This is such a brilliant video about how our engagement with online spaces work. It's one of the best re-creations of online experience and attention fracturing that I've ever encountered. -John
It might just be because I watched the videos back to back, but it also linked in my mind to your video on "how we spend our days is how we spend our lives". Both how it's structured -- different building blocks that seem innocuous and disjointed add up to a whole -- and in how it concludes -- that whole doesnt need to make sense or serve a purpose to the outside world; you are in charge of making sense of it, and in the process, you will end up choosing a purpose.
wait...you guys still make videos? holy crap ive got catching up to do....why has youtube forsaken me, and stopped notifying me of awesome channels uploads?!?!?
It's stupid because it's a real thing other people have bought too, there's even unboxing videos on youtube. It's the same as vihart's, which makes sense because it's the simplest and most logical. In the first ending she makes it seem unlikelier than it really was.
@@singerofsongss if you're watching this video and *this* is your way of approaching someone that you don't agree with by saying they're wrong, really? Well I'm not gonna say you're wrong for doing so, cause I'd make the same mistake as you have, but think about what you did.
@@viliml2763 I'm simultaneously going to thank you for answering the question I needed answered, and also say your takeaway from this video is flawed. And given we'd already seen that the most logical explanation was that the BTS logo should have been a 5 not a 7 anyway, your idea of "simple and logical" was flawed.
I get the impression that you feel bad about turning off comments because people like to talk here, but I think they affect you the most by far, emotionally and potentially in time spent managing them - so I don't think you should feel bad if you'd prefer them off at any point. And since most of the nice comments you mentioned are talking to you about how much they enjoy your videos and thanking you, I'd guess that most of those commenters would agree.
I found the pieces about comments and engagement really relevant; comments are such a mixed blessing - The good bits are really good; the bad bits are especially bad, and even when the bad bits are a tiny fraction of the whole, they still seem to taint the whole experience.
hey, I thought about your channel with all the talks of influencers! "Well at least there are still guys like Atomic Shrimp who kinda do their own thing"
the thing is the human brain spends more attention on the bad things than the good things! For every bad comment there must be 1000 good comments and even then you are mostly focused and think to your self: is this random internet stranger right?
@@wChris_ Yeah, I think it's the noise volume too. Affirmation and support is gentle and quiet; aggression and hostility is loud and brash. It seems bigger than it is.
Your discussion on comments and how they aren't a democracy due to thoughtfulness decreasing with frequency made me realize something: There's no way I can counter the flood of shorter thoughtless comments but I should at least take a bit more part in the system. Leave some of my own thoughts gathered up from over the years and try to push up other comments that deserve better than being buried. I've been in your audience for over a decade now and while what you create isn't as dense as many of the other videos by education creators, by far you convey the enjoyment and wonder at it all far better and in ways that has shaped how I thought about music, math, and their intersection with all other parts of life. I'm under no illusion; our relation is as tenuous as strangers passing on a street, but I hope I can speak for others when I say that you've had a larger beneficial impact on people than your comments would indicate. I struggle to find the words to thank you properly for this, for making the world a larger place for all of us. Maybe I'll manage to leave another comment before another decade has passed with some better way of conveying all this.
I always found it gratifying that someone took the time to try and understand what I thought I meant, even if they disagreed vociferously: maybe there was novel take I hadn't considered before, a new arc for approach. I mean out of a population of billions, how many are going to muddle through the can't-think-of-the-word-that- expresses-what-I-want-with-Germanic-percision-so-this-other-will-have-to-do, the fuzzy analogies, the leaps in logic... and for what? If it is all a numbers game, I've already lost. I think the older take on both democracy and the internet apply. Neither were meant to be popularity contests, but a connection to the world at large.
the problem is that bad comments will always get more spotlight, because that is usually were the well thought out comments will tend go to. good comments usually don't need much more than a like and will be eventually forgotten. good discussions though, that is were the potential shines, they have the attention and longevity of bad comments, but filled with the well thought out content of good comments.
Your video "twelve tones" from 8 years ago completely shook up my point of view on music and music theory at a time in my life where everything seemed boring and by the book. Regardless whether or not you view yourself as an influencer, I do believe you've influenced me to think critically, creatively, and most importantly for myself, and for that, I cannot thank you enough.
That was my first ViHart video too and it made me feel so much better about just... being myself. I felt like the weird kid that thought too big of thoughts and liked things too much, and that video made me feel like it was okay to be like that. To be me. (And I can still sing Twinke Twinkle Lazer Bat!"
"Sometimes, a precious free afternoon [...] is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence, and if I don't do it, no one will." this resonates spiritually with me
"Sometimes, a precious free afternoon is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence, and if I din't do it, no one would." A good quote to share with the kids when they are being 'special' ;)I do love a double edged sword.
When Vi said, it was good to see you, it resonated in my soul, I felt it like they were a friend I hadn't seen in a while. It was good to see you too Vi.
Was looking for this comment. When Vi said that i teared up an cried. Too often i am very lonely. I work second shift and 6/7 of a week i dont see my wife or family. And i spend so much time without someone to talk to.
I almost feel bad leaving a comment here, especially considering I usually don’t comment at all. Everything useful has already been said by other comments. I don’t even have a heartwarming story to tell or anything like that. I just want to thank you. Your videos have always brought joy to me. Your math doodle videos entertained me in high school. Your video on gender actually helped me understand myself just a little bit better. I wear your τ-shirt whenever I go into the vicinity of physicists. This video here successfully let me procrastinate on my master’s thesis (in math!) for almost 40 minutes without even feeling bad about it because “it’s a vihart video and you can’t delay watching that!”. So… thanks! :D
Oh hey! I've been watching ViHart since highschool too, and looks like we're about the same age. I wonder if there's more people who grew up with Vihart, we could create a community and trade hexaflexagons or something
As some one who found this channel in my high school years as well and doesn't comment much eather, what you have written here sums up everything I wish I could type, but sadly if I did it would not come out as graceful. ❤️❤️
Wow, I remember watching this channel ten years ago amazed by hexaflexagrams and fractal snakes, and suddenly it pops up in my feed again. Makes a big difference to watch it at 22 instead of 12, but maybe that's just filtered memory. It's nice to know that this channel and the -totally not an influencer- at its helm have gotten older and wiser too. Keep on keeping it real!
THIS is what integrity looks like when it comes to content creation on the internet. It was a true pleasure to spend 36 minutes and 27 seconds together with you on a walk through a mindspace that all came together in the shape of an octahedron. And for what it is worth, of all the platonic solids, octahedra are my favorite. Hope all is well with you in your world.
I just watched an unboxing video of the BTS “advent” calendar thing and if I translated everything to paper right, it looks like Vi made the BTS octahedron correctly!
The structure of this video is brilliant story telling, taking three disparate threads of thought and literally weaving them together at the end all of which end up revolving around the act and process of creation. Part 1 of each thread is the setup, giving us all the information we need to know to understand each topic and it also sets up the conflict for each particular thread. The conflict in each being "Could I have made a mistake?", "I think I did make a mistake", and finally "when I start something, I will keep doing it until it's done." The Symmetry thread in each arc serves as a conclusion for the relevant part. In the case of Part 1, that's setting up both the mistakes themselves as well as your own response to those mistakes (the self-described stubbornness), which lead us into Part 2. Part 2 is about effort; how effort in realizing you've been wrong and working to understand it, especially in trying to move past false assumptions; how effort in our digital spaces is directly disincentivized to favor quick and easy responses; and the fundamental difficulty and doubt that comes with putting in effort, how by caring about something you open up the possibility of failure. Obviously, that's what effort is, if it wasn't difficult it wouldn't require effort in the first place. There's also the question of what is "worthy of effort" and whether or not that's even a question we should be asking ourselves of if that question is something we can help from asking ourselves. Part two ends the failure to create the imagined object and your questioning is immediately followed up by a callback to your own stubbornness that after saying "I can put this down" you're still imagining how to create this object. It sets up the expectation for the audience that they want you to succeed and overcome this hurtle. I even found myself thinking "well, it's not that bad, it looks neat anyways" because I wanted you to succeed. Part 3 is about uniqueness and conformity: the varied topologies of dice related to the way they're manufactured, but they all fit into underlying topologies; the nature of online discourse where everyone seeks to be unique, but the way we do this is by attaching ourselves to certain creators; and then your own mold which goes back to stubborn determination to keep trying despite failing not because this is a good thing but because this is the box you fit yourself into. Part 4 is conclusions and uncertainty, which starts after saying that maybe there isn't a definitive conclusion. Of particular note is that part 4 breaks the order of the threads from "dice, comments, symmetry" and instead presents the dice section last. You allow us to believe that maybe we won't get the answer and this is the most interesting part to me because you simultaneously do and don't give us an answer in different ways. Part 4 of the comments thread doesn't actually touch on the concept of the internet at all BUT does call back to the initial reaction we have to conflict. Bringing up the uncertainty and the very real possibility that some things can't be known allows us to think maybe the octahedron won't be completed. And the way you completed the octahedron is by adding in the uncertainty itself. The fact that we never even see the conclusion to the BTS octahedron is a fun point to end this on because it allows the person watching to choose which ending they want because, unlike certain fundamentally unsolvable problems, it can be provably known whether you were right or wrong. It's an "exercise left to the student" to go find the answer, if they want to. The fail, fail, success of creating the symmetrical-ribbon-dice is a classic rule of threes story structure. This works especially well as a story because you immediately start by showing vulnerability to become relatable made only more compelling because the conflict throughout the conflict throughout stems directly from that vulnerability. Obviously it's a constructed narrative, the universe very rarely delivers packages to you when they'd be most narratively convenient, but I absolutely love that this video, when you don't look at it too hard, feels natural and flows logically from one point to the next. This is a structure pieced together in editing, deliberately constructed of character and narrative to build a point probably by the very same method shown in the video itself. TL;DR, I loved this video and spent a whole morning thinking about it.
