Maybe I'm just one of those odd ones, as much as I love all the knowledge and learning videos on youtube and I can't deny I've learned a lot from them.
But, they seem to have replaced the written tutorial or instructions for a lot of things.
I'm one of those people, I learn better through reading. I learn alright through youtube videos, but I find I retain knowledge better through written descriptions and pictures.
I've found since youtube tutorials and knowledge videos really exploded in popularity, finding highquality written tutorials or instructions has become more difficult.
Even a lot of programming stuff is moving into video format, which honestly, I can't learn anything from those. I need to be able to work through something like that at my own pace, possibly work through different sections, maybe experiment to fully understand. Doing that with a video is much more difficult than something written.
Lately, i've been looking into stuff about blender, trying to find anything up to date in a non-video format is almost impossible. There's some great high quality written stuff for blender out there, but it's several years out of date and everything that's replaced it is in video format.
This all being said, I am still glad this all exists and there's so much information so easily available.
I don't think you're an odd one. YT has many disadvantages compared to written instructions, especially when it comes to coding. Just off the top of my head, YT has uneven video quality & when you pause videos, there's a bunch of stuff that obscures the video. So, it's hard to read text from a video, or even see something really specific (and maybe tacit) at times.
YT also doesn't allow for notes, no way to easy make an "offline" version, no way to compile its contents into your own knowledgebase, etc.
You can also read text at your own pace, which is really useful for learning things in steps, while videos go at their own.
> when you pause videos, there's a bunch of stuff that obscures the video
I really hate the YouTube app for that. Where did they get the idea that it is a good thing? And it is not even an attempt at monetization, they don't show ads, they still do it on premium, they just make it hard for you to see what's on screen.
It looks like youtube doesn't do that pause overlay at the moment. I tried just now in Chrome and Firefox with extensions disabled, and nothing got in the way of the paused video.
I used to have
.ytp-pause-overlay
in my ublock-origin filters, but it appears it's no longer needed.
They still show the player controls as an overlay the whole time as the video is paused. For me, turning the player controls from a bar below the video into an overlay that dynamically comes and goes is the defining moment when YouTube became unusable. It's simply impossible to read slides in some videos because you'd have to pause them to read all of it, but then the bottom part of the slide becomes unreadable. How was anyone able to arrive at the conclusion that this would be a smart thing to do for a video player?
I used to learn better on YouTube, probably circa 2010. I learned music theory, programming, electronics, photography, and skateboarding, all things that I still use and enjoy today, but this was way before the current eyeball-attention-hogging landscape where videos are replete with ads and sponsorships and regurgitated information that draws videos out twice as long as they really ought to be. I have no doubt that quality educational material is still out there, but the signal-to-noise ratio makes it so hard to sift through that it barely feels worth it.
Monetization has brought out the worst in creators. The folks who did it for the joy are almost always the best to learn from. Alterior motives (including profit) are often a conflict of interest IMO.
Information is meant to be free.
There’s a reason why online content became so popular. Pre-programmed channels are chalk full of garbage, crammed with ads, inflated drama, and other behavior I believe to be a net negative for almost every viewer. Perhaps I’m showing my age and being presumptuous but folks I talk to about this all seem to agree.
I prefer reading too. The main reason is I get distracted easily but music distracts that part of my brain a little so I can focus. I can't do that with videos. And like you, things stick when I see them written down in a way that they don't when I hear them. Write your name for me and I'll remember it forever - tell me and it's gone in 2 minutes.
Skimming is also much harder with videos than text. I can take a whole page in at once instantly to know what it's about, but I need longer on a video to gather the context. Skipping ahead is all or nothing on videos, whereas with text I can glance over the sections I skim past to see if it's stuff I know but with a few new tips thrown in.
I will say though, YouTube definitely wins for practical hands-on videos for me. Cooking, replacing mirrors/handles on a car, making a table. It's enabled me to do a lot of repairs and I've become much better at cooking. I'm not sure written guides would've brought me as far.
> I've found since youtube tutorials and knowledge videos really exploded in popularity
At some point Google decided to prioritize video content. I don't think anybody really likes doing those videos when the main media they are working with is text, but it's a choice of doing a video or never having anybody ever find you.
In my experience the difference is that it is far more likely to find useful content searching for video vs text. The good text content may be there but it is lost in a mass of SEO crap and people trying to sell you things or make a pinterest account.
