Ask HN: YouTube Channels for the Intellectually Curious

none of it is incorrect - it's just lacking in details that only someone in the field would see.

Numberphile probably has less "inaccuracies" - because maths can probably be summarized easier to the layman than computer science.

That's it! Thanks!

Recent videos? I haven't watched it in a while. But looking now, I immediately found an example, because the problems are always with the history. In the video below [1], the guy absolutely mangles the story of the byte and why it's 8 bits long. He turns what was a fuckup in the launch of the System/360, into some urban legend of IBM's technical superiority and vision.

"IBM said, 'Let's be brave! 8 bit characters!'"

FFS, no. IBM said (in summary), "Crap, we really wanted to use 7 bit ASCII - an evolution of the 6 bit teleprinter code, since we're on the federal standards committee, but ASCII peripherals won't be ready in time for the System/360 launch, so uh, let's use this 8 bit extension to our old 6 bit punch cards instead and wing it." It turned out to be a massive blunder. [2]

The System/360 still succeeded and its success meant a bunch of software was written for it, which all assumed an 8 bit byte, competitors copied IBM, and the rest of the market followed, but it took a decade or so. There's lots of fun stuff in the actual story - including the rich history of today's character standards which goes all the way back to the telegraph - to summarize without making things up.

1. https://youtu.be/ixJCo0cyAuA

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20180513204153/http://www.bobbem...

I know you're asking about Computerphile, but this video explains how one of the Numberphile videos is wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuIIjLr6vUA

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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).

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...