That cool Hilbert-curvy numbered die might have been specially designed as a "countdown" die, making it easy to keep track of a number in a game that you frequently have to add or subtract a bit to/from. Or maybe not, countdown dice are usually d20s apparently.
It's less good for rolling though, since if the die is off-balance then numbers in one area will come up more often than others, and if all the low or high numbers are in the same area, then you'll end up with a consistently low or high die. Dice with a different pattern of numbers will also have areas that come up more often, but the numbers in that area can be distributed across the whole range, therefore hiding the peaks of the probability curve. I suppose the optimal arrangement for rolling would put the very highest numbers right next to the very lowest ones. So you could take the same path from the countdown die, but instead of numbering it 1-2-3-..., you number it 1-20-2-19-3-18-... instead. I wonder what that path would look like?
@@evanhoffman7995 With TheDiceLab dice, we try to balance the numbering by having the average of the numbers around each vertex be as close as possible to the average over the whole die. This is in addition to having the average of opposite numbers add to the average over the whole die (which is another way to say that opposite numbers always add to the same number). There isn't that much balancing of this kind that you can do on the d8 since there are so few faces, but we get vertex sums of 14, 16, 18, 18, 20, and 22,. This is the smallest possible range.
After scouring the internet for this same BTS dice, it is with the utmost confidence that I conclude that Vihart predicted the order of the numbers on the other side of the dice correctly!!!
I am so blown away at how you organized the video structure itself into the symmetry of the shape. Even the mysterious Dice 4 chapter --like, I was happy to accept that it was necessary for the symmetry of the shape but irrelevant to the chapter of the video, but then it turned out to actually be relevant to the video chapter as well. Somehow you have made the most cathartic video all without revealing the answer to the question being discussed the entire video
"Stubbornness: neither a flaw nor a virtue, but a weapon." That is brilliant perspective that I, a stubborn person, am happy to have. I've always viewed it as a little bit of both, but mostly a virtue. The concept of it being a tool or weapon to be used or misused... Yup, I'm on board.
I really didn't expect it to be, but this video was exactly what I needed right now. As somebody who has been trying to talk themselves into "comfort with not knowing" for a few months, it was very surreal hearing you talk about it, but I think your perspective will help me out. Thanks for this
I remember when I was younger I would sit and wait for one of your videos to come out because my adhd brain felt some type of relief from watching them. This memory popped into my head and I spent an hour trying to find your videos again. I'm so glad I did because it gives me so much comfort, thank you
There kind of is a hack that works for me, which is to totally reject the word 'should'. As in, I use the grammar pedant part of my brain to tag 'should' as a language error. My hypothesis is that any 'should thought' worth thinking can be rephrased another way, and anything that can only be expressed with 'should' is not worth thinking. So "I should be able to do this faster" could become "I wish I could do this faster" or "I'm surprised by how long this is taking". It works surprisingly well for me
Recently, my thought have been all tangled up in my head, with all of these things going on in the world. I recently finished university, and the lack of certainty about so much of my life felt like a fog clouding my thoughts. However, this video really helped me realise how, even if I do not have all the answers right now, and I might even fail sometimes, every experience I have will help shape the unique geometry of my life. Maybe I am reading too much into the video, but seeing all of those unique dice patterns, every one serving a similar purpose but made so differently from the other, was in a weird way comforting. And in the end, it didn’t matter which answer was correct - there does not need to be an exact answer to find value in what we experience. Anyway, I am more than happy to be influenced like this by this video :) Thank you ViHart for this!
@@Vihart Oh my gosh, cannot believe you replied! Thank you so much for all your videos, they are all amazing. Been following since I was in highschool learning how to make doodles, so it is interesting to think how much your videos have shaped many aspects of my life - from personal introspection to what to doodle on a page!
The hilbert-curve die is called a "Rolldown". It's often used as a number marker rather than a rolled die, and is very common in the d20 (because of Magic the Gathering)
"Meaningless things are allowed to inspire genuine meaning within us." is a great quote! It reminded me of someone discussing how love languages (a popular trend now) have no scientific/psychological background, but give ways for people to have meaningful conversations with other people about how they communicate, conversations that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
The way you said "aww it's just another octahedron from the mirror universe" was so perfectly nonchalant that I ended up cackling to myself and adding it to my list of favourite phrases
Cute bad hair bad cute! Good jokes aside, I got into your channel with snakes and graphs- my 8th grade English teacher showed it to me 10 years ago. I've been a total fan ever since, and I don't think I've ever commented on or directly engaged with your work but I've shared it SO much with the people I care about (so much so that I still freehand dragon fractals when I get bored...). Now, 10 years later, I'm a school teacher, and I love showing your great stuff to my students!
Oh my gosh, the Ribbon Saga is giving me major flashbacks to when I was writing a twelve-tone piece for Music Theory, and I was imagining it like the notes on the Babbitt Square were actually superimposed on a cube such that each "block" of the cube had the same note on each face, and that the music was like the notes lighting up and bouncing off the edges of the cube and traveling in different directions... I am pretty sure I spent upwards of ten hours over the course of a few days finding twelve-by-twelve pattered cube paper patterns, printing them out, and then trying to fill them out such that each face was a correct Babbitt Square and that each edge's faces matched. It turned out not to work, which was a huge disappointment. Despite my concept failing, the piece still got written, and it would go on to be used as an example piece by the prof until he retired a few years later. I never was quite happy with that outcome, because the concept behind the piece could have been so much more, and anytime I remembered it I couldn't escape remembering my failure to put the cube together. Maybe there's a tone row that would make a correct cube, and I just didn't find it. But it's too late now.
This video is exactly what I needed right now. It's like I subconsciously called out into the universe and then all the answers came back. So, I just want to thank you for being...you? Just your willingness to do whatever the heck you want is really inspiring. I just started high school, and I feel more and more that I'm pushing myself into a box and that the walls around me are ever caving in. It's not a huge problem, just something I can feel naturally happening as I'm growing up, that I'm having less options or at least less time to choose. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that you seem to embody the complete opposite of this, which I feel like is pretty rare. I've been watching your videos for a while and you seem like such a unique and incredible person. Keep doing whatever it is you want to do, whether that's making videos, not making videos, or creating a spider-triangle cult. (Which I would join without hesitation!)
i clicked one video titled dragons, and have now found this lovely channel that i don’t always understand or always can keep up with the commentary, but it makes me think and debate and question and the effort put into everything is so clear and so appreciated and beautiful. a beautiful project that has clearly been worked on for so long, and will continue to exist for as long as it can. have a wonderful day
I'm not great at the affirmations, but since you said you read comments, I'll say this: You make me love learning and want to create. So maybe you're not an influencer, but you're definitely inspiring. You inspired me when I was in middle school and you still inspire me now, graduating from a masters with pandemic burnout. Thank you.
wikipedia has you: "Some twenty-sided dice have a different arrangement used for the purpose of keeping track of an integer that counts down, such as health points. These spindown dice are arranged such that adjacent integers appear on adjacent faces, allowing the user to easily find the next lower number. They are commonly used with collectible card games." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#Common_variations) That paragraph only mentions 20-sided spindowns, but in reality spindowns are common in most of the other common die shapes.
I've actually noticed the fact that D8s in my collection don't all follow the opposite sides add up to 9. I thought it might be they want each half when you look at it to add up to the same number, but I don't remember if that checked out for all of them.
I don't think that's what it is Here's the thing - in my dice collection, the only dice I have that don't adhere to the standard model of numbering also happen to be the oldest dice set I own and comes from the real early days of tabletop games. The d8 in that set follows the 8145 pattern, but its not the *only* die in the set like that. The d20 also follows a pattern that isn't "sum of opposite sides = 21", instead opting for "opposite sides share the same unit number" (its one of those dice that has two sets of 0-9 on its faces so really it's "opposite sides have the same number", which I don't think would make for a good spindown die anyways). Even the d4 is differently chiral for some reason. Surely if the d8 was meant to be a spindown die, wouldn't all the other die in the set be countdown die too? Also, I'm pretty sure my set predates most modern card games that use spindown die
Every time you upload a video, I'm instantly transported back a decade to the campus quad, experiencing the joy of finally actually understanding mathematical concepts that were just rote memorization before. A LOT has changed since then. I graduated, found a career, fell in love, changed my first name, picked up a dicemaking hobby, so many things. And to this day, I still sing "Candy Corn Kernels" under my breath when I see candy corn in a grocery store. Thanks for letting your work be part of my journey, even if you had no idea that journey was happening. And thanks for the video and prompt to introspect, I think I really needed a good cry today.
I'm a teen and I plan to be in the business of mathematically educating people when I grow up. I probably wouldn't if I hadn't found your channel and watched all your stuff. Does that make you an influencer? I don't know, but in any case: You influenced me.