Those things do exist in the video space but they are not yet so common that it is impossible to find useful information.
I learned blender last year to a pretty good level entirely on YouTube. I recommend using the hot keys (arrow keys to skip, shift+carrots to increase playback speed). I also highly recommend using Anki and creating flash cards as you go. Windows 10 is great for pasting in screenshots with a couple hot keys straight on to your flash cards. By reviewing the flash cards you retain what you watch in the videos and greatly speed up your learning time.
YouTube has doubled down on censorship and they’ve effectively created a chilling effect for creators.
Without clear policies and transparency (their process appears to be highly subjective) creators are afraid to touch certain topics.
I enjoy learning about and seeing opposing ideas. I learn more in the end and the creators themselves benefit from researching and putting together a thesis or explanation on the subject at hand.
I'm with you. I'd rather read and have an odd illustration than watch a video. Most of the time, when I watch a video it is reluctantly, because I can't find written information on the topic as easily as a video. But there are a very limited set of instructions that are better suited to video format, for example, cooking, working on a car or gardening.
I have the same thing and for me a mix is great but I read very fast so if the info is dense I prefer reading and where this really goes wrong is money; when I do not remember a linux cli kata, now the first hits are often videos with an intro, outro etc: makes no sense. It is one line I want to copy paste! Or at least see to remember. Very wasteful but I get why it is.
Given a lot of people don't like being in video or public speaking I wouldn't say the world wants YouTube instructional videos, it's just what in practice has worked the best.
Pin down why and make a site that solves the problem and become a unicorn.
Agreed, the outcome is often worse than carefully written and unpadded instructions. Incentives are powerful and creators are motivated by the monetary gain.
I think it also has a huge effect on sports. Especially the ones that aren’t on TV. When I did martial arts in the 90s it was super hard to find recordings of good Muay Thai or kickboxing fights. So you had to figure out things for yourself very slowly instead of seeing how the world class guys do it. Today’s youth can watch the best in the sport from all history and learn things way faster.
So I expect the next generations of athletes to have way better knowledge of the sport and just be way better.
Same in music. I had a drummer friend who had one tape of Neil Peart of Rush. He studied this in and out. Today you can find recordings of all the greats easily and see how they do it. This will take off years of the learning curve.
Also, the ability to observe professional athletes in high definition. When I was first getting into tennis, I found it incredibly useful to see the best in the world practicing 4k 60fps [0].
As a part-time tennis pro. The combined benefits of watching the best in the world and then comparing it to a video of yourself playing is tremendous for most people.
And for tennis in particular, the court level angle especially shows just how good these players are. There was an Isner vs. Djokovic court level video that's now taken down (the full quality version), and seeing up close the speed at which Djokovic would change directions and return one of the biggest serves was astounding.
This has been extremely pronounced with skateboarding. Technical tricks that used to take years to land are now being done effortlessly by kids filming throwaway clips shot vertically on their phones.
Rodney Mullen, the godfather of basically every trick that involves jumping up and flipping the board and landing on it, has a great TED Talk on epistemology in skateboarding [1]. The biggest block is often just to see proof that something can be done. He also draws apt comparisons with the open source community. Interestingly, he apparently invented a lot of his tricks in isolation on a farm; some genius thrives in the woodshed.
Thinking in McLuhanisms, these new mediums have undoubtedly extended epistemology in very revolutionary ways, but it's definitely amputated them as well. The dime-a-dozen landscape and portrait photos that are nigh indistinguishable, the wild west of the content treadmill economy, and the anxiety of influencers [2].
" The biggest block is often just to see proof that something can be done. "
This is super important in most sports. It's really hard to know if you are just doing it wrong or it's just not possible. Only the super talented can break through that. Most others need some guidance.
I feel like people are too afraid of saying that you can learn dangerous topics without a proper teacher. IMO it holds people back.
I'm a completely self taught outdoor climber (with the exception of a lead belay course indoors) and have worked up to some pretty advanced stuff. Trad, big wall, self-rescue, etc.
Youtube was a big part of that. You can watch videos published by authoritative sources, cross reference them with books, etc. and get a very good understanding of a topic. Even when your life is on the line.
Then you can start branching out once you know the building blocks. Some rando on Youtube is showing you how to build some new-to-you self-equalizing anchor? Well they're just using the knots and concepts you already know from the authoritative sources. You can verify it's safe yourself, and then judge the usefulness.
