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this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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Veritasium. After he put that uncritical commercial for the self driving car company on his feed I couldn’t take any of his content seriously anymore.
It was his video on IQ tests that set off alarm bells for me.
IQ tests are not some method of determining intelligence they are very much linked to relative education/socioeconomic standing. His complete lack of criticism and neutral/positive support of IQ tests make me think he likes the result of his score…
I stopped watching after the "speed of electricity in a wire" video. When I realised a video about something I knew about was bollocks, it made me question every other video that taught me about something I didn't know.
Even if that had been a one off, how would I know? The trust is gone.
What was wrong with that one?
Without getting into it too deeply the way he conflates induction and conductivity just to set up some kind of gotcha.
IIRC, it was way too confusing to be useful as an educational video
Op said it's bollock, not because it's confusing, so i'm curious what went wrong as well. I think Electroboom challenge him as well, but not sure the context and how it went.
Yeah, I would also like to know.
There are a lot of videos that made me question the validity of his "science". While I didn't want to spend time dissecting a specific video but with the videos piling up I decided it would be easier to just not watch him. I don't watch videos to question whether it's bullshit or not, so I ended up watching videos where I don't have to ask that question.
I'll purposely seek out videos covering topics I'm (more) familiar with, from unfamiliar content creators that I might be interested in watching more of. It helps me gauge their accuracy, confidence, and ability to simplify without losing the underlying reasoning.
"Oh and by the way, this is a sponsored video 🤷" and then spends half an hour sucking a company's dick for money
That and the shampoo ad killed my interest in the channel, and ever since then I'm extremely wary of everyone. Kurzgesagt is also up there, for producing propaganda for a billionaire's charity.
God kurzgesagt really bothers me for their “technology will save us” ideology. I get bad vibes.
Guys, all we have to do is trust the technology that Bill Gates stands to profit from! Never mind the fact that Bill Gates funds my videos, just trust him, guys! The future might look bleak, but you don't have to take any action! Ol' Billy already is! Just trust him!!
Yeah, it’s really egregious. I don’t really like their videos because they all feel kind of biased like that… and just a lot of editorializing. To be clear, I’m not above technology getting us out of a jam, but I really don’t think we should expect it… We should really plan with what we know is possible.
what's wrong with Kurzgesagt?
Essentially, they're funded by billionaires, and their videos show it. Here's a couple videos that go into it:
https://youtu.be/HjHMoNGqQTI
https://youtu.be/uCuy1DaQzWI
Their videos about the climate for the last few years essentially boil down to "shit sucks, everything is bad, a lot of people are going to die. But wait, here's an interesting new technology that could save the planet! All we have to do is trust capitalism to make this technology happen, and we'll be saved!"
I'm of the opinion that we should be brutally fucking honest about the climate, and that copium like this only makes people complacent. If we stopped pumping out greenhouse gases right now, we wouldn't avoid 3° of warming. Hundreds of millions of people are going to die as a direct result of anthropogenic climate change, and there is nothing we can do about that. If we get complacent, that number will be in the multiple billions. Cute cartoon birds turning into skeletons does not reflect the horror of climate change.
The Kurzgesagt climate videos explicitly encourage political action to combat climate change. I think they even encourage it as the most important thing an individual can do. They don't push 'let capitalism solve everything' , they push 'vote in green candidates + regulation'.
I saw one of those videos taking them down for receiving Bill Gates money and frankly I think it's a pretty empty hitpiece.
Don't get me wrong, the Gate's foundation does push this 'never question the market' ideology, and any organisation that relies on their funding deserves to be scrutinized to hell and back. But Kurzgesagt does not push this ideology.
' The problem with Kurzgesagt' never found any factual issues with their content, AND the broad message of their videos is ' lobby the government for regulation + here's the technology' . If Gate's Foundation money has caused them to compromise their values, it's not done a good job of it.
Funding is not the same as editorial control, and the amount recieved from the gates foundation is not even a large portion of their income, so it's not like they have much leverage.
Gate's Foundation and similar spend money literally everywhere, so I worry about people writing good orgs off so quickly.
here's a thorough analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI
TL;DW: they assume technology will magically "fix" the climate crisis and no big changes to society or the economy are necessary. thus perpetuating and worsening the climate crisis by pretty much telling people "it's gonna be fiiiiine"...when it really won't be "fine".
edit: note, that most of their content is fine, just the climate "solutions" and stuff are...so optimistic as to be misleading. their physics and futurology stuff is fine. also way oversimplified in many cases, but fine.
Whoa, I thought I was alone in disliking Kurzgesagt. What made me unsubscribe was a video that was very clearly sponsored by the game Cyberpunk but didn't mention that anywhere
some recent ones have been interesting, but yeah that ad really was a scummy move
Yeah, the new SAT video was great and i still can’t for the life of me figure how those people managed to think about the problem and realize the options were wrong, really goes to show how intelligent people are always doing things with a very alert mind, even if the problem is very easy
Why was it bad
Making a 20 minute advertisement rife with misinformation and having one single statement saying the video is sponsored is bad
Same, never trust any of his videos now so I just don't bother watching.
Oh, what? I don't remember that one. Is it this one? https://youtu.be/yjztvddhZmI