Absolutely brilliant and incredibly profound. You've given me so much with this magnificent flow of thoughts and touch on so many substantial, expansive, impactful concepts & ideas, all of which resonated with me more than you can imagine. I thank you deeply for sharing all of this - it is something that has provided real meaning and provoked heavy introspection. Believe it or not, it has been life-altering for me, just as many of your other videos have been (especially your series on the Fibonacci sequence in nature, but even the entire Doodling In Math and PI vs. Tau series hold special places in my heart) ever since I began watching your stuff nearly a decade ago. Matching the archetype described within your video, I'm a chronic lurker, someone who rarely posts and when I do, I invest a substantial amount of time & effort into the crafting of a single comment, just as I am doing now (be honored by the fact that you've gotten me to express my thoughts in this excessive, analytical prose). You completely nailed your assessment and your vision for this video as a whole. Plus, presenting all of this as a progressive stream of thought works surprisingly, phenomenally well in amplifying the efficacy of the delivery of the ideas you're trying to express, with each naturally bleeding into the next in a meaningful way, with it all tying together in what is truly masterful storytelling & presentation. Thank you once again for your videos, each of which are similar symphonies of poetic, mathematical art. I look forward to more sparse yet stellar content from you in the future. Keep doing you, in all your vibrant, heartfelt (see what I did there?), imaginative glory, and we'll all continue to join you for the mind-bending ride.
YESSS!!! SO GLAD TO SEE THIS! and yes, the untangling has piled up a lot in this brain, it's sort of bad/good to know that others are not having an easy time with this rn either
2. Wow. Wasn't expecting to cry this morning from a video about dice numbering patterns, but this was exactly what I needed in my life right now. I often feel like a strip on someone else's die, and the universe is trying to figure out what the heck to do with me and just getting more and more frustrated. But, as you demonstrated, each strip is representative of multitudinous thoughts and that's a very comforting reminder. Thank you. 1. I've been watching your videos since Mathed Potatoes and I consider it a personal accomplishment that, as time goes on, the people I surround myself with are increasingly people who appreciate your videos also. I went from bugging friends and love interests to watch Vi Hart and scouring for one that would appeal to them, to sending any Vi Hart to any of the people I know, with joy, knowing certain aspects of would speak to each of them in a different way. Thank you.
I am an engineer today because I started watching your videos in high school. You add value into the world that makes science and math artistic and creative in a way that traditional education has a habit of beating out of people. You helped me retain my curiosity and creativity and you have added value to my career and life. Whether you produce content or not going further I will always be thankful for what you have already done.
This video spoke to me. There's so much about what Vi talked about that resonated with my experience. The inability to let go. The stubbornness. The "should"s. Thank you Vi. I needed this today. I think of you as an educator over an "influencer", but today you were a positive influence on my geeky, bipolar self. Thank you.
There were so many moments in this video where Vi managed to perfectly articulate things I've felt before but never knew how to put in to words. This channel walks the boundary between math and poetry and I love every second of it. Thank you, Vi, for sharing your thoughts with all of us.
There are countless times where Vi managed to articulate thoughts I had but didn't really have a strong place in my head because I wasn't able to articulate them TO MYSELF clearly. There was a lot of these moments in the "Suspend your disbelief" video, I was in awe, half wanting to clap, half wanting to cry, it was quite a moment! I even got a friend thanking me for sharing that video on FB and making him discover this channel. Vi, if you're reading this, thank you ♥
By the end of the video I fully expect to see a big vault with a sea of dice, which she can swim in as though it were a pool of water, just like Scrooge McDuck.
This was so beautiful I teared up a little XD You may or may not be an "influencer," whatever that means, but you've definitely influenced my life for the better. It's good to hear your voice again. Also oh my gosh that octahedron is beautiful 'u' It was neat to see the balancing act between scripts and mysteries. ^u^ Thank you for another great art piece / TH-cam video! ~Cat~
You stopped coming up in my recommended a long while ago. With me being my easily distracted self I didnt realize I was missing posts and assumed youd moved on to some other, very time consuming, super brilliant endeavor. I am so glad you're still around! Your videos are so smart, entertaining and educational and I love it. Thanks for being here!!
"It's just in my nature to do these things... Sometimes a precious free afternoon where I had actual things I really needed to get done is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence and if I don't do it, no one will." This is so incredibly relatable and half the reason why people like me watch your videos. You have such a real personality, just weird enough to be entertaining and unique, and able to share your thoughts in a well articulated manor. Thank you for sharing these thoughts with us all.
When a love of math videos (and folding paper) coincides with a love of BTS. You get a Vihart video that makes you think more introspectively then you have all week. Thankful for the years of incredible videos that bring so much joy and helping me realize that the tangents my brain takes are ultimately for good.
You're a talented and interesting person. I feel happy too because I also have thought patterns like yours but I don't have the ability to articulate them. I like hearing them articulated. It makes me feel less overwhelmed and like human understanding isn't as out of reach.
This seemed like a deep dive into Vihart's mind, I felt like Alice in the land of Octagonal dice, and it is simply briliant how it all (un)folds at the end.
I discovered this same problem many years ago when I started playing Magic the Gathering. Turns out you can buy dice, or you can buy "counters". The "counters" don't follow the dice rules, because they're intended to make it easier to keep track of an integer, rather than trying to achieve randomness. I suspect for most practical purposes it doesn't really matter, though.
I mean, practically yes. But magic twitter was up in arms semi-recently about whether using spindowns as d20s for the recent D&D set wouldn't give random enough rolls or "differently random" rolls.
@@samarnadra I don't think the concern with using spindown dice as d20s is that it won't be random enough on a normally thrown roll, it's that someone using a spindown can figure out how to roll it high intentionally. With a d20 where low and high numbers are evenly distributed, it's much harder to manipulate your roll and low/high are equally likely... with a spindown, sure if you toss it without intention it seems like it'd still be fairly random, but because half the die is high and half is low so you can practice getting it to land on the higher side. In both numbering systems it's probably impossible (or at least very very difficult) to intentionally roll specific numbers, but one makes it easier than the other to get in a specific range.
Words can’t express what I feel after watching this. I was suddenly reminded of thus channel and wanted to see what’s up, did not expect a deep narrative dive into a math non-influencer’s head. everything about this video is brilliant
What a brilliant video. The way you put a bunch of loose threads out there that literally wove together at the end was beautiful. And the visual with the head worked really well. This was an amazing explanation and exploration of all the topics you covered. Thank you Vi
My thoughts feel really similar sometimes! The way you represented it visually and orally was beautiful!! And I love how nicely the thoughts came together at the end but the entire process itself was very interesting and all the messy thoughts before they were wrapped up were cool and also visually entertaining! The way you script all of your videos is also always so.. vivifying! I love how you talk about all these concepts, and show how cool the ideas of them are, and let all of the new ideas burst out around them like fireworks with new ideas exploding into colorful sparks, or maybe a bit calmer like a river turning into a bunch of tiny waterways with many different branching paths to choose from. And just the way you speak in your videos is nice too, like a song with crescendos and speeding tempos and key changes when you get excited or present good questions or new ideas. And all of that goes without mentioning all of the good visual aid! All of the colors and different materials and even just really well drawn doodles are used to examine concepts thoroughly from so many different perspectives! It's all just so spectacular and so fun and satisfying and interesting! You have definitely helped along my passion for math and all of the other topics you cover, and I'll always come back to your videos when school just isn't doing math justice like you do.
I just realized that I've been watching this channel for 10 years now. even when I reached the point where I felt like I didn't want to do math ever again, I'd still find myself coming back to Vi's videos. I think Vi's content has definitely evolved but the comfort that they bring is still there and the excitement I get when I see a new video i think is unmatched to any other content creator I follow.
I am kind of sorry about going completely off the rails here (well, maybe not all-the-way-completely, it's kind of related to internet philsopohy or whatever?), but: A few years ago, as as even younger (and more influenceable) me, I saw your trihexaflexagon videos, and for some reason, I really liked those thingies. I started making them at , like, every opportunity. I have a memory of waiting at a railway station and getting out the paper and scissors I had with me specifically for the purpose of making trihexaflexagons, and making some. I had them everywhere. I think pretty much everyone I had some sort of relationship with got to see the wonders of the trihexaflexagon, and a few friends also started liking the concept of flexagons. It wouldn't be much of an exageration to say they became part of my identity. I don't even know what I'm getting at here. I think that it might just be a tiny bit interesting for you to hear about the surprisingly large yet meaningless effects you have had on some random teen half a world away. (Also, I think I never made a Hexahexaflexagon??? I need to do that sometime.)
This is why I love your videos, they are so relevant and relatable if you look deep down, and silly throughout the whole thing. Good show viheart good show
Seeing a Vihart upload made me so, so happy. I've been watching Vihart since I was in 4th grade. Of course, I was a fourth grader, and liked the videos because of the colors and the storylines and the simplified math that I couldn't comprehend. Now, I'm in my first year of high school. I actually understand some of the things she talks about, and it makes me enjoy the videos even more. I guess what I have to say is thanks, Vihart, for making my day better and making the past few years of my life more mathematical.
I really resonated with your thoughts about the pressures we put on ourselves about how quickly we should be creating things, and how we come to expect perfection from our creations. I was genuinely so pleased with how nice your first ribbon-covered octahedron turned out that it helped remind me that I can still make beautiful things even when they aren't perfect or don't fully match the image in my head. And, of course, I can always take what I learned to try again another time!
“Just do it anyway, almost as if you were living your life as your life and not as a results factory for someone else” I think I really needed to hear that. Thank you!
