Science Communications on YouTube

Posted by azhenley 8 days ago

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Comment by mmooss 19 hours ago

Who has time for videos? I know lots watch them, but wow - reading is so much more efficient. I can skip ahead - and skim - or revisit; I can annotate; I can save, transcribe (copy/paste), I read so much faster than even accelerated video can play .... and all so much more easily.

By sticking to reading, am I missing out on content?

Edit: Not a criticism of watching video, I'm wondering if I'm missing substantial things. If I didn't read, for example, I'd miss a lot that doesn't exist in video or audio. Same thing with podcasts.

Comment by griffzhowl 18 hours ago

It's similar to the benefits of attending lectures (or watching them on yt): there are more informal asides and intuition-pumps, and maybe more detailed explanations of intermediate steps in calculations than you usually get in books.

And for videos specifically, it can obviously help understanding in many cases to have animated visualizations

Comment by mmooss 18 hours ago

A good point. Personally, I've never liked attending lectures except for the chance to ask questions. If I must 'attend', I prefer afterward at 2x.

Comment by MangoToupe 16 hours ago

Lectures have the added benefit of not relying on video, though. You can consume them when doing chores, driving, etc.

Comment by griffzhowl 2 hours ago

Yes, maybe, but for many maths or physics lectures you might have to imagine what's going on as you're listening to the squeaking of chalk on the blackboard:)

Comment by freefaler 15 hours ago

For serious lectures (not story telling like history or other humanities) you can't be doing anything on the side if you want to understand. Try listening to a math lecture, or chemistry lecture while doing dishes :)

I found the same to be true with audiobooks, nothing serious can't be "just listened to". I've tried to "listen" to a good biology non-fiction on how live evolved from the primordial soup. Shit, in the first chapters there were covalency chemistry and other stuff that I needed to sit down and write to understand.

Too stupid to do it while doing chores I guess...

Comment by mmooss 15 hours ago

I agree about serious lectures, but ...

> not story telling like history or other humanities

Those are not serious humanities lectures. The serious ones are not storytelling, but serious examination of the evidence or of its analysis. There are far more factors, complexity, and uncertainty in an historical event or process than in a petri dish, and the event can't even be reproduced. It's impossible to use the same kind of scientific method and obtain the same kind of certainty, and requires far more critical thinking, judgment, and analysis.

What caused Andrew Jackson to be elected? There's a relatively simple story told, but the reality is enormously complex and uncertain.

Comment by MangoToupe 13 hours ago

Referring to "math" as serious just makes me want to discount your opinion entirely. Lectures (or indeed any linear encoding) are a bad medium for discussing formal languages. This has nothing to do with how much you care about a topic or whatever "serious" is supposed to imply here.

Regardless, listening to something intently and doing mechanical actions are not exclusive.

Comment by freefaler 11 hours ago

Well try to listen to a group theory lecture (for example on cohomology of groups) while doing chores :) But the lecture was indeed useful if you stop and rewind and see how the lecturer was explaining (there were some interesting graphs).

Your brain can't hold the context long enough to go to the required level of abstraction, while you're multitasking (may be walking or something deeply automated doesn't count.

Comment by griffzhowl 2 hours ago

I would say the main reason it's hard to follow abstract maths lectures by listening is not the difficulty of the concepts per se, but simply because it's so visual: it relies on notation and diagrams

But mathematicians can talk to each other about arbitrarily abstract concepts, as long as they have enough shared background, and they don't (always) need a blackboard to do it.

Conversely, you can have conceptually very simple things that are basically impossible to follow just by listening, like multiplying two nine-digit numbers or following one of Euclid's proofs in plane geometry. The difficulty isn't about abstraction, but how many things you have to hold in working memory

Comment by mmooss 10 hours ago

> listening to something intently and doing mechanical actions are not exclusive

If it's 'serious' and worthwhile, I often don't even have the bandwidth to keep up with the lecture or book. Why spend my time on anything less?

Comment by II2II 17 hours ago

I find videos are a convenient way to get an overview of something I'm interested in, yet not so deeply invested in that I want to learn it in depth. In other words, I can do the chores and learn a bit more about the world in the process. In that respect, I would say that reading is much less efficient.

If it is something I am interested in learning in depth, then I would agree that books are usually more efficient.

Well, with a caveat.

Some people appear to record themselves as they pursue their hobbies, then post it to YouTube. (Sometime's it's organic. Sometimes it's partially planned out.) In those cases it is a bit like a very one-sided mentorship. The host will either realize they're doing something that they would never write about, whether it is in a script or a blog or a book, then discuss it. Other times they don't make note of what they're doing, for the same reason they wouldn't write about it, but you see it because they are doing it. Written communication can be lossy.

Comment by mmooss 15 hours ago

> Written communication can be lossy.

That's a great insight.

Comment by senthil_rajasek 18 hours ago

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

-Confucius [1]

For certain concepts such as Linear Algebra, for instance books allow me to "do" and understand. Which is why I read more than I watch videos.