But are you the exception or are you the norm? I agree that if you seek out the right information - you can learn about all the safety concepts. I would say climbing is fairly intuitive and follows some basic rules.
But I've seen my fair share of people setting up american death triangle or threading ropes directly through the metal anchor. I've seen people using daisy chains as personal anchor device or taking hands off the grigri.
I fall on the side of holding people back is better - but who knows, maybe not
> But I've seen my fair share of people setting up american death triangle or threading ropes directly through the metal anchor.
Do you think these people have spent even a second doing any actual research on Youtube or otherwise, though? I have a hard time believing there are any Youtube videos suggesting the use of the American Death Triangle or threading ropes through the fixed anchor chains. Not using a daisy chain as a personal anchor is basically a meme at this point in any climbing forums.
In that case, it seems like the real thing to suggest is that people not just go out there and wing it. It's not that Youtube has failed them in that case, it's that they didn't even use it.
Not only that, but for example for table tennis there are hundreds of high-quality teachers showing you the basics of the sport, sharing tips on how to get better, giving you professional advice on how to train and much more.
It is a lot easier nowadays to go from completely new to decent or even "good" in a specific domain by following some simple visual instructions.
I think that's one of the reasons why F1 drivers are getting younger and younger. The games prepare them for the rhythm and a lot of other things you encounter with real cars. I remember first time I drove a really fast car on the track I had massive problems getting used to the brake distances and the rapid shifting. If you drive the car in a game you are already prepared for the basics.
YouTube is amazing for the sort of tacit knowledge the author is talking about, as well as things that actually transfer pretty well in well written manuals, like auto repair. I use YouTube to find tacit information on household/auto repairs, how to enhance my 3d printer, etc... all the time. It really is a new repository of knowledge for humankind. It is amazing, and boon for me and my life.
However, much of my ability to enjoy and use that tacit knowledge is predicated on having other basic skills. I know my way around tools and a shop both because my dad taught me and because I took courses in school.
YouTube (and much of online learning generally) is fantastic to for learning specific, point in time skills that you need to use right away. This is incredibly important and incredibly useful. It is less good at ensuring the people learn the fundamental skills they need to make these sorts of point in time learnings accessible. After all, while I didn't learn how to replace the trunk lock assembly on a 2010 Toyota Highlander in school, but I did build enough things in Junior High shop class that I knew what a socket wrench was and that it was possible to fix things.
These technologies and systems serve different needs, I think its important to recognize that.
I am essentially a self-taught EE thanks to the internet. There is no shortage of engineers posting educational content, and no shortage of extremely knowledgeable engineers willing to directly help you with problems. I've done dozens of projects and even brought one to market.
I guess the flipside, in my experience it doesn't count as anything in the professional world. Since I back doored engineering, I am currently the technical lead on two projects at my job, both of which have vacant engineering lead positions - making me the defacto engineering lead. So I do the engineers work for technicians pay ($19/hr). I am also the only technician in the engineering dept. as opposed to the lab.
I should have just stuck with programming 20 years ago. Sorry this is a bit of a rambling tangent I went on. Maybe a warning to others that a degree is often more important than the knowledge the degree brings.
My wife’s business has a number of self taught engineers. As management (everyone management started as an engineer), they have full faith in these people and love them. However, it causes them no end of pain that they never got their degrees as client contracts often require a credential to bill at higher rates.
For the ones that are willing, they’ll gladly sponsor a degree pursuit and pay them more at completion, but the business environment puts a lot of pressure on creating a pay ceiling on uncredentialed employees
I have associates degree in electronics tech and did go for my full engineering degree, but failed out...twice. I cannot for the life of me reliably pen-and-paper-clock-ticking solve complex equations. I even payed out the ass for a top tier tutor, no luck. I very firmly reached the "Maybe this just isn't for you" point. But with my own work and in my job, being really bad at high level calculus or diff eq has never even cropped up much less been a detriment (Well it does crop up, but in the SPICE simulator/circuit simulator).
Oddly enough the engineering lead here is an uncredentialled engineer, but he was also the first employee 25 years ago so I suppose he is grandfathered in. Not that he doesn't deserve it either, he is wildly knowledgeable and capable.
Are you able to do the homework (without aids) but not the test?
