Pop Science And The Limitations Of Infotainment
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 ต.ค. 2024
- it's finally here... Pop Science, a video essay.
Popular Science is science for the masses. The stock in trade is nifty insights and suprising facts, conclusions that amaze and astound. Here's my TED talk about it. It's simple, it's neat, and hopefully it's backed by science.
Pop Sci 2 - Electric Boogaloo HERE: • Pop Science 2: Electri...
Follow Coffee Break!
Twitter: / coffeebreak_yt
Facebook: / coffeebreak42
Patreon: / coffee_break
Go check these out:
Dr. Steel's blog on procrastination procrastinus.com/
Dr. Crede's Twitter on methodological issues in science. / marcuscrede
Books Referenced Here:
everything by Malcolm Gladwell - your barnes and noble front shelves
Chasing the Scream - Johann Hari www.amazon.com...
Originals - Adam Grant www.amazon.com...
Grit - Angela Duckworth www.amazon.com...
Paradox of Choice - Barry Schwartz www.amazon.com...
Music:
ibrahim - land of petals / land-of-petals
ibrahim - unfamiliar and wonderful / unfamiliar-and-wonderful
Hill - String Thing
Soiree - Untitled 2016 / untitled-2016
ibrahim - a world at peace / a-world-at-peace
ALL REFERENCES ARE LISTED HERE:
docs.google.co...
NOTE: TH-cam has a limit to the length of the description, and so I’ve been forced to put my source page above: my apologies for the inconvenience.
EDIT: To those of you who wondered in the comments, yes, this was the video planned before all the Kurzgesagt in a nutshell stuff blew up.
EDIT 2: I received a kind comment on 4/22 letting me know that I have used a VOX graph at 12:32 without proper attribution in the video. That was an oversight during my editing process, and I wanted to correct this. That graph is sourced from here:
www.vox.com/20... and the study it is building off of can be found here: www.ncbi.nlm.n...
![เปิดบ้าน พี่ตูน Bodyslam หลังใหม่คนแรก ที่ภูเก็ต l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/flFwcmyDQSk/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks to everyone who hung in there for this video, I know it took forever, but I couldn't be more proud of the end result. If you'd like to subvert other people's weakly held beliefs about pop-science, you can do your part by pressing the like button, subscribing or sharing!
This is a really good and entertaining video, but it's a little annoying that the effect of it on a lot of viewers (and even people who just read the title, which definitely carries a derogatory tone despite being unembellished with clickbaity phrases) is going to be 'I can't trust pop science', when the whole point was to explore the details deeper and not rush to conclusions like that just because someone knows how to appeal to your 'weakly held beliefs' and encourages you to.
The underlying agenda still seems to be to criticize pop science, and I wish that the format and context of the video made the points in favor of pop science more like slightly backtracking on the main argument than promoting an equally balanced counterpoint. It got better towards the end for sure, but the comments (including this one) show a decent bit of hypocrisy in my opinion
@@obnoxiouslakerfan I think your criticism is very fair, and I really like the point about backtracking instead of counterpoint, but I don't agree with you saying that the title and image are derogatory... With a video that touches on a subject with so much controversy, it is extremely hard to make it feel as though he isn't attacking the pop sci industry.
As well, the man needs to make some money... I think he's done a fantastic job at making the video appealing to more people, while still maintaining educational value and merit. Videos such as his are great starting points for this topic as it can be extremely hard to sit through long videos that cover all parts of this very broad subject. For example, smarter every day's fantastic new series on social media has the same ideas of researching, but can be really difficult for an uninterested person to sit through.
Also thank you for not being an ass when presenting your opinion. It's obvious that you've thought this out and it's very refreshing to read a criticism of the video that isn't just a hormone rush.
Cheers :)
Thanks, this video make sense of a lot of things! especially why some Pop-science videos I've watched felt 'offensive'; because it was in their formula to challenge people's personally held belief! I thought those people are just Edgy and annoying, turn out it's a formula. Lol. I really hope Pop-science video is more about "clarifying things" instead of "challenging things", I mean this video clarify things, I don't see it attacking my personal opinions of things.
Hey man, your videos always wake me up, put a smile on my lips and me wonder. Love your work.
I think your instrumentals video is incredibly wrong. As a musician myself, I am actually quite offended. If you want to understand this then read "Path to the new music" by Anton Webern.