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2826962/

Comment by quamserena 19 hours ago

3blue1brown has great math visualizations. I find the top 10% of YouTube videos are worth the time over reading, and the bottom 90% are comparable or slower. Those are also nice though because you can put them on while doing other stuff, like eating or doing the laundry.

Comment by andrewflnr 18 hours ago

It's not science communication, but I don't know where to find anything quite like Perun's content in written form. It's military/economics issues, often pretty granular, at just the right level of detail for an interested layman.

Comment by mmooss 15 hours ago

There are endless military and economic publications, from nonsense to easy overviews to serious research. What does Perun produce? Do you have an example?

(I can suggest some if you are interested and give me a better idea.)

Comment by andrewflnr 12 hours ago

Between easy overview and serious research, probably just a bit shy of university intro course (depending on the university I guess). Some of the really fun stuff for me is organizational issues like procurement failures, corruption, etc. He also has does some pretty up-to-the-week analysis of major events (i.e. pretty recent, but late enough that the dust has settled and meaningful analysis is actually possible).

Comment by legitster 18 hours ago

I can watch/listen to videos while doing many other menial tasks pretty effectively (laundry, cleaning, washing, etc).

Also, some of the videos are pretty dang entertaining.

Comment by rf15 18 hours ago

Who has time for reading? Audio content at least allows you to absorb information while your hands and eyes can be busy with other things: cleaning, driving, etc.

Besides, teaching videos and also books often share a common weakness: low information density. Youtubers and Authors both like to talk so damn much without saying anything. Give me a good story or documentation catalogue any day, but stop mixing the two.

Comment by mmooss 18 hours ago

> teaching videos and also books often share a common weakness: low information density

Here we agree, but for books I don't need to read the low-density material. Review articles, for example, are fantastic. Scholarly books can be overwhelming due to density x size.

> Audio content at least allows you to absorb information while your hands and eyes can be busy with other things: cleaning, driving, etc.

Not with high-density content, IME.

Comment by jonahrd 19 hours ago

I'm a much more auditory/visual learner, so these videos work really great for me. I'm glad that reading works for you!

Comment by mmooss 19 hours ago

I'm not criticizing, sorry; just trying to understand.

I find video more compelling, generally. Obviously video has more ways to communicate - graphically, empirically, etc. It's not that reading works more effectively, but far more efficiently.

Comment by bane 19 hours ago

Let me turn your question around, what are the benefits of communicating science via video such that it's a very popular medium that people use to learn about science?

Comment by mmooss 18 hours ago

I think video is much more compelling to people in many ways (similar to TV vs reading a book), including to me. Part of that is seeing a person talking to you with all the cues of expression, voice, etc. There's a lower cognitive threshhold for engaging.

Video also has communication modes that text/print lacks: dynamic graphics and empirical video (showing the thing itself happening), audio, speech and expression (as described above).

With all that, I find it quite frustrating to see it consume so much time that could be spent reading and processing several things. How do others on HN - intellectually curious and serious, often busy - reconcile that?

Though my question is really, am I missing things by not watching video - things I won't realistically get through print? I mean high-quality things - I want the equivelant of a paper, review paper, or book by a professional in the field.

Comment by bane 9 hours ago

Thanks for answering! I'll ask you this question as another form of an answer. Is it possible you are making a false dichotomy expecting that the different media are expected to provide the same result for their relative consumers?

Comment by jraines 16 hours ago

They are good summaries. They’ve essentially replaced low- to mid- depth magaize articles, and some of the high depending on the topic

Comment by xvilka 17 hours ago

List is incomplete without some other high quality channels already mentioned in other threads, but also Anton Petrov[1]'s channel, Sixty Symbols[2], Science Clic[3] and Artem Kirsanov[4]. Animalogic[5] certainly worth mentioning. And absolutely stunning Journey to Microcosmos[6].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@whatdamath

[2] https://www.youtube.com/@sixtysymbols

[3] https://www.youtube.com/@ScienceClicEN

[4] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR2uRTQ53V_egXKFflMMaaw

[5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwg6_F2hDHYrqbNSGjmar4w

[6] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbnbBWJtwsf0jLGUwX5Q3g

Comment by andrewflnr 12 hours ago

I want to hijack this comment to plug AlphaPhoenix (https://youtube.com/@alphaphoenixchannel), who is responsible for by far the best explanations of electricity that I've encountered in any format. For instance, this one that clarifies what happens when you try to send electricity on an open circuit, and (IIRC this is the right one) what impedance mismatch is actually about: https://youtu.be/2AXv49dDQJw

Comment by ngruhn 17 hours ago

ScienceClic has extremely good animations. And it's run by some guy in his early 20s. He knows the physics, he can create these amazing animations and he comes up with genuinely novel metaphors and perspectives.

