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.
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
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.
Funnily enough, linear algebra is a good example of how doing doesn't lead to understanding. Just calculating eigenvalues and eigenvectors don't give you the geometric view of what is happening. Also talk to some engineering students who learned how to do matrix multiplication, but can't tell you what a vector is (it is not just something with magnitude and direction).
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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].
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...)
Readit News
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.
And for videos specifically, it can obviously help understanding in many cases to have animated visualizations
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.
That's a great insight.
-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/
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.
(I can suggest some if you are interested and give me a better idea.)
Also, some of the videos are pretty dang entertaining.
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.
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.
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.
[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
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
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.
Hopefully author reads HN.
I kind of wish they hadn't included Veritasium either. He seems to have gone downhill.
https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-majorit...
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...)
[0] https://www.electrify.video/post/electrify-completes-majorit...
It's one of the very few things that actually work