I was worried about how my words were going to be used, so I am glad that this was a very thoughtful treatment of the topic. It is easy to be cynical about this, which I sometimes lapse into, especially when writers take the position that they can rake in all the cash but have no responsibility for what they say. We don't know their motivations, but it is coincidentally the same position that an amoral individual would take: if you buy it, we will sell it. On the other hand, writers have to position their work so people will read it, to make it accessible and interesting. In any case, that there is an appreciative audience for Stephen's work is a reason to be optimistic.
I appreciated what you said in the video.
+
Why do we buy that stuff?
Moritz Wegge / Why do we buy anything that we hear? Because it is impractical to find out for ourselves. The balance is between being ignorant and wasting time
@@-caesarian-6078 You can't be an expert in everything by experience, need to be taught by people who have made 1000s of mistakes to speed up the process
This video subversed my weakly held believe that I can somewhat trust pop science content.
M E T A
@@CoffeeBreaks This video reinforced my strongly held belief that all science is unreliable and that the earth is flat.
My beliefs are changed weekly.
Question everything
@@CoffeeBreaks Isn't that not the point of the video though? For a video that makes a lot of nominal efforts at being impartial, the fact that this is the top comment and is 'loved' by the creator kind of proves that this ultimately still serves as a slight hitpiece/takedown of pop science, masked by moments of backtracking and a seemingly un-clickbaity, balanced title that already carries a negative connotation and the implied distinction that 'pop science' is a completely separate category than 'real science'.
If we want to talk about being meta and all that, how about the fact that in a video about stressing the nuance in things and that it's not always enough just to be a 'conversation starter' because of the real impact that pop science has on people, we have a perfect example of one of those people here in this comment, misinterpreting the video and thinking you can't somewhat trust pop science, and it's encouraged by the creator rather than exploring the nuance of how much we should trust pop science.
Anyway, this was a very good video, and I think Stephen is aware of some of his own hypocrisy in making this, but this comment and the subtext/impact of a video like this still kind of bugs me, if that makes sense.
The person who wrote procrastination is good is procrastinating publishing the paper.
Is that surprising?
Lol love this
Well they are overdue by now, I don't think they can be procrastinating at this point.
Another 90 days to change this
You are thinking way too small. I submitted a tonne of overdue assigments from last semester just this week. Now I have 3 days untill exams and here I am.
You can always procrastinate ☠☠
@@JKenny44 jeez Luiz. Hope you're good now, dude.
He didn't procrastinate on writing that book though
**Makes pop science video about pop science**
Sorry, i had to. I love you ❤️
Except it's not pop science at all. He's not claiming to be backed up by studies or showing data or percentages. He's just saying what can be observed. The only times you have to trust him is when he makes claims (not studies, just stuff like "ths book says x"), and if you want to check those claims out you can just do it.
Un Usuario *sarcasm*
@@alvin_row you just described pop science
@@parkermillican the original comment did not seem sarcastic. joking, but not sarcastic.
Arnold ok
My problem with pop science is that it may fool people into thinking they fully know the subject explained or that it substitutes formal education. Ex: "wow this is better than school and books!"
I don't think anyone assumes they know more than someone studying biology just because they watched a Ted talk.
@@althechicken9597
I wish that were true.
Anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers and flat-earthers wouldn't exist.
@@althechicken9597You'd be surprised.
@@althechicken9597are you joking?
@@althechicken9597 oh you’ve never met an evangelical. Or a hard core full left or full right. The more fundamental the more they quote because so and so said so.
People just want to feel smart without doing any work.
It's the same way people read the headline of a news article and then act like they're political experts.
I don't think I'd blame the consumer of pop-science for these issues. The whole point is to inform people who aren't scientists and who don't have the time to do extensive research and become properly well-informed on a specific topic.
@@sprazz8668I honestly do though. Humans are social and are only capable of thinking in groups and are incapable of thinking for themselves which makes something like misinformation that much more dangerous.
This is the Coffeebreak I subscribed to! Wonderful return to form
Ozepyon09 exactly what I wanted to say, happy it’s back!
Big brain over here lmao
Something I think would be intensely helpful for spreading science to everyone is "Read-alongs" for journals.