I hit "like" on this video when the "impulsive" dice purchase happened. I was having fun. I like dice. In "Comments 4", you helped me reflect for a moment on some recent past failures of mine and how they are opening me up to the future. When we got to "wrapping up", and you turned over the strips you had been writing on, and I saw the symmetry and shape of your video, I started crying out of joy. Thank you for sharing your mind with us. As usual, it's beautiful.
I never thought I'd be waiting so eagerly for the suspense to end on a revelation of the right positioning and rotation of numbers on a die. Edit: I just finished the video, and I'm speechless. Edit 2: I had to find out about the dice, so I did. No spoilers here though.
I appreciate how well-spoken you are and how well-constructed the content you make is, so I wanted to take a few minutes to let you know that the videos you make mean something to me. So thank you! This video scratched a good itch in my brain, with the way you took the video in a ton of different directions and brought it all together so nicely in the end. I have 'those days' that you describe in the start of the video most of the time, my brain likes to engage with as many things as it can and to keep learning! But, I rarely have the time to allow to myself to unspool all of my thoughts as much as I want to. This video reminded me that I love the moments where some of those little thoughts overlap and wind together to make new things, and that even if I can't see the whole interwoven multi-sided mess-shape that my brain is making, that doesn't mean that it all amounted to nothing. Sometimes it's just best to be filed away to try again another time, or to just let those things be imperfect and not know. Here's to uncertainty! Small side effect of this video: I want to go buy more dice now. I must have more click clack.
An absurb adventure to find wheter the BTS Dice meets the past standards or its own new configuration. Along the way vihart explains her thought processes on creation and views on the ever changing TH-cam landscape with the "responsibilities" that may come from being a creator on it. Contemplation on the reasoning behind the creation of the video itself arises as the absurdity of the task beforehand sets in and comes to a satisfying conclusion. It would be an understatement if I say that this was the best video I saw in years. Excellent video!
Working on projects and tasks to completion is a skill unto itself, and something I'm still working on. I am good at starting things, but not at finishing them (yet)
@@Vihart I just ordered a planner the other day that I'm hoping I can use to help divide my day up into workable chunks so I can focus my time on what I want to get better at and set aside reasonable amounts of time to work on them rather then my current method (which is nothing). Also still working on the 'shoulds' , and figuring out what reasonable expectations for myself are
When you didn’t show the actual dice at the end I had to take matters into my own hands. For only the price of my TH-cam recommended feed showing me bts/unboxing content, my curiosity has been sated. (To the others who must know, Vihart was 100% correct about the number placements and rotation)
Don't spoil it, let the people do a bit of research, at least. Vi wanted it to be a mystery. I also checked but I don't think is cool to spoil it in the comment section.
Thank you for this. You saved my sanity, and probably my enjoyment about the rest of the video. The rage I felt when she erased the truth at the end wiped out a feeling of beauty I was eagerly writing to others about. I can't even remember what I felt was so life-changing about the video, so I'm going to watch it again knowing the answer so the feeling of being cheated doesn't destroy it again.
"meaning isn't free" is a sentence I needed today. I'm so happy I decided to take a look back at your channel, and that you're still making stuff with that same sense of wonder as back in 2013. Thanks for making this content, and you may not consider yourself an influencer, but there's a generation of people inspired by your stuff, and I consider the world a better place because of it
Numberphile had a good 2-video series on fair dice, and I remember a discussion on the unfairness of naive "opposite-numbers adding to the same value" design.
This is such a beautiful video, in so many ways, and now after watching it I am feeling so inspired, in several ways, but as someone that rarely comments on things, I mostly want to say... "our fortune is seafoam, our fate decided through 36 views of pair-a-dice" is... you know, fantastic.
This...this video was a work of art. Especially if it is imperfect with an ending left unknown, that's the whole beauty of it, and what the video itself is _about._ I have enjoyed every video you have ever posted to this channel because your process has those rough edges that give the story some character. Mistakes happen, all we can do is our best, fix what we can and let go of what we can't.
This video has everything. Math, philosophy, art, social commentary, wholesome feels at Vi nerding out over mirror dice worlds and dice snacks, and a mystery that will keep me awake at night for the foreseeable future.
I know that you spent a lot of this video being vulnerable about insecurities and I don’t want to parasocial relationship myself into thinking I can do anything to help, but I think the ribbon octahedron came out really well and the pattern at the end when you put it into the head was something I’d like to make/have, so I’m glad you showed it to everyone. I hope you can come to feel ok with “failures” like that because even the thought and effort you put into something you found mathematically beautiful is really cool. Have a good day!
I know right? I'm like *please* someone who has resin make and gift them their version of a bts dice 🥺 it would be a poetic gift imo if it turned out the official bts dice were wrong. Like, she could get one in the end after all haha.
Hey, Vi! I emailed you like a year ago, thanking you for your videos and explaining that they inspired me to study math in college. And - to my surprise - you replied. I think it’s incredible that an “influencer” like you can make such personal videos, with such personal and yet universal topics, and still be so obviously just another person like me, someone who reads comments and replies to emails. Your work is *so* inspiring, and I’m so glad to exist in a time and a place where I get to appreciate it.
I was kind of stunned to see this in my recommended. I used to watch your videos constantly in elementary school, and now I can't stop seeing the Fibonacci sequence in every spiral lol. You gave me a whole new appreciation of math at a young age, which is probably why I'm so weirdly obsessed with polynomials these days
Thanks for turning on TH-cam comments. I like them, even if you don’t :) Also including both possible endings was very cool, and (somewhat surprisingly, to me) I’m not even bothered that you don’t reveal which is “true”. The cube paths and other discussions are more interesting than that answer anyway.
I have been watching your videos for many years. They have been a comfort of mine, showing me that my way of being is not alone and something to be proud and confident of. Influencer of the masses or not, you have inspired me to pursue my dreams. Keep being unapologetically you, Vi.
There's something about your videos that just feels like a breath of fresh air among the other things I watch. A slice of human experience that isn't intended to be consumable for an algorithm. It's nice, thank you :)
I started watching these videos when I was in middle school, not sure exactly when but probably about 2013. I just turned 20 last week and I’m a junior in college. It’s just amazing that so many of the creators that I watched 7 or 8 years ago are still around, and in many ways, almost feel like they matured with me. A new vihart or VSauce video is like a visit from an old friend. The depth and complexity of the themes you’re talking about here speak just as loudly as fun math videos did when I was 13. Thanks for the ride, I’m fully strapped in for wherever you decide to take us next. Full support and much love. Always.
This is such a brilliant video about how our engagement with online spaces work. It's one of the best re-creations of online experience and attention fracturing that I've ever encountered. -John
It might just be because I watched the videos back to back, but it also linked in my mind to your video on "how we spend our days is how we spend our lives". Both how it's structured -- different building blocks that seem innocuous and disjointed add up to a whole -- and in how it concludes -- that whole doesnt need to make sense or serve a purpose to the outside world; you are in charge of making sense of it, and in the process, you will end up choosing a purpose.
@@wolfjeanne +
+
Somehow I knew this was a John comment just by the first few words
wait...you guys still make videos? holy crap ive got catching up to do....why has youtube forsaken me, and stopped notifying me of awesome channels uploads?!?!?
The double ending was genius. Maybe the real ending was the symmetries we made along the way.
I assume, like Clue, there's a third ending where everyone's layout of the BTS die is true.
It's stupid because it's a real thing other people have bought too, there's even unboxing videos on youtube.
It's the same as vihart's, which makes sense because it's the simplest and most logical. In the first ending she makes it seem unlikelier than it really was.
@@viliml2763 If you’re watching this video and *this* is your takeaway, I regret to inform you that I think you’re doing it wrong.
@@singerofsongss if you're watching this video and *this* is your way of approaching someone that you don't agree with by saying they're wrong, really? Well I'm not gonna say you're wrong for doing so, cause I'd make the same mistake as you have, but think about what you did.
@@viliml2763 I'm simultaneously going to thank you for answering the question I needed answered, and also say your takeaway from this video is flawed.
And given we'd already seen that the most logical explanation was that the BTS logo should have been a 5 not a 7 anyway, your idea of "simple and logical" was flawed.
I get the impression that you feel bad about turning off comments because people like to talk here, but I think they affect you the most by far, emotionally and potentially in time spent managing them - so I don't think you should feel bad if you'd prefer them off at any point. And since most of the nice comments you mentioned are talking to you about how much they enjoy your videos and thanking you, I'd guess that most of those commenters would agree.
Darn right!!
Agreed!
Art
+
I will still probably dislike any videos with comments disabled...
this is honestly a narrative masterpiece, the way everything tied back together, no gun left unchekhov'd
What do you mean unchekhov'd
@@misaka6507 Like Chekhov's Gun, I assume?
Chekov's standoff ×16
Chekov's shootout
I found the pieces about comments and engagement really relevant; comments are such a mixed blessing - The good bits are really good; the bad bits are especially bad, and even when the bad bits are a tiny fraction of the whole, they still seem to taint the whole experience.
hey, I thought about your channel with all the talks of influencers! "Well at least there are still guys like Atomic Shrimp who kinda do their own thing"
the thing is the human brain spends more attention on the bad things than the good things! For every bad comment there must be 1000 good comments and even then you are mostly focused and think to your self: is this random internet stranger right?
The best thing so far about Vi enabling comments is seeing all my favorite TH-camrs in the comments! 😮
@@wChris_ Yeah, I think it's the noise volume too. Affirmation and support is gentle and quiet; aggression and hostility is loud and brash. It seems bigger than it is.