Comment by mat_b 19 hours ago

No mention of PBS Space Time? That show is high quality.

Comment by gnz11 19 hours ago

PBS also did a recent live stream on the topic of science communication with some notable YouTubers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPKxk3s-8Yc

Comment by smokel 19 hours ago

Link for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime

Comment by griffzhowl 18 hours ago

For more in-depth physics, combining mathematical detail with excellent visualizations, the best channels I've found are

Richard Behiel, Physics Explained, Dr Jorge Diaz

For mathematics, I really appreciate the simpl but effective format of Richard Borcherds (Fields medalist)

https://www.youtube.com/@richarde.borcherds7998

Comment by panopoly 16 hours ago

> Richard Behiel

Behiel is to 3Blue1Brown as a popular children's cartoon is to its late sequel series that aged up with its audience.

Excellent work.

I especially like his more recent trend of going line by line through famous papers. EPR and Bell's Inequality to date.

Comment by predkambrij 16 hours ago

I recommend "YouTube Summary with ChatGPT & Claude" extension, which makes it easy to copy transcription. Paste it in Deepseek or your favourite LLM with prompt "summarize in 1 paragraph" and then you can run TTS and you get idea about of the video in 10 seconds. You can ask followup questions, or to format it differently or get the reason to actually watch it in full.

Comment by vinceguidry 19 hours ago

Can't leave out Dr. Angela Collier: https://www.youtube.com/@acollierastro

Hopefully author reads HN.

Comment by andrewflnr 18 hours ago

She's very hit or miss in her quality IMO. Also, she's explicitly disclaimed the title of "science communicator", so she might not want to be on this list anyway. :)

I kind of wish they hadn't included Veritasium either. He seems to have gone downhill.

Comment by MPSimmons 17 hours ago

I don't know to what extent it has directly impacted his quality, but it appears that Derek sold Veritasium to a private equity firm

https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-majorit...

Comment by hermitcrab 16 hours ago

I can't imagine that is going to end well. Hopefully I am wrong about that.

Comment by andrewflnr 12 hours ago

You're already right about that.

Comment by the__alchemist 17 hours ago

Her content is mostly meta, vs science comm/teaching. I am really torn on her: Great communicator, funny, accomplished. Seems confident/smug?/conservative for a scientist. Something about her word choice and style feels more politician than learner/researcher. Not sure how to phrase this.

Comment by andrewflnr 17 hours ago

That's an interesting perspective. I definitely don't get a "politician" tone from her. Her tone seems very casual to me. Conservative in the broad sense, maybe (definitely not politically).

Comment by the__alchemist 16 hours ago

Now that you point it out, I agree. Not sure the appropriate analogy.

Comment by zkmon 18 hours ago

No 3B1B?

Comment by squeral 16 hours ago

I found it strange that StarTalk hadn't been mentioned yet. Neil deGrasse Tyson is my favourite science communicator.

Comment by thinkyfish 16 hours ago

An who can forget Lord Nice!

Comment by ThrowawayTestr 19 hours ago

Some people might take issue with the Veritasium recommendation. I think he's great though.

Comment by Workaccount2 19 hours ago

I was an avid viewer until he stepped in my area of expertise and leveraged technicalities, half-truths, and misrepresentation to really juice up the click-baityness and "wow!" factor.

My interest in his videos plunged after that, and it seemed like he was re-alinging for consistent high views over straight hard factual education. Frankly I wish I could purge him from my feed at this point (youtube still recommends all his videos incessantly, despite me not watching one for at least a year now. On paper I am the ideal viewer though, so...)

Comment by quamserena 19 hours ago

He was bought out by private equity.[0] That’s why the channel is different now.

[0] https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-majorit...

Comment by Workaccount2 18 hours ago

Yeah, that would explain it.

Comment by rramadass 17 hours ago

This explains why i have been finding his recent videos somewhat disjointed/disorganized and titles click-baity. The quality of the content has most certainly gone down.

Comment by estimator7292 19 hours ago

On your homepage, click the three dots next to a video and click "do not recommend channel"

It's one of the very few things that actually work

Comment by AuthAuth 18 hours ago

Do not recommend channel doesnt work. It only pauses recommendations for a few weeks. I've selected do not recommend on channels several times and they still sneak back in.

Comment by andrewflnr 12 hours ago

This is weird to me. I've banned a bunch of channels and never seen them again. You're not just doing the "I'm not interested" thing, right?

I've heard this from a couple other people, though, which makes me wonder if the alleged "don't recommend channel" button is hooked up to different API calls in different UIs...

Comment by dkdcio 17 hours ago

I highly recommend turning off watch history on YouTube. it stops recommending you videos entirely; just watch what you subscribe to

Comment by AlexErrant 17 hours ago

I have a dedicated Chrome profile/account for watching videos that I don't want infecting my primary account's recommendations. Right click, "Open link as".

Comment by xvilka 16 hours ago

What particular area, if I may ask?