A lot of journals are byzantine, hard to parse at their best for most people. Having someone in the field record themselves explaining parts of the paper for someone to listen to as they read along would be a godsend. It might even help people learn how to parse more dense work and help them develop the tools to seek answers for themselves. Who knows, maybe by having experts reading journals and explaining them aloud we'd end up catching errors and faulty logic that would otherwise not be noticed. "Rubber duck debugging" has helped people do similar stuff. The people could learn stuff, might get a valuable skill, and we can walk away with a more watertight journal for the trouble.
@infinitemausoleum721 That is a freaking FANTASTIC idea! Like good enough for me to want to reach out to my network and see if I can get some professionals I know to try it. Do you mind if I work on your idea? Would you like to work with me on it?
"We tend to believe claims that sound science-y."
-Scientist, 2019
Which is why you hear the “basic biology” argument used a lot to attack marginalized groups of people.
That coffee break animation is sleek
Lemmino has an amazing video on this called 8 spiders, absolutely mind blowing.
Ahhh, so this is what you had been working on which kinda led to the whole misunderstanding.
You are joking, right?
@@bluee6894 That's exactly what it was :)
k1w1 no one is mainly at fault; they both had done not very respectable things. that is a thing of the past and there's no need to try to bring it up again- and if you still wanna discuss it go to reddit or something and not TH-cam.
@@markzheng1509 thats a weird thing to do: to tell people what and where they have to discuss things.
accutus it was more of a suggestion as TH-cam isn't optimal for discussion, at least not the comment section. I wasn't trying to command people to do whatever I said. Sorry if it seemed I was forcing something :P
I hope people don't keep attacking you because of your last Kurzgesagt video, and even if they do, I hope you don't let it get to you.
What you are discussing is an important subject that needs to be talked about and isn't talked about enough in this content marketing era, please don't let some haters make you doubt the signifigance of your work.
I'm also looking forward to the next fake guru episode on your second channel, those are also great. Wish you all the best.
it is important. It's just. What would be a better way to disemenate these ideas? Like. What are we lay people to do?
He’s also funded by billionaires I’m talking about kurzgesagt
Malcolm Gladwell just gives the masses what they want to hear so he can sell books, not sure even he believes what he writes.
I'm very glad that you made a video on this. It's very important and I think you nailed it.
9:30 trust me that study is never going to be published in a scientific journal
Lmao his weird face shouldn't have too. :P
If he published it, he wouldn't be procrastinating would he?
So apparently the study has been "under review" since around 2017. Being under review basically means the prototype of the study is submitted to the academic journal whose peer reviewers give the researcher feedback or maybe even asks for improvements. But usually this process takes less than a year. It seems pretty obvious to me that this study has been rejected by all academic/scientific journals it has been submitted to.
@@orenalbertmeisel3127 or he's procrastinating you fool!
@@orenalbertmeisel3127 the student finished her phd in 2014 so.. that is kind of a weird delay. BUT publications can take really long times.. especially if they keep targeting high impact factors. Rejection doesn't mean lack of value, be careful! Scientific publication is also a competitive market
Grit is just another word for conscientiousness. An already established personality trait
Yes, but considering the incentives she received you can understand why Pop. Sci can be a problem.
There is a TEDx talk by Jordan where he was just teaching people nonsense disguised as a speed-reading course.
Really enlightening TH-cam video. Best part was " I have ideas but it doesn't means i have answers " . It really got me thinking. My chem teacher use to say that all the things I'm teaching you are theoretical, it dosen't mean that these are right, it only means that these theories haven't been proven wrong. And that is what I have to say about this vid
Regarding the self-regulation / checking of pop-science, it seems to be a problem with actual science too. Often claims are not re-tested to see if the results are actually repeatable, and when that is done and claims get more nuance or even whole papers are retracted it's already too late and the original claim is already deeply ingrained. A good example of this is the whole 'vitamin C prevents colds' stuff. I'm not claiming this plagues all scientific research, but it seems to happen often enough to be worth keeping an eye for.
Gladwell oversimplifies but also aggressively defends his oversimplification.
I was listening to a Freakonomics podcast where Gladwell disagreed with the original author of the 10,000-hour research that he oversimplified his findings in his book.