You might have some form of diagnosable learning disability. If you get that diagnosed and then take it to a college's office of disability support services (or whatever the equivalent is), they'll set you up with a set of accommodations, which is generally things like more time on tests.
As a college-educated engineer, I guarantee that you learned much more than I ever did during my formal training. The only useful things I've learned for my job was learned after college, when I actually had to know stuff to be successful!
With that said, if you really like engineering, you can eventually get the PE with enough years' experience and get that pay increase. It may be worth it to you.
I've always had a deep sense of respect for the hands-on engineers and technicians, the people that colloquialize an engine as a "motor," know the difference between a heat gun and a drill, and can wrench without needing a course on the Principles of Theoretical and Applied Screwdriver Mechanics.
Maybe if you bring the facts with a positive atittude to your employer they will be willing to recognize that you deserve a lead position, with matching salary, or at least something in between this and what you have now, even without a degree.
I'm actually looking for an out right now to respin my luck somewhere else. Right now I engineer by proxy, i.e. I do a design, document, or ECO and my boss stamps it (which frankly isn't too different than the other engineers, he ultimately stamps their stuff too).
I have prodded my boss about it and he more or less said that after our recent acquisition by parent company and parent parent company, things are very corporate by the book. It seems right now we're in a state where they are getting full engineering work at a 50-60% discount and I am getting to do engineering work despite being hired as a clock punching lab grunt.
Yeah, I have. The problem is that I really do love electronics. I am a decent C programmer, for embedded applications at least. I have never written an actual PC program though besides tutorial stuff.
A friend of my did a crash course boot camp for js, and did eventually get a good job out of it. Maybe I should think about doing the same.
you might want to check out the odin project... seems fairly high quality. or if that's not your jam i'm sure you could find a book or a course on something like coursera or udemy with varying success....
Well, I had a toilet problem a week ago. Looking it up on YouTube, I found a plumber who demonstrated a solution. Five minutes of work and the problem was resolved.
IDK how much I saved, but at least 2000 CZK (approx. 80 dollars). Not to mention that I didn't have to wait for the plumber to arrive, which would take a few days, probably.
I fixed our garage refrigerator just a few weeks ago thanks to YouTube. The freezer side was cooling fine, but the refrigerator side was not cooling at all. When I opened the refrigerator door, I could feel cold air venting into the refrigerator from the freezer just fine, but it would never get cold and would eventually beep with a high temperature error. Meat had spoiled, drinks were hot, and my wife started looking online for a replacement.
A little searching and digging led me to videos about replacing fans and motors and messing with the refrigerator hardware. That required pulling the refrigerator apart, which was well beyond my ambition. Finally, I stumbled on a video that described my problem exactly. It turns out that the air return vent had become blocked by ice, so when the refrigerator was closed air wasn't being pulled into the refrigerator side. When I opened the door, the open door caused air to move just fine.
I took out a couple of shelves, found the return vent, chipped away at the ice blocking the return, and things have been working great ever since.
Yeah I learned that from a friend many years ago, 9 times out of 10 of a refrigerator is acting funny, turning it off for a few hours to let the ice melt will solve the problem. Most of the time if that doesn't work you need a new compressor and you're better off buying a new refrigerator. Sometimes it is some strange electrical issue but those are rare.
My YT fix tale: friend was throwing out an LCD TV because of weird colours, like solarization. I asked him for it, spent an hour searching youtube and found a TV engineer video with a likely solution: unplug the data cable where it feeds into the screen and scrape it clean.
7 years later and the TV is doing daily duty as a monitor for watching streamed content. I clean the cable once or twice a year, and one time had to source a replacement capacitor from a roadside discarded TV to bring it back to life (again, thanks to YT info.)
I'm not actually sure if I ended up looking at YouTube or just regular old web results, but my personal internet trust fall was replacing an old window with a new one, where the steps went: 1. Go to store. Buy a window, some 2x4s, and some plywood sheeting. 2. Rip giant hole in the side of my house, removing the old window and everything within about 3 feet of it. 3. Google [how to frame a rough opening for a window]. 4. Follow the instructions.
Granted, I already had some prior knowledge here -- I knew the term "frame" and "rough opening" -- but I was still amused with myself that I left an "acquire information about how to complete my task" step until the middle, when I had a giant hole in the side of my house.