Hi Mr Shrimp
vi doesn't know i exist, but she's the reason i changed my perspective on math for the better
Same here!
a blessing unto this wordlde
now she does
Well now I do! Welcome and thank you for the kind comment
@@Vihart WAIT WHA- HII
Your discussion on comments and how they aren't a democracy due to thoughtfulness decreasing with frequency made me realize something: There's no way I can counter the flood of shorter thoughtless comments but I should at least take a bit more part in the system. Leave some of my own thoughts gathered up from over the years and try to push up other comments that deserve better than being buried.
I've been in your audience for over a decade now and while what you create isn't as dense as many of the other videos by education creators, by far you convey the enjoyment and wonder at it all far better and in ways that has shaped how I thought about music, math, and their intersection with all other parts of life. I'm under no illusion; our relation is as tenuous as strangers passing on a street, but I hope I can speak for others when I say that you've had a larger beneficial impact on people than your comments would indicate. I struggle to find the words to thank you properly for this, for making the world a larger place for all of us. Maybe I'll manage to leave another comment before another decade has passed with some better way of conveying all this.
I always found it gratifying that someone took the time to try and understand what I thought I meant, even if they disagreed vociferously: maybe there was novel take I hadn't considered before, a new arc for approach.
I mean out of a population of billions, how many are going to muddle through the can't-think-of-the-word-that- expresses-what-I-want-with-Germanic-percision-so-this-other-will-have-to-do, the fuzzy analogies, the leaps in logic... and for what? If it is all a numbers game, I've already lost.
I think the older take on both democracy and the internet apply. Neither were meant to be popularity contests, but a connection to the world at large.
Well I think you found the words! So well said.
What he said.
the problem is that bad comments will always get more spotlight, because that is usually were the well thought out comments will tend go to. good comments usually don't need much more than a like and will be eventually forgotten. good discussions though, that is were the potential shines, they have the attention and longevity of bad comments, but filled with the well thought out content of good comments.
Your video "twelve tones" from 8 years ago completely shook up my point of view on music and music theory at a time in my life where everything seemed boring and by the book. Regardless whether or not you view yourself as an influencer, I do believe you've influenced me to think critically, creatively, and most importantly for myself, and for that, I cannot thank you enough.
i use it till today nearly daily, when i discuss with ppl that think more popular=better music
That was my first ViHart video too and it made me feel so much better about just... being myself. I felt like the weird kid that thought too big of thoughts and liked things too much, and that video made me feel like it was okay to be like that. To be me. (And I can still sing Twinke Twinkle Lazer Bat!"
"Twelve Tones" gave me a big spark of light during a particularly bad bout of depression.
Neat, your comment is horizontally aligned with twelve tones in the recommended list for me.
"Sometimes, a precious free afternoon [...] is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence, and if I don't do it, no one will."
this resonates spiritually with me
I spend a lot of time on stuff that turns out bad and always feel so guilty. I really resonate with that too 🥺
"Sometimes, a precious free afternoon is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence, and if I din't do it, no one would." A good quote to share with the kids when they are being 'special' ;)I do love a double edged sword.
"living your life as your life and not as a results factory for someone else"
damn, that's a good quote
It’s called Marxism.
@@theVolunteer24 nice one.
When Vi said, it was good to see you, it resonated in my soul, I felt it like they were a friend I hadn't seen in a while.
It was good to see you too Vi.
💜Vi
Infrequent deep content makes for the chillest and best parasocial relationships
Was looking for this comment.
When Vi said that i teared up an cried. Too often i am very lonely. I work second shift and 6/7 of a week i dont see my wife or family. And i spend so much time without someone to talk to.
I almost feel bad leaving a comment here, especially considering I usually don’t comment at all. Everything useful has already been said by other comments. I don’t even have a heartwarming story to tell or anything like that. I just want to thank you. Your videos have always brought joy to me. Your math doodle videos entertained me in high school. Your video on gender actually helped me understand myself just a little bit better. I wear your τ-shirt whenever I go into the vicinity of physicists. This video here successfully let me procrastinate on my master’s thesis (in math!) for almost 40 minutes without even feeling bad about it because “it’s a vihart video and you can’t delay watching that!”. So… thanks! :D
I love the way you wrote tau shirt like t-shirt
the fact that you have a specific shirt to wear when proximate to physicists is most excellent.
Oh hey! I've been watching ViHart since highschool too, and looks like we're about the same age. I wonder if there's more people who grew up with Vihart, we could create a community and trade hexaflexagons or something
@@lonelystar25 that sounds lovely:O should we make one on discord
As some one who found this channel in my high school years as well and doesn't comment much eather, what you have written here sums up everything I wish I could type, but sadly if I did it would not come out as graceful. ❤️❤️
Wow, I remember watching this channel ten years ago amazed by hexaflexagrams and fractal snakes, and suddenly it pops up in my feed again. Makes a big difference to watch it at 22 instead of 12, but maybe that's just filtered memory. It's nice to know that this channel and the -totally not an influencer- at its helm have gotten older and wiser too. Keep on keeping it real!
A strange line through my text happened to me too, what does it mean?
THIS is what integrity looks like when it comes to content creation on the internet. It was a true pleasure to spend 36 minutes and 27 seconds together with you on a walk through a mindspace that all came together in the shape of an octahedron. And for what it is worth, of all the platonic solids, octahedra are my favorite. Hope all is well with you in your world.
I like dodecahedrons best
I just watched an unboxing video of the BTS “advent” calendar thing and if I translated everything to paper right, it looks like Vi made the BTS octahedron correctly!
thanks sam needed this
Omfg thank you 🥲
Oh thank god
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!
The structure of this video is brilliant story telling, taking three disparate threads of thought and literally weaving them together at the end all of which end up revolving around the act and process of creation.
Part 1 of each thread is the setup, giving us all the information we need to know to understand each topic and it also sets up the conflict for each particular thread. The conflict in each being "Could I have made a mistake?", "I think I did make a mistake", and finally "when I start something, I will keep doing it until it's done." The Symmetry thread in each arc serves as a conclusion for the relevant part. In the case of Part 1, that's setting up both the mistakes themselves as well as your own response to those mistakes (the self-described stubbornness), which lead us into Part 2.
Part 2 is about effort; how effort in realizing you've been wrong and working to understand it, especially in trying to move past false assumptions; how effort in our digital spaces is directly disincentivized to favor quick and easy responses; and the fundamental difficulty and doubt that comes with putting in effort, how by caring about something you open up the possibility of failure. Obviously, that's what effort is, if it wasn't difficult it wouldn't require effort in the first place. There's also the question of what is "worthy of effort" and whether or not that's even a question we should be asking ourselves of if that question is something we can help from asking ourselves. Part two ends the failure to create the imagined object and your questioning is immediately followed up by a callback to your own stubbornness that after saying "I can put this down" you're still imagining how to create this object. It sets up the expectation for the audience that they want you to succeed and overcome this hurtle. I even found myself thinking "well, it's not that bad, it looks neat anyways" because I wanted you to succeed.
Part 3 is about uniqueness and conformity: the varied topologies of dice related to the way they're manufactured, but they all fit into underlying topologies; the nature of online discourse where everyone seeks to be unique, but the way we do this is by attaching ourselves to certain creators; and then your own mold which goes back to stubborn determination to keep trying despite failing not because this is a good thing but because this is the box you fit yourself into.
Part 4 is conclusions and uncertainty, which starts after saying that maybe there isn't a definitive conclusion. Of particular note is that part 4 breaks the order of the threads from "dice, comments, symmetry" and instead presents the dice section last. You allow us to believe that maybe we won't get the answer and this is the most interesting part to me because you simultaneously do and don't give us an answer in different ways. Part 4 of the comments thread doesn't actually touch on the concept of the internet at all BUT does call back to the initial reaction we have to conflict. Bringing up the uncertainty and the very real possibility that some things can't be known allows us to think maybe the octahedron won't be completed. And the way you completed the octahedron is by adding in the uncertainty itself. The fact that we never even see the conclusion to the BTS octahedron is a fun point to end this on because it allows the person watching to choose which ending they want because, unlike certain fundamentally unsolvable problems, it can be provably known whether you were right or wrong. It's an "exercise left to the student" to go find the answer, if they want to.
The fail, fail, success of creating the symmetrical-ribbon-dice is a classic rule of threes story structure. This works especially well as a story because you immediately start by showing vulnerability to become relatable made only more compelling because the conflict throughout the conflict throughout stems directly from that vulnerability.
Obviously it's a constructed narrative, the universe very rarely delivers packages to you when they'd be most narratively convenient, but I absolutely love that this video, when you don't look at it too hard, feels natural and flows logically from one point to the next. This is a structure pieced together in editing, deliberately constructed of character and narrative to build a point probably by the very same method shown in the video itself.
TL;DR, I loved this video and spent a whole morning thinking about it.
Thank you for that considered comment. Old UK duffer here :)
noice pfp
This is the single greatest comment i have ever seen. Thank you very much random person
That cool Hilbert-curvy numbered die might have been specially designed as a "countdown" die, making it easy to keep track of a number in a game that you frequently have to add or subtract a bit to/from. Or maybe not, countdown dice are usually d20s apparently.