Sometimes I noticed Gladwell not only oversimplifies but also overextends original research to his own ideas based on anecdotes. I spend a while looking at learning psychology book and noticed that he used a concept of desirable difficulties (which is when you make things harder for yourself when learning to help you get better results - ex: recalling stuff from memory rather than looking over notes when revising for exams) to imply that dyslexia was a desirable difficulty because a lot of millionaires tended to be dyslexic...
What's worse is Gladwell's ideas are then cited by highly educated and influential figures.
Using the dyslexia example, I will attempt to prove that environmental causes have a varied effect on the individual.
Suppose we look at a group of dyslexic people. Will we see a normal distribution or one highly skewed left or right? I would argue neither, as I would expect a distribution with a u shape pattern.
When you have any man face a trial, there are two important results baring completing the trial; growing stronger or growing weaker. For example, two men start lifting weights and start lifting amounts beyond what they ought. The resulting intense pain and possible injury may discourage one and encourage the other. Likewise, dyslexia places a heavy burden on children whom lack in most virtues, as they haven't had a chance to cultivate those quite yet. Thus when children must bear this burden then they tend to either run away into other activities or stubbornly refuse to give up. Both provide additional motivation for a task, which causes the task to receive more time, and key point, practice. Now the activities a child pursues depends largely on the parents and community of the child, which in turn determine the value of said activities. Becoming a master at tag doesn't pay well, but learning advanced mathematics does, for example.
Thus the environment plays a large role in the success of a dyslexic child.
However, the caveat to all this, is free will. A child, for reason or another, may choose to go against his environment for better or worse.
Yes, he's a very clear case of a guy who wants to get money and/or acclaim rather than someone trying to educate people IMO. People will go on about the principle of charity, but at a certain point if you're so charitable you're bending backwards for a charlatan, you're an idiot.
I think this really comes from the fact that he’s a journalist and not an academic. From an academic perspective, simplification is a communication tool, not a tool that brings you to any sort of insight.
From a writer’s perspective wisdom is found in simplicity. You can very much tell by his work that he subscribes to the second philosophy.
I think this is kinda what the video hit so well on IMO, the conflicting incentives and philosophies inherent to pop science means that it will *never* be truly scientific.
Being academically minded I would agree that this makes him wrong sometimes, but I also think there’s an argument to be made that general wisdom with some grounding in science is better than general wisdom pulled from thin air, and that’s what Gladwell seems to peddle in.
Gladwell exposed himself as a hack years ago in that Munk debate imo. By then, I had already begun to realize how sloppy a lot of the science underpinning his work truly was, but seeing him have to make arguments on the fly that were truly idiotic was the nail in the coffin
Gladwell is such a fraud.
Basically nuance is important and you should be skeptical
Matthew B about every issue. Must do your part to avoid the Internet hivemind.
Not nuance, but specificity
Not just that: there is an incentive for pop sci to be simple and novel, and that's what makes it deserving of skepticism.
Yes, but I think it's also important to stress that skepticism shouldn't be the same as cynicism or pessimism. We should question but we shouldn't immediately assume the worst. I feel like sometimes people forget this.
@@unfig3034 well said. :)
Thats a neat new intro animation
Gladwell's face at about 14:00 is like "are you seriously going to ask me about something i wrote?"
I think this is why I don’t want to make videos sharing my ideas on TH-cam or public platform just yet because I know I don’t have the mindset I’d like to share with the world. Just having ideas isn’t the end all, it’s about executing them.
Lovely video. Glad to have you back Coffee Break. 💖
*Proceeds to fact check everything he said*
Seriously though, this video is well done! Hope that this series will be a success, expecting more of these from you CB
Here's the reference section. It ran a bit long for TH-cam description, so I had to put it in a different file. docs.google.com/document/d/1X4Ti87E-kvBygzCprxLbSMuqWGOlvHCy-Om-IYK8-wE/edit?usp=sharing
Hi That Guy
Is this the video you were originally going to make?
yes.
@@CoffeeBreaks Its a VERY good one. Thank you.
@@CoffeeBreaks You were always so bad at editing, but now even the content is bad and biased, bye.
@@Frank1e.b0i What part are you upset about?
@@Nick_Lamb I'm upset that this guy is an immature idiot and take advantage that people forget too soon, he even has videos on this subject, so ironic.
YOU PRONOUNCED THE 'S' IN ILLINOIS. THAT'S HERESY!!!!!!