Don't forget the flip side of this, which is that manuals are increasingly useless if not just entirely non-existent for a variety of products. And the companies that make videos for their products instead of manuals usually don't have the greatest photography and editing skills.
I do not see anyone else willing to pony up the money to be a “good steward”. Who wants to take on all the responsibility and liabilities that come with hosting other people’s content?
Better solution here would be ipv6 and fiber connections to each home so people do not have to rely on uploading to one company to be able to distribute their video.
Each WP page has (or can easily have) an 'external links' section on the bottom (that's easy to edit, see any example) with fairly lax rulage. So long as the vid is suited to the article, objections are unlikely.
A while back, the car I had had a bad blower motor. I looked it up, found a video that showed where and how to replace it. I got the part online and was able to do it myself.
It was a fairly simple replacement too. The motor was actually situated under the dash on the passenger side and was about as difficult as installing/replacing a computer fan.
I had a motor issue with my dishwasher. With the help of a Youtube video, I was able to disassemble the full machine, identify the issue, and put it all back together. I don't know what going rate's are for fixing dishwashers, but I am guessing at a minimum I saved $200 bucks.
Same with our washing machine. The brushes for the motors had just worn down all the way; it was $30 for the replacement parts. It's a bit undersized for our family, so it does a LOT of loads, and it was 10 years old. So it's hopefully good for another few years. Once the door seal goes though (it's got a little leak), it'll probably not be worth repairing.
This has been evident to me personally in two areas especially: car repair and gardening. I routinely look up repairs for my vehicles on YT and often find they are more approachable than if I’d just relied on a chiltons guide. The “tacit knowledge” of things like “you got to reach around from this angle to access the oil filter” or “when it makes this sound, it’s often this part” is incredible. And it’s struck me before that it really is a new phenomenon that all this detailed knowledge video is available instantly.
Gardening reveals a gotcha that I’ve thought I’d like to solve with my own content though. Often content is presented with no followup. Ie “top 10 ways to get rid of squash vine borers” regurgitates the same things as lists online, with very little I’ve seen saying “these worked, these didn’t”. Since it’s often a longer term endeavor with lots of variables, there’s little content that follows gardening techniques through. I’ve thought if I started a garden channel, I’d like to do time lapse videos following real random controlled trials with various techniques to see and demonstrate what works. Maybe a way to have a very boring channel, but it’s what I’d like to see.
Quality affordable digital cameras
Internet for everyone
Search Engines
Portable screens
I think he missed one, the channel/subscription model that YouTube still supports, where you can push content about a very narrow subject, and a large enough audience to make it worth everyone's effort, can meet.
Funny this link just popped up, I was just marvelling at my 13 yr old son's self taught progression at programming.
He's taken about 2 years to get from batch scripts to c# and unity... mostly via youtube videos.
https://cyb3rgames.itch.io/trench-warfare < his latest efforts completed in about a week.
Kids these days love to learn via self paced youtube
*note, if you're going to let your kids watch youtube, either put your own anti-advert features in on your network or pay for youtube premium.
You tube adverts are abhorrent on their own let alone the constant breaking up of what self paced education they might be getting from it.
I'm so glad to hear about this. I was beginning to think widespread use of smartphones was actually decreasing technical literacy and making it harder to learn. They're almost too easy and don't expose their inner workings as readily as desktop computers.
Now that you mention it, I bet there's actually a wealth of educational content on YouTube and TikTok that serves to counter this. Technical insights for any interest.
I definitely can relate, software engineering is one of those fields that can definitely be learned on one's own time for free, and now I'm working at an internship at a startup!
I have to admit that I've found video fat more effective for learning unfamiliar recipes than written recipes. Just so much easier to see someone do it. Not my first choice for everything I want to learn, but it is a good resource for many.
I think the article is overthinking it a little bit, and I think it comes down to accessibility, enthusiasm, and to a certain degree a rapid pace in terms of content.
There's no doubt that YouTube has made a number of these topics far more accessible. The inclusion of videos along side typical text searches means that it's just as easy to click on an article as it is one of those videos. There's also typically a multitude of options that each might cover the same topic from certain angles and varying degrees of overlap.
These videos are typically uploaded by creators who are passionate and incredibly enthusiastic to share a key aspect of their lives. Many of the popular educational channels have a passionate creator behind them, rather than a flatter more lecture based approach like you might get in typical coursework (which is also on YouTube, but isn't nearly as widely consumed).