It's less good for rolling though, since if the die is off-balance then numbers in one area will come up more often than others, and if all the low or high numbers are in the same area, then you'll end up with a consistently low or high die. Dice with a different pattern of numbers will also have areas that come up more often, but the numbers in that area can be distributed across the whole range, therefore hiding the peaks of the probability curve.
I suppose the optimal arrangement for rolling would put the very highest numbers right next to the very lowest ones. So you could take the same path from the countdown die, but instead of numbering it 1-2-3-..., you number it 1-20-2-19-3-18-... instead. I wonder what that path would look like?
@@evanhoffman7995 With TheDiceLab dice, we try to balance the numbering by having the average of the numbers around each vertex be as close as possible to the average over the whole die. This is in addition to having the average of opposite numbers add to the average over the whole die (which is another way to say that opposite numbers always add to the same number).
There isn't that much balancing of this kind that you can do on the d8 since there are so few faces, but we get vertex sums of 14, 16, 18, 18, 20, and 22,. This is the smallest possible range.
It might be. d20 are contdown for Magic, For D&D, you would prefer euqual sum die.
I thought they were called spin down dice
@@UnaturalShadows I think both terms are used. And maybe there are geographic differences?
I love the 3d “path models” of how the dice count up- such an interesting way of viewing it- and the forms created are quite beautiful
Yeah, I've been living in Hilbert land for a while now, I was surprised only one took that path.
After scouring the internet for this same BTS dice, it is with the utmost confidence that I conclude that Vihart predicted the order of the numbers on the other side of the dice correctly!!!
I am so blown away at how you organized the video structure itself into the symmetry of the shape. Even the mysterious Dice 4 chapter --like, I was happy to accept that it was necessary for the symmetry of the shape but irrelevant to the chapter of the video, but then it turned out to actually be relevant to the video chapter as well. Somehow you have made the most cathartic video all without revealing the answer to the question being discussed the entire video
This is exacly why she is an Artist
"Stubbornness: neither a flaw nor a virtue, but a weapon."
That is brilliant perspective that I, a stubborn person, am happy to have. I've always viewed it as a little bit of both, but mostly a virtue. The concept of it being a tool or weapon to be used or misused... Yup, I'm on board.
I really didn't expect it to be, but this video was exactly what I needed right now. As somebody who has been trying to talk themselves into "comfort with not knowing" for a few months, it was very surreal hearing you talk about it, but I think your perspective will help me out. Thanks for this
I remember when I was younger I would sit and wait for one of your videos to come out because my adhd brain felt some type of relief from watching them. This memory popped into my head and I spent an hour trying to find your videos again. I'm so glad I did because it gives me so much comfort, thank you
There kind of is a hack that works for me, which is to totally reject the word 'should'. As in, I use the grammar pedant part of my brain to tag 'should' as a language error. My hypothesis is that any 'should thought' worth thinking can be rephrased another way, and anything that can only be expressed with 'should' is not worth thinking.
So "I should be able to do this faster" could become "I wish I could do this faster" or "I'm surprised by how long this is taking".
It works surprisingly well for me
She comes on the horizon… bringing… MATH.
And dice
@@alinaowen2635 Lots, and lots of dice...
Yes
☀🎶ahAHHH!! BOMP BOMMMMM🎶☀
Bring Me the Horizon
Recently, my thought have been all tangled up in my head, with all of these things going on in the world. I recently finished university, and the lack of certainty about so much of my life felt like a fog clouding my thoughts.
However, this video really helped me realise how, even if I do not have all the answers right now, and I might even fail sometimes, every experience I have will help shape the unique geometry of my life.
Maybe I am reading too much into the video, but seeing all of those unique dice patterns, every one serving a similar purpose but made so differently from the other, was in a weird way comforting. And in the end, it didn’t matter which answer was correct - there does not need to be an exact answer to find value in what we experience.
Anyway, I am more than happy to be influenced like this by this video :) Thank you ViHart for this!
Beautifully said!
@@Vihart Oh my gosh, cannot believe you replied! Thank you so much for all your videos, they are all amazing. Been following since I was in highschool learning how to make doodles, so it is interesting to think how much your videos have shaped many aspects of my life - from personal introspection to what to doodle on a page!
The hilbert-curve die is called a "Rolldown". It's often used as a number marker rather than a rolled die, and is very common in the d20 (because of Magic the Gathering)
I love when dice do that :)
I was wondering why mtg d20’s from pre-release packs were easy to use for life totals, but normal ones weren’t
I think Wizards of the Coast calls them "spindown" dice.
"Meaningless things are allowed to inspire genuine meaning within us." is a great quote! It reminded me of someone discussing how love languages (a popular trend now) have no scientific/psychological background, but give ways for people to have meaningful conversations with other people about how they communicate, conversations that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
The way you said "aww it's just another octahedron from the mirror universe" was so perfectly nonchalant that I ended up cackling to myself and adding it to my list of favourite phrases
Cute bad hair bad cute!
Good jokes aside, I got into your channel with snakes and graphs- my 8th grade English teacher showed it to me 10 years ago. I've been a total fan ever since, and I don't think I've ever commented on or directly engaged with your work but I've shared it SO much with the people I care about (so much so that I still freehand dragon fractals when I get bored...). Now, 10 years later, I'm a school teacher, and I love showing your great stuff to my students!
Cute bad hair bad cute is gonna be the new man door hand hook car door
Oh my gosh, the Ribbon Saga is giving me major flashbacks to when I was writing a twelve-tone piece for Music Theory, and I was imagining it like the notes on the Babbitt Square were actually superimposed on a cube such that each "block" of the cube had the same note on each face, and that the music was like the notes lighting up and bouncing off the edges of the cube and traveling in different directions... I am pretty sure I spent upwards of ten hours over the course of a few days finding twelve-by-twelve pattered cube paper patterns, printing them out, and then trying to fill them out such that each face was a correct Babbitt Square and that each edge's faces matched. It turned out not to work, which was a huge disappointment.
Despite my concept failing, the piece still got written, and it would go on to be used as an example piece by the prof until he retired a few years later. I never was quite happy with that outcome, because the concept behind the piece could have been so much more, and anytime I remembered it I couldn't escape remembering my failure to put the cube together.
Maybe there's a tone row that would make a correct cube, and I just didn't find it. But it's too late now.
I always forget that I'm subscribed to Vi's channel and then she posts and my entire life gets so much better😊💖
Me too
This video is exactly what I needed right now. It's like I subconsciously called out into the universe and then all the answers came back.
So, I just want to thank you for being...you? Just your willingness to do whatever the heck you want is really inspiring. I just started high school, and I feel more and more that I'm pushing myself into a box and that the walls around me are ever caving in. It's not a huge problem, just something I can feel naturally happening as I'm growing up, that I'm having less options or at least less time to choose. Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that you seem to embody the complete opposite of this, which I feel like is pretty rare.
I've been watching your videos for a while and you seem like such a unique and incredible person. Keep doing whatever it is you want to do, whether that's making videos, not making videos, or creating a spider-triangle cult. (Which I would join without hesitation!)
i clicked one video titled dragons, and have now found this lovely channel that i don’t always understand or always can keep up with the commentary, but it makes me think and debate and question and the effort put into everything is so clear and so appreciated and beautiful. a beautiful project that has clearly been worked on for so long, and will continue to exist for as long as it can. have a wonderful day
I'm not great at the affirmations, but since you said you read comments, I'll say this: You make me love learning and want to create. So maybe you're not an influencer, but you're definitely inspiring. You inspired me when I was in middle school and you still inspire me now, graduating from a masters with pandemic burnout. Thank you.
wikipedia has you: "Some twenty-sided dice have a different arrangement used for the purpose of keeping track of an integer that counts down, such as health points. These spindown dice are arranged such that adjacent integers appear on adjacent faces, allowing the user to easily find the next lower number. They are commonly used with collectible card games." (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice#Common_variations) That paragraph only mentions 20-sided spindowns, but in reality spindowns are common in most of the other common die shapes.
I've actually noticed the fact that D8s in my collection don't all follow the opposite sides add up to 9. I thought it might be they want each half when you look at it to add up to the same number, but I don't remember if that checked out for all of them.
I just played Magic The Gathering for the first time a few days ago, and saw the spindown d20s, which I thought was weird, but cool.
I don't think that's what it is
Here's the thing - in my dice collection, the only dice I have that don't adhere to the standard model of numbering also happen to be the oldest dice set I own and comes from the real early days of tabletop games. The d8 in that set follows the 8145 pattern, but its not the *only* die in the set like that. The d20 also follows a pattern that isn't "sum of opposite sides = 21", instead opting for "opposite sides share the same unit number" (its one of those dice that has two sets of 0-9 on its faces so really it's "opposite sides have the same number", which I don't think would make for a good spindown die anyways). Even the d4 is differently chiral for some reason.
Surely if the d8 was meant to be a spindown die, wouldn't all the other die in the set be countdown die too? Also, I'm pretty sure my set predates most modern card games that use spindown die
Every time you upload a video, I'm instantly transported back a decade to the campus quad, experiencing the joy of finally actually understanding mathematical concepts that were just rote memorization before.
A LOT has changed since then. I graduated, found a career, fell in love, changed my first name, picked up a dicemaking hobby, so many things. And to this day, I still sing "Candy Corn Kernels" under my breath when I see candy corn in a grocery store.
Thanks for letting your work be part of my journey, even if you had no idea that journey was happening. And thanks for the video and prompt to introspect, I think I really needed a good cry today.