One thing I really like (ironically) about what In a Nutshell does is when they, for instance, use an atom in their animations and write a tag that says "Atoms don't really look like this!".
They use a useful, practical way of representing the objects they're trying to explain without needing to dive into the complex world of quantum mechanics, while also providing a challenge for the viewer to question what they're looking at and wonder how atoms really look, why they mention such a thing.
So it passively encourages curiosity and investigation, without losing the benefits of the simplified concept of a Bohr atom.
This is probably the same issue with most reporters and media in general these days. You only get the version of the story that is quick and easy to tell/understand and packaged in a way to make it sound as interesting as possible, even if it's a stretch of the truth at best.
Too bad people are too stupid to understand REAL facts.
Well...yes and no. I can offer some perspective as someone who has worked in journalism and met many fantastic journalists. I think a good deal of people, especially people who claim to be very fair and critical thinkers, fall into the trap of not giving journalists any credit for the good work they do, which truly is most of the work, and love pointing out when a journalist fails. Often, journalistic reporting is actually how many people find the most amount of information on an issue. Journalists often come back to stories or write followups to major events with more context, but readers don't often come back and read that. There are tons of in-depth investigative reports being published everyday in mainstream media, but audiences don't read these like they do the big, sensational things. This leads to many readers assuming that journalism is "bad" or "incomplete" when the reality is, they don't fully understand how journalism has always worked. journalism is built on an understanding that readers have an equally robust journalistic reading habit to match the integrity of the journalism. That has changed with social media, because now most people barely even make it past the headlines on social media posts.
Before we can have a public discussion of journalism, we have to meet journalism on its own terms, which most people never do. The general public has lost its journalistic literacy while the quality of journalism really hasn't slipped very much, and if anything has improved thanks to developments in news gathering technology.
yo don't stop making vids your too good at them
13:25 This seems to imply Cody'sLab is an example of educating us "efficiently and accurately using robust science". I agree with this assessment.
Add Nile Red to the list.
I thought that was Cody's Lab! I'd recognise that shoddy production quality anywhere!
I think one of the problems with pop science is that a lot of the time, things that have the best production quality, or are produced by someone with the best title/charisma will be more widely believed, regardless of the quality of the science.
codys lab is great
@@Dendroapsis you're so right!
Glad that you're still into Making these!!! I love your Content dude and just wanted to say - Thanks :D
glad to see an intellectual army
I'm reminded of "Gell-mann amnesia". When we're highly knowledgeable in a field, we notice all the errors made by journalists writing about that field. But when we are not knowledgeable, we simply don't notice those errors.
I am impressed that some of the commenters on this article refer accessing the primary research manuscripts.
As rare as this is, I encourage you all to do so. I guarantee you will see scientific research and indeed the world differently after reading 5000 primary research papers (and a few meta-analyses) across a variety of fields (yes it will take you years and it does require a lot of extra learning, but all of the extra information you need to understand how to interpret research is ultimately at your fingertips).
Hey! This is gold! I have this repulse to pop science. I always say it’s counter productive, but you touched the heart of the issue: policies pushed by journalists and politicians that are feed by this entertaining industry. There’s this pride of being a critical thinker but without any baggage of a experienced researcher. Generally it ends up with their (politician and journalist) commitment to a position they cannot change anymore, like a real scientist needs to/should do.
I love that I'm subscribed to a channel that finds real issues in the world that actually cares about being correct. Thank you
Truly phenomenal video. I’m just left with a bit of anxiety. If I find information through a speech or article I feel like every single time I’ll have to do a thorough review of the cited studies just to be sure what I’m hearing isn’t BS. But at the same time that’s so inefficient because that is incredibly time consuming, and honestly I have a life and responsibilities to tend to so I can’t just be constantly doing research on cited studies. Lol that probably sounds ridiculous but this whole video, while beautifully put together, has definitely caused me to second guess many things I’ve come to believe from articles and speeches I’ve listened to.
I know exactly what you mean, it's incredibly frustrating to feel like you need to take EVERYTHING you hear with a grain of salt. I wish there were absolute truths that I could be confident in. I feel like everyone should start their sentences with the precursor "my current understanding is..."