Lastly, I can find a 5, 10, or 20 minute video that's focused on a specific subject or topic on YouTube as opposed to going through 60 or 90 minutes of coursework/lectures that are predefined. I can jump from video to video, carving out my own path to learn what I want, rather than sit through a lecture that may not be discussing something particularly of interest.
The Tacit knowledge that's referenced in the article is certainly there in many of the videos on YouTube, but is not the main driver behind this "revolution". It's the ability for anyone in the world to dive nearly as deep as they want, lead by content creators that are genuine passionate about the subjects they cover.
Youtube deserves no credit: they do nothing to make educational videos more discoverable, they cannot even categorise them properly!
My 'feed' is filled with videos I already watched and typically the only way I discover new content is linked from HN or other sites.
Neither does Youtube treat their educational creators well - as far ad they are concerned, 'influencer' reviewing funny viseos has more value than educational content.
For me, YouTube serves me up so much educational content i want to watch that there is over 100 hours of content in my Watch Later. And i do very often go through the videos it gives me but it never ends.
YouTube is a tool, you have to do a bit of curation so it learns what you like and dislike, and then it just delivers an unending firehose of content matching that. And if what you like is educational content, boy is there a lot of it available.
I dunno what i am doing wrong, but my youtube feed is a barrage of things I've already watched, the only way for me to get something new suggested that's not garbade is to spesifically search for it.
In my experience, youtube recommendations are stellar for educational and long form content, so i would absolutely recommend looking at them if that is your focus. I've discovered a lot of cool channels this way.
Do you have watch history turned off maybe? YouTube extremely rarely recommends videos I've already watched (and usually, it's explicitly a suggestion to rewatch something that might actually be cool to rewatch)
There are all sort of wonderful educational videos on youtube, but it's like leading a horse to water. The hard part is now getting them to drink.
That said, I do credit part of my education to Youtube University. I learned more about virology in details that I never thought about before. Still, I haven't yet complete the virology lectures.
I don't think YouTube replaces school for most people, but it makes it possible for someone who wants to learn something to do that much more more easily than before. School forces kids to learn a little bit about a wide-ish swath of subjects. Youtube enables them to go deeper on whatever it is they're interested in.
Finding and signing up for a class or lessons is a big, expensive hurdle, and then you might discover you hate the subject or the teacher. If you can quickly and easily dip into a dozen subjects and try videos from hundreds of creators, you can rapidly try and reject things until you find one that strikes you and stick with it.
The Internet in general does this, but YouTube is a big part of it, especially things where visuals are useful—woodworking is a good example, but there are so so many things to learn if you can jut find a subject and a teacher that catches your interest.
There are many lectures and conference talks from university professors who are at the top of their field on YouTube. You might be able to find better content than what's available in your local university class.
Oh I know, but there are also a lot of people making claims to expertise they don't have and spreading lies. Some of them are real experts in other fields and so have respect there.
It's generally pretty easy to spot the fakes if you have a basic understanding of the field and are just researching for specific details. Frankly, for the stuff I typically look for, there are surprisingly few fakes to be found. This may change with YT deprecating the down-vote arrow.
I would say critical thinking, learning to distinguish good information from bad is a valuable life skill that is only getting more valuable with time. Something we should try to teach people about from a young age.
While visual learning through YouTube is a step up in terms of tacit knowledge transmission I think the example of becoming a world class athlete by watching YouTube videos is probably really an exception and mentorship and a comprehensive environment to learn in are very important.
Samo also lists (heart) surgery as an example and I think it would be very hard to learn this at any level of excellence from footage alone. (obviously also hard to test given the lack of volunteers I imagine). But there's a huge tactile component that just gets absorbed by osmosis in a real world setting and that's hard to replicate from a screen. Same with woodworking and some of the other examples given. Even labwork in fields such as chemistry has a surprising amount of 'art' to it that one wouldn't expect just from observing.
Ahh the good ol "medicine is Art and science" keeping the physician cartel alive and well, with no competitive risk from scientists and AI.
I know my son was at risk of worse outcomes if not for me researching the relevant scientific papers online. (Tongue Tie, surgery vs laser, physician recommended surgery because it's done by a surgeon not a dentist. Outcomes are worse with surgery)
It's about time we move to evidence based medicine and revoke licenses from traditionalists.
is the entire point of your account to advocate for deregulating medicine or why are you barking up the wrong tree here?