I'm a teen and I plan to be in the business of mathematically educating people when I grow up. I probably wouldn't if I hadn't found your channel and watched all your stuff. Does that make you an influencer? I don't know, but in any case: You influenced me.
"meaningless things are allowed to inspire genuine meaning between us" this is so powerfull
Absolutely brilliant and incredibly profound. You've given me so much with this magnificent flow of thoughts and touch on so many substantial, expansive, impactful concepts & ideas, all of which resonated with me more than you can imagine. I thank you deeply for sharing all of this - it is something that has provided real meaning and provoked heavy introspection. Believe it or not, it has been life-altering for me, just as many of your other videos have been (especially your series on the Fibonacci sequence in nature, but even the entire Doodling In Math and PI vs. Tau series hold special places in my heart) ever since I began watching your stuff nearly a decade ago.
Matching the archetype described within your video, I'm a chronic lurker, someone who rarely posts and when I do, I invest a substantial amount of time & effort into the crafting of a single comment, just as I am doing now (be honored by the fact that you've gotten me to express my thoughts in this excessive, analytical prose). You completely nailed your assessment and your vision for this video as a whole. Plus, presenting all of this as a progressive stream of thought works surprisingly, phenomenally well in amplifying the efficacy of the delivery of the ideas you're trying to express, with each naturally bleeding into the next in a meaningful way, with it all tying together in what is truly masterful storytelling & presentation. Thank you once again for your videos, each of which are similar symphonies of poetic, mathematical art. I look forward to more sparse yet stellar content from you in the future. Keep doing you, in all your vibrant, heartfelt (see what I did there?), imaginative glory, and we'll all continue to join you for the mind-bending ride.
_"I, too, am not immune to being human..."_
Same here, Vi. Same here.
But you're a reminder that being human ain't necessarily bad.
no you
Hear hear!
YESSS!!! SO GLAD TO SEE THIS!
and yes, the untangling has piled up a lot in this brain, it's sort of bad/good to know that others are not having an easy time with this rn either
Ido
2. Wow. Wasn't expecting to cry this morning from a video about dice numbering patterns, but this was exactly what I needed in my life right now. I often feel like a strip on someone else's die, and the universe is trying to figure out what the heck to do with me and just getting more and more frustrated. But, as you demonstrated, each strip is representative of multitudinous thoughts and that's a very comforting reminder. Thank you.
1. I've been watching your videos since Mathed Potatoes and I consider it a personal accomplishment that, as time goes on, the people I surround myself with are increasingly people who appreciate your videos also. I went from bugging friends and love interests to watch Vi Hart and scouring for one that would appeal to them, to sending any Vi Hart to any of the people I know, with joy, knowing certain aspects of would speak to each of them in a different way. Thank you.
I am an engineer today because I started watching your videos in high school. You add value into the world that makes science and math artistic and creative in a way that traditional education has a habit of beating out of people. You helped me retain my curiosity and creativity and you have added value to my career and life. Whether you produce content or not going further I will always be thankful for what you have already done.
This video spoke to me. There's so much about what Vi talked about that resonated with my experience. The inability to let go. The stubbornness. The "should"s. Thank you Vi. I needed this today. I think of you as an educator over an "influencer", but today you were a positive influence on my geeky, bipolar self. Thank you.
There were so many moments in this video where Vi managed to perfectly articulate things I've felt before but never knew how to put in to words. This channel walks the boundary between math and poetry and I love every second of it. Thank you, Vi, for sharing your thoughts with all of us.
There are countless times where Vi managed to articulate thoughts I had but didn't really have a strong place in my head because I wasn't able to articulate them TO MYSELF clearly.
There was a lot of these moments in the "Suspend your disbelief" video, I was in awe, half wanting to clap, half wanting to cry, it was quite a moment!
I even got a friend thanking me for sharing that video on FB and making him discover this channel.
Vi, if you're reading this, thank you ♥
most relatable thing I've seen in a year is vihart casually saying "if I had to buy more dice it wouldn't be that bad"
the D&D player and the Dice Goblin in me is proud
By the end of the video I fully expect to see a big vault with a sea of dice, which she can swim in as though it were a pool of water, just like Scrooge McDuck.
@@Arashmickey McDice lol
This was so beautiful I teared up a little XD
You may or may not be an "influencer," whatever that means, but you've definitely influenced my life for the better. It's good to hear your voice again. Also oh my gosh that octahedron is beautiful 'u'
It was neat to see the balancing act between scripts and mysteries. ^u^
Thank you for another great art piece / TH-cam video!
~Cat~
This person is a musician, mathematician, and an artist
You stopped coming up in my recommended a long while ago. With me being my easily distracted self I didnt realize I was missing posts and assumed youd moved on to some other, very time consuming, super brilliant endeavor. I am so glad you're still around! Your videos are so smart, entertaining and educational and I love it. Thanks for being here!!
What a wonderful artifact you've created. Was fun to watch
"It's just in my nature to do these things... Sometimes a precious free afternoon where I had actual things I really needed to get done is going to up and disappear because something stupid wants to be brought into existence and if I don't do it, no one will."
This is so incredibly relatable and half the reason why people like me watch your videos. You have such a real personality, just weird enough to be entertaining and unique, and able to share your thoughts in a well articulated manor. Thank you for sharing these thoughts with us all.
SHE'S BACK!
When a love of math videos (and folding paper) coincides with a love of BTS. You get a Vihart video that makes you think more introspectively then you have all week. Thankful for the years of incredible videos that bring so much joy and helping me realize that the tangents my brain takes are ultimately for good.
This is basically a dissertation on life with the misdirection and stunning wonder of a magic show. I love it.
You're a talented and interesting person. I feel happy too because I also have thought patterns like yours but I don't have the ability to articulate them. I like hearing them articulated. It makes me feel less overwhelmed and like human understanding isn't as out of reach.
This seemed like a deep dive into Vihart's mind, I felt like Alice in the land of Octagonal dice, and it is simply briliant how it all (un)folds at the end.
I discovered this same problem many years ago when I started playing Magic the Gathering. Turns out you can buy dice, or you can buy "counters". The "counters" don't follow the dice rules, because they're intended to make it easier to keep track of an integer, rather than trying to achieve randomness. I suspect for most practical purposes it doesn't really matter, though.
I mean, practically yes. But magic twitter was up in arms semi-recently about whether using spindowns as d20s for the recent D&D set wouldn't give random enough rolls or "differently random" rolls.
@@samarnadra I don't think the concern with using spindown dice as d20s is that it won't be random enough on a normally thrown roll, it's that someone using a spindown can figure out how to roll it high intentionally. With a d20 where low and high numbers are evenly distributed, it's much harder to manipulate your roll and low/high are equally likely... with a spindown, sure if you toss it without intention it seems like it'd still be fairly random, but because half the die is high and half is low so you can practice getting it to land on the higher side. In both numbering systems it's probably impossible (or at least very very difficult) to intentionally roll specific numbers, but one makes it easier than the other to get in a specific range.
@@kittykat490 that actually makes a lot of sense
Words can’t express what I feel after watching this. I was suddenly reminded of thus channel and wanted to see what’s up, did not expect a deep narrative dive into a math non-influencer’s head. everything about this video is brilliant
What a brilliant video. The way you put a bunch of loose threads out there that literally wove together at the end was beautiful. And the visual with the head worked really well. This was an amazing explanation and exploration of all the topics you covered. Thank you Vi
My thoughts feel really similar sometimes! The way you represented it visually and orally was beautiful!! And I love how nicely the thoughts came together at the end but the entire process itself was very interesting and all the messy thoughts before they were wrapped up were cool and also visually entertaining!
The way you script all of your videos is also always so.. vivifying! I love how you talk about all these concepts, and show how cool the ideas of them are, and let all of the new ideas burst out around them like fireworks with new ideas exploding into colorful sparks, or maybe a bit calmer like a river turning into a bunch of tiny waterways with many different branching paths to choose from. And just the way you speak in your videos is nice too, like a song with crescendos and speeding tempos and key changes when you get excited or present good questions or new ideas.
And all of that goes without mentioning all of the good visual aid! All of the colors and different materials and even just really well drawn doodles are used to examine concepts thoroughly from so many different perspectives! It's all just so spectacular and so fun and satisfying and interesting!
You have definitely helped along my passion for math and all of the other topics you cover, and I'll always come back to your videos when school just isn't doing math justice like you do.
I just realized that I've been watching this channel for 10 years now. even when I reached the point where I felt like I didn't want to do math ever again, I'd still find myself coming back to Vi's videos. I think Vi's content has definitely evolved but the comfort that they bring is still there and the excitement I get when I see a new video i think is unmatched to any other content creator I follow.
"I could have lived in blissful ignorance"
Hold on, that's not the Vihart I know.
Yes
I am kind of sorry about going completely off the rails here (well, maybe not all-the-way-completely, it's kind of related to internet philsopohy or whatever?), but:
A few years ago, as as even younger (and more influenceable) me, I saw your trihexaflexagon videos, and for some reason, I really liked those thingies. I started making them at , like, every opportunity. I have a memory of waiting at a railway station and getting out the paper and scissors I had with me specifically for the purpose of making trihexaflexagons, and making some. I had them everywhere. I think pretty much everyone I had some sort of relationship with got to see the wonders of the trihexaflexagon, and a few friends also started liking the concept of flexagons. It wouldn't be much of an exageration to say they became part of my identity.