I can definitely relate. I've come to find that it also deadens a lot of my curiosity about the scientific world, especially when it comes to studies that are psychosocial. I don't even bother with documentaries anymore
It's ok to not have time to fact check as long as you're aware the stuff you're reading could be wrong and don't treat it as certain, and don't tell other people about it as if it was certain. Uncertainty and admitting one doesn't have an in depth understanding of important issues is perfectly acceptable. Let the people who's jobs it is to know this stuff know that stuff and inform you and the rest of us what is important to know and how we should treat that information in relation to our lives and public policy.
Though of course you run into the issue of needing to verify that a particular person is actually an expert, and specifically knows the topic they are talking about well, but that is usually a much simpler task than fully comprehending the field itself.
@@bugspray6662If you want absolute truths, you might like: math :)
I like to look for the opposite of the current opinion i am looking at. I try to find the extremes and the middle ground. If you find either one of the three more so or less so then you can tailor your thinking and personal opinion.
Also, for what my lil comment is worth, I applaud you for opening my eyes to the insane potential of misinformation even my favourite channels can provide me with. Beautiful animations and charming accents, or not. I could not help but view all of TH-cam (and myself as a viewer) differently after watching the prior video so, thank you. ☺️🙏
About procrastination... I have an exam next week and so I finally taught myself to knit just to do anything BUT studying.
Nice essay. It's good to be reminded that pop sci is not the same thing as the actual science it claims to be relying upon. In pop sci, there tends to be a lot of cherry picking and very little room for nuisance-or real dissent, for that matter. When it comes to empirical claims, pop sci can be a great way to generate interest in a particular subject, but it is most definitely NOT a substitute for the real thing.
This is why since the beginning things like Kurzgesagt or crash course rubbed me the wrong way. They present complex ideas so shortly and in a so clean format that people asume they are written in stone.
Lol sure
Crash Course is pretty okay imo, because they often state that the topic is ambiguous or that they simplified it a lot, inciting further research by its viewers
Considering how little rewards they get , they are not that bad.
@Softy The problem is that research takez a lot of time and a lot of people just cant do it.
This is a dilemma for any pop science channels. As the video becomes more and more satisfying, people stop looking at references.
Ive watched 10000 hours of this video. I am now am expert on this video
I think economics is the maximum expression of Pop Science, where nuances are always shut down.
This needs to be a documentary
loved this until you pronounced the S in Illinois
The ad before this was Malcolm Gladwell's Masterclass, hahahahaha
Thank you very much for making this. I was so sure it would come off emotionally charged (given the whole kurzgesagt debacle), but you pulled this off really well. You offer pros and cons for pop science instead of demonizing or worshipping it. The video is thorough and nuanced, which is very fitting for a video about this. :P So thank you for being you. Keep up the good work. :)
There's something poetic about a paper that links moderate procrastination to creativity remaining unpublished.
So basically 6th-grade science experiments.
Dad of the Year mhm. And 9th grade questions when they say salt concentration is decreased by the same amount in each test in an exam about osmosis, when water concentration is what actually matters. And then the presence of other chemicals aside from water and salt in the solution is not considered a correct answer for a control.
Yes Ik I am salty about this, but I am prepared to be proven wrong
Good point. Pop science should serve as a survey to a topic. 😊
I've known a few pot heads, and let me tell you, it's not harmless. 😂
I have found no lobby more aggressive and relying on anecdotal evidence than the weed lobby.
Just from personal experience of procrastinating sometimes, I think it goes both ways. Sometimes I have more flowing ideas after procrastinating, sometimes if I just stick hard with a work regimen I have flowing ideas too. So I guess from my own experience I have no idea if procrastination changes much. But it's probably true that having more time to consider things helps draw other connections or helps idea solidify, but that could be true whether one is procrastinating or working hard regularly. The main downside of not procrastinating and working hard regularly is burnout, so that could be why it seems someone who is always working is less creative - just because their mind is burnt out.
'The intellectual thing I should want to say is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say.' Bertrand Russell
I am fairly sure my old cognitive psy textbook said and sited several published papers which pointed to the exceptional importance of taking ones attention off a dificult problem entirely in order to reach creative solutions, procratinating fits that descriptor to a tee.
Great Video, Greetings from Germany!
That procrastination philosophy legitimately resonates with me. Though calling it procrastination is a bit of an exaggeration.