I didn't argue for or against licenses. In any field with tacit knowledge expertise will persist regardless. Even in a world with zero licenses people will probably not have their kids operated on by someone who studied surgery on YouTube. Both the dentist as well as the physician in your example are trained professionals. As are the scientists whose studies you trusted when you came to the conclusion that someone gave you bad advice.
Institutionalized and tacit knowledge in science is just as present as it is in medicine. Licenses are just a way to make that knowledge acquisition explicit and verifiable.
No, I somewhat value privacy and use burner accounts. I was probably upset I had to pay 5 different people to get my yearly dandruff medicine.
Also, I absolutely do not trust scientists (read- Humans). I trust the scientific method and finding multiple independent studies with reasonable methods and similar conclusions.
I simply took issue with you claiming there is an Art to medicine in 2021.
It really is a gold mine. Things I've successfully tackled with the help of YouTube:small engine repair, appliance repair, knife making, woodworking, electronics, sailing, auto repair. And the list goes on.
Yes there is a lot of garbage, but also some really useful content.
I generally give YouTube the company a lot of grief when I talk about them but this article is true, the availability of information on YouTube (and the internet in general) is outstanding. I have learned most of what I know using the internet, much of it on YouTube. I mostly learn through reading but tons of things like gardening or working on my car I could not have easily learned without YouTube
> Because of this intensely local nature, it presents a uniquely strong succession problem: if a master woodworker fails to transmit his tacit knowledge to the few apprentices in his shop, the knowledge is lost forever, even if he’s written books about it.
There was an article I saw on HN the other day about organizational decay on the internet, in particular, dead hypertext links, and a big example given was a significant number of citations in court rulings go nowhere. With this in mind, I don't believe the problem of losing this knowledge is solved, unless you trust that YouTube won't purge data ever or won't ever cease to exist.
It's a shame that nobody but Youtube can afford to host videos at a loss year after year. I could vent for an hour about why I dislike the company: they are a privacy abomination; their moderation is incompetent; the way they monetize is unethical. If there were a worse steward than Youtube to store the bulk of humanity's video, I can't think of who it would possibly be.
At some point in the future, YouTube competitors will probably become cost effective - probably 30-50 years in the future.
If you've ever imagined someone coming from the future with futuristic technology, it would probably look something like YouTube. It's a piece of technology we effectively can't replicate that we're entirely beholden to because removing our dependence on it would set us back decades socially, technologically, and functionally.
Are they so expensive to host yourself? Sure the picture quality won't be as great but with modern codecs it doesn't seem like it would be much worse than the average web page.
It’s not impossible, but I think it’s about 128 minute-views per GB and $0.01/GB? Which would make hosting e.g. Issac Arthur’s YouTube channel cost in the order of $200-$300 per video uploaded, which I would hope is small for him given how many volunteers he gets and the sponsor messages, but might discourage future versions of him from getting started.
Scott Manley’s channel looks like typically more views and shorter videos, so would probably be similar hosting costs. Would he still be able to do his thing without YouTube? Or Robert Miles (the AI researcher, not the famous one I’ve never heard of before updating this comment because I’m not into music)?
Oops, what I had in mind when I wrote the comment was the expense of hosting a vast repository of videos (eg: Youtube, Vimeo, Twitch, etc). I didn't mean the modest cost of an individual just serving their own content.
Even Google is giving up their free services. Soon YouTube will follow Apple and raise their walls around the Prison and lock people in through an aggressive TOS. With DMCA or newly lobbied legislation could Google own every video?
It will be an exodus for those on the cutting edge, and the late comers will be paying the price.
Google doesn't have the marketing department Apple has to successfully pull it off.
I just tried to figure out what people actually watch on YouTube a couple of days ago without much luck. I came across some numbers but they only divided the videos into very broad categories like music, entertainment, education, and others or something like that. Is anybody aware of a more detailed look at this?
Yeah, you're right. Wikipedia lists the most popular channels, and they're pretty much just entertainment and music. Then again, as near as I can tell, that's exactly what they are. Even the one listed as education is just music/entertainment for children.
I suspect it's divided into such fine-grained niches that most of what people watch isn't popular. Almost anything popular labelled "education" is likely TV-level education, and really mostly just entertainment with the pleasant feeling of getting a bit of shallow learning on the way.
