]

> After watching the full video and reading the comments exchanged, I don't believe Veritasium there is guilty of anything more than believing studies with questionable funding sources and buying into autonomous cars too soon.

Perhaps. But even if that was the case, the circumstances around it was enough to destroy my trust for Veritasium.

The way in which Waymo was interacting with him and other YouTubers should have set off all kinds of alarm bells. I couldn't come up with a more perfect hypothetical situation in which I'd expect him to be fully engaged in skepticism and critical analysis.

I normally wouldn't blame people too much for any specific instance of getting caught up in something cool. But if there was ever a time to do so, it was this.

A big company in the most recent field joining the list of perpetually-just-around-the-corner technology, and one aimed directly at consumers at that, grabs a bunch of YouTubers together to make a bunch of videos for simultaneous(-ish?) release and gives them some group presentations and special access to the company. If you aren't going to be maximally critical of the companies claims in this circumstance, when are you?

So even if he just got caught up in the coolness despite the best intentions, I don't think he deserves a pass. I can't just go back to assuming he's actually properly evaluating his sources in all his other videos.

And it wasn't even like we just got a video devoid of heavy review. We got a video with outright non-cited nor disclaimed statements straight off the presser being presented as if they were his own original thoughts/analysis.

The real problem for me here was mostly one of ethics and trust. I didn't feel like the way he went about making the video was particularly ethical - especially without a much stronger level of disclaimer. And I lost my trust in his ability to actually critically review the information he presented.

If I'm going to have to watch his videos with full alertness and skepticism, his videos aren't useful to me. I don't watch Veritasium or other such channels for information that is all that important to me, but rather as a mildly intellectual way to pass time and be exposed to new ideas - often while eating, doing something menial, or winding down for the day. It's still important to me that that information is reasonably accurate, as it still tends to join the hoard of random things in my head that 'I've heard somewhere...'.

If I don't trust the presenter to both have a good head on their shoulders, and to have actually used it in good faith when creating the video, their videos are useless to me.

> I would hope the flaw in this concept is obvious to anyone here but there are OPEN SOURCE high-quality sources of mapping information, let alone maps that could be built by someone with funding.

I honestly don't remember much about this specific point by now, but the use of the word 'scans' in the quote makes me suspect we're talking not about just about something like OSM but rather something more like a curated and processed point-cloud.

If so, that does seem like something beyond the capabilities of the open-source mapping movement without crazy amounts of funding just to generate the raw point clouds. And even then, how many volunteers do you need to validate a map/scan as correct and accurate enough for a self-driving car to use it as a primary data source?

But maybe I'm just getting thrown off by the word 'scan' and this is a non-issue.

As for the rest... honestly I'd have to dive in to even begin to address any of it. I don't doubt Tom Nicholas made some errors, at least. But as I said earlier, this stuff wasn't really my main concern to begin with.

> This is a good example of why I'd recommend the channel though. Veritasium actually responded to the criticism video with their own points

Conversely, this was one of the major strikes for me. Of course responding is good in general, but I found his response extremely poor. Based on memory, I felt like he avoided the larger issues and instead quibbled about specific details that weren't even related to the major issues I had. I was left thinking that he was clearly more interested in PR than in a good-faith discussion about the various issues.

To be fair, at the point I read the response, I was already disinclined to cut Veritasium a whole lot of slack. But his response was about as bad as it got for me, and cut off any desire I had to continue giving him some slack.

> Tom Nicholas' set of arguments are in general good fodder for discussion but the premise is ultimately undermined by the video clickbait title and thumbnail calling several different creators' works abject propaganda.

I won't disagree with you there. I'd honestly forgotten about that aspect of his video by now. Though if you're willing to cut Veritasium some slack on his titles and thumbnails, I'd say Tom Nicholas deserves some too. But really I'd prefer nobody did it in the first place.

I'm guessing his presentation has similar issues even though you didn't mention it. And I agree with you again. I've actually just stopped watching some otherwise interesting videos partway through recently because that sort of thing started bugging me so much. I can't fault you there.

[tiborsaas]

So basically Veritasium is selling ads to keep making more videos and sometimes he makes things simple enough that high schoolers can understand it? Ok :)

[foerbert]

I mean, if you want to consider "selling ads" to include selling undisclosed ads as organic, original, and good-faith reporting of accurate information, then yeah, sure? I sure wouldn't, though.

[tiborsaas]

Care to share an example? It makes talking about this really hard.

[foerbert]

Sure. Here's a video critiquing one of Veritasium's videos I had issues with. Check this[1] thread for further details about it from me and some good rebuttals from another commenter.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=foerbert#32223515

[namaria]

I think it's best not to conflate entertainment and information sources. "Informative" youtube channels fall on a weird middle ground where their content seems to be edifying you but they are so riddles with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, you have to spend a lot of energy filtering it or you might develop misconceptions. I'd rather just watch silly videos and get my information from reliable publishing house that provide some expectation of curation and fact checking.

[obscurette]

About Veritasium. These good stories with dubious claims and with "but I wasn't wrong!" and "at least I made you think" reactions is considered OK by most in the US for example. But in eastern parts of the world it is treated as a pure smartass behavior.

[foerbert]

Is it? Maybe (probably) I'm unusual as far as US folk go, but I think it's pretty squarely in the realm of smartassery.

[tpush]

If you're talking about the electricity video, that one was not wrong at all.

[magarnicle]

No, but he didn't put enough effort into making sure his question was clear, and it felt a bit deceptive ("click-batey"). He asked when the bulb would light up at all, but it seems most people thought he was asking when it would light up fully. He didn't make that clear initially, and then didn't admit later that he had communicated poorly.

That being said, I really like his videos and don't mind most of the issues people bring up with him here.

[p1mrx]

Just Have a Think covers topics similar to Matt Ferrel, with a bit more rigor:

https://www.youtube.com/c/JustHaveaThink/videos