But I make films and animated skits for a living. I can say, that often I'm quite unfocused, and I take many breaks, and extended breaks. But no matter how lazy I feel, I always get my work done on time. Always. It's such a stressful job at times, but I just love the medium so much. I used to try hard the whole thing, now I just sort of pace myself. I work longer hours, but I'm not nearly as stressed about the job as I used to be. I come up with ideas a lot easier now too. Something about working on more of a tight schedule gave me a lot of anxiety. It often derailed my focus.
Though, you still need to be extremely disciplined. I'm sure you can imagine how much time a media job can take. The buck starts and stops with me, so I can't be lazy. Though on my breaks, you wouldn't catch me playing my switch lol, but I often listen to news, or sit in silence. Careful not to reward myself for a job well done, but get my head in a different space to better conceptualize the next phase of whatever task I'm doing that day. If I were to work harder, I wouldn't enjoy work anymore. I say, why should I stress about it when pacing myself still pays the bills, and keeps life comfortable.
This is such a weird video to watch. I'm half wondering if the ideas presented in these videos apply to the video itself. Maybe because this is a well presented short video, it too has the same flaws being described by the video, but in that case that very idea is flawed because it comes from the video which based on this video could be flawed.
It hurts my brain.
Wow. I was so wrong. This is not a take down piece. This is incredibly thoughtful and nuanced. Thank you for your work!
Another thing is pop sci people like Johann Hari also take conclusions that are widely accepted in a scientific discipline but present it like it’s brand new and groundbreaking because it might be known to the general public. Like the bio-social model of depression.
2:04 this problem that pop-scientits have with people not accepting strong held believes is called the "backfire effect" and is the tendency of some people to resist accepting evidence that conflicts with their beliefs. The effect is demonstrated when people presented with that conflicting information become even more convinced of their original beliefs rather than questioning them.
In the video you never tell us the name of the reason why, so it lead me to believe that you weren't aware of it. I hope it makes thing clearer to somebody
I love how you didn't blame anyone for it. You could have easily made me hate Adam Grant by telling me that he based his book on an unpublished research but instead you choose the neutral position.
Well I truthfully think AG is great and everyone who knows him say that. He’s a much better pop science communicator than I am. I think looking at where event be best mess up though is a good way to see the challenges of an industry.
Pop science makes *everyone* an expert! 🤔
especially soccer moms with their fkin self help books and magazines
This speaks well to many youtubers on this platform. Not all of them, but some. A lot of the pop sci content I enjoy has nothing to do with bold claims that subvert your expectations, they're just little nuggets of interesting. At worst, they have practically no educational value, but thats hardly a sin. A brady haran video, a cody's lab, most of destin's work, they're not trying to shock you. They're just explaining interesting concepts in an extremely basic way.
The problems with the reliability of pop science and their focus on possibly unreliable studies are why when I'm in the mood for some quick, fun science I usually go to channels like Smarter Every Day, Cody's Lab, and Thought Emporium where you know the basic science has to work because they're holding it in their hand and probably built something to demonstrate it.
Duckworth. I believe she is a Genius Grant winner. Speaks volumes.
I am so glad you've made this video. I'm having this bizzare problem where my physics teacher is more likely to talk about pop-science black holes rather than the actual subject, so I have to substitute him with khan academy courses. I absolutely despise popsci at this point. Also making fun of "flat-earthers" in class (even elsewhere) is really annoying.
I remember a MinuteEarth video that is widely well received (good dislike to like ratio) and has over 1.6M views. The problem is the basic premise that the video is based on is flawed, despite it being about a topic that is taught in schools in my country. What surprised me then is the fact that in the comments, whilst a number of people were criticising what they perceived as a political message attached to the video, nobody had pointed out the blatant inaccuracy of the science content. Pop science, like any media varies greatly in quality, and discerning the good from the bad can be very difficult, even for people familiar with real science and how the scientific community works.
God bless you, you have made a very good video
I have to admit, you had me worried there with the Kurtzegat shenanigans but this video is amazing and informative. Good job Coffee Break, eager to see more.
Most people who can cite trivia about quantum physics would be completely incapable of mathematically finding the volume of a cylinder. I hate these "educators" because they feed people useless and watered down information about the bleeding edge of fields when the audience couldn't pass an entry level exam on the actual base of the topic.
Hey man. I keep saying this. But you are the best. You are something else.