I don't even know what I'm getting at here. I think that it might just be a tiny bit interesting for you to hear about the surprisingly large yet meaningless effects you have had on some random teen half a world away.
(Also, I think I never made a Hexahexaflexagon??? I need to do that sometime.)
This is why I love your videos, they are so relevant and relatable if you look deep down, and silly throughout the whole thing. Good show viheart good show
This is so frustrating, yet so beautiful, thankyou.
Seeing a Vihart upload made me so, so happy.
I've been watching Vihart since I was in 4th grade. Of course, I was a fourth grader, and liked the videos because of the colors and the storylines and the simplified math that I couldn't comprehend.
Now, I'm in my first year of high school. I actually understand some of the things she talks about, and it makes me enjoy the videos even more.
I guess what I have to say is thanks, Vihart, for making my day better and making the past few years of my life more mathematical.
I really resonated with your thoughts about the pressures we put on ourselves about how quickly we should be creating things, and how we come to expect perfection from our creations. I was genuinely so pleased with how nice your first ribbon-covered octahedron turned out that it helped remind me that I can still make beautiful things even when they aren't perfect or don't fully match the image in my head. And, of course, I can always take what I learned to try again another time!
“Just do it anyway, almost as if you were living your life as your life and not as a results factory for someone else”
I think I really needed to hear that. Thank you!
I hit "like" on this video when the "impulsive" dice purchase happened. I was having fun. I like dice. In "Comments 4", you helped me reflect for a moment on some recent past failures of mine and how they are opening me up to the future. When we got to "wrapping up", and you turned over the strips you had been writing on, and I saw the symmetry and shape of your video, I started crying out of joy. Thank you for sharing your mind with us. As usual, it's beautiful.
She came back when we needed her most
yes
I never thought I'd be waiting so eagerly for the suspense to end on a revelation of the right positioning and rotation of numbers on a die.
Edit: I just finished the video, and I'm speechless.
Edit 2: I had to find out about the dice, so I did. No spoilers here though.
can you at least say where you found your answer?
@@idiothead5511 on an unboxing
@@idiothead5511 TH-cam is the homeland of unboxers
I appreciate how well-spoken you are and how well-constructed the content you make is, so I wanted to take a few minutes to let you know that the videos you make mean something to me. So thank you! This video scratched a good itch in my brain, with the way you took the video in a ton of different directions and brought it all together so nicely in the end.
I have 'those days' that you describe in the start of the video most of the time, my brain likes to engage with as many things as it can and to keep learning! But, I rarely have the time to allow to myself to unspool all of my thoughts as much as I want to. This video reminded me that I love the moments where some of those little thoughts overlap and wind together to make new things, and that even if I can't see the whole interwoven multi-sided mess-shape that my brain is making, that doesn't mean that it all amounted to nothing. Sometimes it's just best to be filed away to try again another time, or to just let those things be imperfect and not know. Here's to uncertainty!
Small side effect of this video: I want to go buy more dice now. I must have more click clack.
have been watching your videos since i was literally 6 years old and my dad showed me them; you continue to be a delight and inspiration
An absurb adventure to find wheter the BTS Dice meets the past standards or its own new configuration.
Along the way vihart explains her thought processes on creation and views on the ever changing TH-cam landscape with the "responsibilities" that may come from being a creator on it.
Contemplation on the reasoning behind the creation of the video itself arises as the absurdity of the task beforehand sets in and comes to a satisfying conclusion.
It would be an understatement if I say that this was the best video I saw in years. Excellent video!
Working on projects and tasks to completion is a skill unto itself, and something I'm still working on. I am good at starting things, but not at finishing them (yet)
Facts! For me, putting intentional practice into that skill, without also trying to practice doing the best work at the same time, definitely helped.
@@Vihart I just ordered a planner the other day that I'm hoping I can use to help divide my day up into workable chunks so I can focus my time on what I want to get better at and set aside reasonable amounts of time to work on them rather then my current method (which is nothing).
Also still working on the 'shoulds' , and figuring out what reasonable expectations for myself are
When you didn’t show the actual dice at the end I had to take matters into my own hands. For only the price of my TH-cam recommended feed showing me bts/unboxing content, my curiosity has been sated.
(To the others who must know, Vihart was 100% correct about the number placements and rotation)
Thank you for sharing so I didn't also have to go through the extra research. I appreciate the double ending, BUT I MUST KNOW
Don't spoil it, let the people do a bit of research, at least. Vi wanted it to be a mystery. I also checked but I don't think is cool to spoil it in the comment section.
Thank you for this. You saved my sanity, and probably my enjoyment about the rest of the video. The rage I felt when she erased the truth at the end wiped out a feeling of beauty I was eagerly writing to others about. I can't even remember what I felt was so life-changing about the video, so I'm going to watch it again knowing the answer so the feeling of being cheated doesn't destroy it again.
@@fostena I disagree. I would have spent time researching it, which really would have been a waste of my time.
Thank you oh my god
SHES BACK, THE MATH QUEEN!
HEX-A-FLAXA WOOOOOO!!!!
The queen is back 🤩 I’ve watched your videos religiously since 6th grade
"meaning isn't free" is a sentence I needed today. I'm so happy I decided to take a look back at your channel, and that you're still making stuff with that same sense of wonder as back in 2013. Thanks for making this content, and you may not consider yourself an influencer, but there's a generation of people inspired by your stuff, and I consider the world a better place because of it
Numberphile had a good 2-video series on fair dice, and I remember a discussion on the unfairness of naive "opposite-numbers adding to the same value" design.
Numberphile has some really excellent dice-related videos, I recommend everyone check them out :)
This is such a beautiful video, in so many ways, and now after watching it I am feeling so inspired, in several ways, but as someone that rarely comments on things, I mostly want to say... "our fortune is seafoam, our fate decided through 36 views of pair-a-dice" is... you know, fantastic.
Omg our fave mathmusician is back in our spirally algorithm
Totally
This...this video was a work of art. Especially if it is imperfect with an ending left unknown, that's the whole beauty of it, and what the video itself is _about._
I have enjoyed every video you have ever posted to this channel because your process has those rough edges that give the story some character. Mistakes happen, all we can do is our best, fix what we can and let go of what we can't.
This video has everything. Math, philosophy, art, social commentary, wholesome feels at Vi nerding out over mirror dice worlds and dice snacks, and a mystery that will keep me awake at night for the foreseeable future.
I know that you spent a lot of this video being vulnerable about insecurities and I don’t want to parasocial relationship myself into thinking I can do anything to help, but I think the ribbon octahedron came out really well and the pattern at the end when you put it into the head was something I’d like to make/have, so I’m glad you showed it to everyone. I hope you can come to feel ok with “failures” like that because even the thought and effort you put into something you found mathematically beautiful is really cool. Have a good day!
I know right? I'm like *please* someone who has resin make and gift them their version of a bts dice 🥺 it would be a poetic gift imo if it turned out the official bts dice were wrong. Like, she could get one in the end after all haha.
Hey, Vi! I emailed you like a year ago, thanking you for your videos and explaining that they inspired me to study math in college. And - to my surprise - you replied. I think it’s incredible that an “influencer” like you can make such personal videos, with such personal and yet universal topics, and still be so obviously just another person like me, someone who reads comments and replies to emails. Your work is *so* inspiring, and I’m so glad to exist in a time and a place where I get to appreciate it.
I was kind of stunned to see this in my recommended. I used to watch your videos constantly in elementary school, and now I can't stop seeing the Fibonacci sequence in every spiral lol. You gave me a whole new appreciation of math at a young age, which is probably why I'm so weirdly obsessed with polynomials these days
I love the jumpy structure of your videos (and probably also your thinking) a lot. Reminds me a lot of my own, which I seldomly encounter.
This is the most therapeutic video I’ve seen in a while, and I can’t even explain why. It’s just so calming and fun. Thank you
Thanks for turning on TH-cam comments. I like them, even if you don’t :) Also including both possible endings was very cool, and (somewhat surprisingly, to me) I’m not even bothered that you don’t reveal which is “true”. The cube paths and other discussions are more interesting than that answer anyway.
THE WOMAN THE MYTH THE LEGEND HAS RETURNED
You were such a huge part of my childhood. I'm so happy I rediscovered your channel recently ♡ so glad to see you're still just as awesome :)
This is probably one of my favorite TH-cam videos now
I have been watching your videos for many years. They have been a comfort of mine, showing me that my way of being is not alone and something to be proud and confident of. Influencer of the masses or not, you have inspired me to pursue my dreams. Keep being unapologetically you, Vi.
This is the most cinematic ramble-style video I’ve ever seen. It’s so down-to-earth yet so artistic. You are such a treasure Vi
This was the best birthday gift I didn't know I wanted or needed! ❤️
Glad to see vihart is doing well!! I haven’t seen one of these vids in a while 👌😌
There's something about your videos that just feels like a breath of fresh air among the other things I watch. A slice of human experience that isn't intended to be consumable for an algorithm. It's nice, thank you :)
I started watching these videos when I was in middle school, not sure exactly when but probably about 2013. I just turned 20 last week and I’m a junior in college. It’s just amazing that so many of the creators that I watched 7 or 8 years ago are still around, and in many ways, almost feel like they matured with me. A new vihart or VSauce video is like a visit from an old friend. The depth and complexity of the themes you’re talking about here speak just as loudly as fun math videos did when I was 13.
Thanks for the ride, I’m fully strapped in for wherever you decide to take us next. Full support and much love. Always.