I just thought the other day that we won't need schools as much in the future. Teachers could just record material, or use pre-recorded material, to teach students online.
And then young people could take jobs earlier, in their teens, and learn about the world and find out what their interests are instead of regurgitating the same answers for the same old assignments over and over.
Find an interest, turn it into a job, be a bit happier.
Or just study and settle for something, either way I think there should be more freedom for young adults now with the internet.
Not everyone has specific dreams, rather their dream may be being in an essential role, part of a good team, etc. Anecdotally, I've met a number of people working in solid waste and every single one of them loved their job with one citing specifically that they are done before 1pm every day and have an entire afternoon to spend with their family or with their hobbies.
When I was a kid, I thought that basic economics implied that the jobs people didn't want to do would be the ones that paid the most, and the jobs that people would do even if they didn't get paid would pay the least.
At 57, I realize that I didn't grasp the issue of the level of skill and/or education required to do a given job, and the distribution of that within the population.
If you’re the only person willing to collect trash, people will pay you a lot of money to do it, and you’ll have a much nicer house, car, holiday, or whatever you want to spend it on.
Markets are great.
Felix Dennis: one of the richest people in the Uk got rich by digging holes and putting waste in it. And selling the dirt.
There are many high school students who would love to be earning a decent income as a trash collector rather than sitting in a modified prison doing stuff that won’t impact their life in any positive way.
I don't think Youtube is all that great for learning the kind of structured basics they teach in school.
Many people are self-motivated enough to watch videos on woodworking or sports or video game production. Less so for algebra or grammar, but these are important base skills.
This is part of why all the online course websites have such abysmal completion rates.
Its great at answering the How-To-Questions in small snippets. But when it comes to the in depth questions, the Why Questions, you still have to return to university-lectures, although those are hosted on the platform.
Education and Instruction still have the vast time difference in dimension.
And its hard to push yourselves through the desert of ignorance to in depth knowledge-which is why online univerty-courses have such a low completion ratio, compared to the traditional "forced to be there"-lectures and tutorials.
I agree for university type education. I've tried to slog through that stuff but could never get far due to lack of motivation. But for DIY and hobbies, it's really demolished barriers to entry. I learnt how to cut down trees from the many tree-cutting YouTube channels, how to build a retaining wall, how to plaster your walls, all sorts of little individual skills that are otherwise hard to pick up without making a career out of it or having the right friends.
I think this revolution needs to be taken further to masses at grass roots through remote learning model. Folks can take the courses from institutions across world via Youtube (or similar platform) for free and participate in an online certification for the course and get certified. I find that many talented and bright students can't financially afford degrees institutions
A way to preserve human languages - apparently they are being lost at a very high rate, as the last speakers age and die, and the youth learn trade languages like English, which are more valuable due to network effects.
Unfortunately it's being killed by the obnoxious advertising, which is growing far faster than the value of the content (it's already past my personal tipping point).
At some point we can hope that hosting is cheap enough we can all host our own videos, that search engines will find our content (without any favouritism) and that such an outcome will actually be legal.
I use two Chrome plugins to eliminate all time-using Youtube ads:
uBlock Origin
SponsorBlock for YouTube. This uses crowdsourced info to skip advertising within videos as well as into/outro/subscription begging, etc. I don't think I've head a single "click subscribe and ring the bell icon" since I installed it. All that crap's a distant memory.
I think there are still overlay banner ads but they can be ignored more easily.
But, they seem to have replaced the written tutorial or instructions for a lot of things.
I'm one of those people, I learn better through reading. I learn alright through youtube videos, but I find I retain knowledge better through written descriptions and pictures.
I've found since youtube tutorials and knowledge videos really exploded in popularity, finding highquality written tutorials or instructions has become more difficult.
Even a lot of programming stuff is moving into video format, which honestly, I can't learn anything from those. I need to be able to work through something like that at my own pace, possibly work through different sections, maybe experiment to fully understand. Doing that with a video is much more difficult than something written.
Lately, i've been looking into stuff about blender, trying to find anything up to date in a non-video format is almost impossible. There's some great high quality written stuff for blender out there, but it's several years out of date and everything that's replaced it is in video format.
This all being said, I am still glad this all exists and there's so much information so easily available.