[4ad]

I hate Veritasium's clickbait, and I think most of his videos are very poor, but this one is the exception. It's very well put together. The first ten minutes of the video is exactly how I introduce entropy to people.

Of course I can't give him a pass on how crass it was telling that women he has a PhD in physics (he does not). The video would have been so much better without that two seconds of footage...

[andyjohnson0]

> course I can't give him a pass on how crass it was telling that women he has a PhD in physics (he does not)

To be clear, he does have a PhD but it is in physics education research, not physics.

[hilbert42]

"I think most of his videos are very poor,"

Why do you think so? (Most to me seem reasonable but one on speed of electricity stands out as badly done (he redid the video but it too could have been better).)

[pxeger1]

He seems to exaggerate the importance of things when they make for a good story and sound interesting. This is a classic flaw in popular science but I think he's got a lot more egregious with it over the years.

The worst example I remember, which is actually what drove me to unsubscribe, was when he said that the golden ratio was "a pretty five-y number" because it can be written as 0.5 + 0.5 * (5^0.5). Anyone with a good mathematical background could tell you there's nothing five-y about 0.5 at all. I'll grant him, the golden ratio is still a little bit five-y because of the sqrt(5).

The whole context and presentation seemed like it was designed to make the viewer feel like they'd learnt something even though nothing of substance was really delivered in those 20 seconds. He does that a lot.

[hilbert42]

"The whole context and presentation seemed like it was designed to make the viewer feel like they'd learnt something even though nothing of substance was really delivered in those 20 seconds. He does that a lot."

I can't disagree with that. He's not only a YouTube presenter but also a documentary maker, His documentary Uranium: Twisting the Dragon's Tail https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4847012/ has been repeated on TV where I am, I think, at least three times. He's also made others.

Unfortunately, that type of presentation is all too common in modern docos (probably couldn't get it past the director otherwise). As you'd know, this and similar techniques (which I find highly irritating) are also used to pad out half-hour shows to an hour and or to multi episodes when one would do adequately (thankfully, my PVR comes to the rescue and I rarely watch them in real time).

[interestica]

> Anyone with a good mathematical background could tell you there's nothing five-y about 0.5 at all.

Um, I disagree? Visually, the 5 is memorable here. "Fivey" just seems to mean "lots of the number 5"?

[koningrobot]

I think the point is that 0.5 is 1/2, and the 5 digit only appears because of our base 10 presentation of numbers.

[pxeger1]

I think the context was perhaps more important than I'd considered to explain the significance of "five-y". The implication was that the fiviness gives something of an intuitive explaination for why some shape had 5 sides. The presence of a √5 does (maybe) do this, but 0.5 definitely doesn't. (Because as sibling comment points out, 0.5 = 1/2 and the 5 only appears due to our (arbitrary, from a mathematical point of view) choice of base ten.

[hospitalJail]

His dandruff ad was pretty cringe IMO. But idk, it seems like his videos are really long for what they accomplish in general. He seems like the generic youtuber that milks every dollar of ad revenue and is shameless about it.

Kind of sad that a expensive camera + clickbait thumbnail/title > Experts communicating clearly and accurately.

I imagine he/his team is scouring youtube for the experts, and remaking their videos with more production value.

[AlexandrB]

I was quite disappointed by his video on self-driving cars. It presented a very one-sided view and felt like a puff piece (and, indeed, it was sponsored by Waymo). Tom Nicholas did a good job breaking down the problems with it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CM0aohBfUTc&pp=ygUPdG9tIHZlcml...

[willis936]

His video on electromagnetism is still my gold standard for Lorentz's Law. It came out while I was taking emag. I liked it so much I showed it to my professor, who didn't name drop Lorentz all semester. The class was making sure no one got a BSEE without knowing Maxwell's Equations, which does warrant a semester. I guess it was more of a failing of the physics curriculum.

[manojlds]

Most of his videos are GOOD, come on!

[kergonath]

The problem is that on a given specific subject you can never be sure whether he’s exaggerating or misrepresenting things. Just this makes watching him a waste of time, because then you need to spend at least twice the time to fact check him. A bit like asking a question to ChatGPT. At least Wikipedia provides you links to proper sources.

[PrimeMcFly]

> I think most of his videos are very poor,

This sounds quite bitter, as does griping about him mentioning his PhD.

His videos have excellent production quality, and do a great job of communicating advanced STEM concepts to laypeople in an entertaining way.

Maybe you don't like them, but that doesn't mean they are bad. Given their popularity, it would seem they are anything but.