I was so shocked to see my own resistance when I challenged my own strongly held beliefs. Thank you for this.
great video! i do think that pop science article should be viewed as just an introduction to a subject and not the whole picture...
Well, he is totally procrastinating the deliver of that paper. So, he stands by his ideas in a sense.
One fundamental argument against Pop Science. Pop Science is losing it's value because of its sheer vastness and short duration in which it retains in a person's mind. It has become entertainment material to most. Who would retain the entirety of 20 videos he/she watches everyday? Even if they were all important in the field of science?
I’m immediately suspicious of anyone who does a Ted talk.
This is enlightenment. I was thinking of starting a Pop Sci Channel, I'm engineering in Biotechnology but I have more than sufficient knowledge on important everyday topics that need to be explored to the masses.
YOU JUST MADE ME MORE RESPONSIBLE , CAREFUL AND A BETTER PERSON
THANKS
Procrastination is the process of intentionally keeping the task out of the mind. As anything else that is normally completed, it was because that task was not ignored. But for whatever reason, the procrastinated task was kept out of thought. Otherwise its simple absentmindedness.
Its like my father would say. "You spend more time avoiding taking out the trash than you do just doing it."
I appreciate this a lot. Infortainment makes people feel empowered with knowledge, which is great, but it also lets them easily look past how little they actually know about topics.
Right. There is so much of the subject that cannot be condensed into consumable bite sized pieces and it does not make that obvious.
Cooffee you are amazing.
Pop Science is use to give authority , that facilitate persuasion
There was a phrase in the recent INET video that I really liked, "by the time something becomes conventional wisdom it's probably wrong." Either from not enough nuance or progress in the field that leads to refining or invalidating.
Lol... K.
This is an important video. It supports suspicions I have long held, that it just cannot be as simple as pop scientists would have us believe. I am new to your channel, and am very that the algorithm found me.
Dude! I know this video was originally intended against kurzgesagt. But you didn't mention them at all here. Nor have you talked about any other stem TH-cam channels. Like you said, they're low hanging fruit.
I think you did a great job!
You're not wrong about the race to share the cutting edge. The day of the NASA's release of the black hole picture was the day nothing but that image was popping up on the TH-cam feed. On the other hand, Dr. Becky Smethurst, only released a video about it yesterday (YT is obviously not her full time job.) I'd like to recommend her channel to anyone interested in astrophysics. She likes to dive a little deeper into the topics, something most pop sci channels won't (or simply can't) do.
Been waiting for this one.
Amazing intro with the coffee mug closing in towards the letter 'C'. Damn good! And amazing video, great content :')
Finally! And well worth the wait! I'd easily rank this one of my favorite all time. Thank you so much.
"Science entertainers" is a perfect way to describe them
One thing id recommend to any one, is that before you decide to take advice from a book, ask a professional with a licence first, and see what they might think. That, and if you really want to go full out, go to school.
"{List of Major Pop Science Figures} ... all of these people are not the worst in pop science, or even especially bad. They are actually the BEST in pop science, which is why I chose them..."
What, no Kurzgesagt? :D :D :D
As good as Kurzgesagt is, it's still not as big as the guys mentioned in the video. Making 5-20 minute long videos just for TH-cam is not equivalent to writing whole books. TH-cam itself hasn't even been around for 2 decades yet.
Kurzgesagt is next level trash. Along with ASAP science and hank green (partially).
@@honest_bishop5905 I was going to agree with you until you added the "partially".
@@switchtheflip9422 I added partially because Mr Green doesn't dedicate his channel to pop science.His moronic song "I love science" makes up for it though.
How many of your viewer check or at least look at your references? Google Docs should give you some interesting statistics ;)
Interesting that this video, on pop science, is, in itself, approximately 18 minutes long. May be pop science should expand itself, like this video (pun not intended), and we could have a positive and productive leap towards correct and cognitive pop science. Cheers mate @Coffee Break
Yeah, this is exactly right. The stuff that sells books is sort of the opposite of good science. Good science almost always sounds like "it's complicated, but in this extremely specific controlled situation, we can at least say this thing happens".
The public doesn't want real science, it's just confusing, and demonstrates how little we really know. They want a quirky rule of thumb that astonishes them.
This crap overwhelmingly comes from business/management departments and social science departments. The kinds of studies they do would never, ever, ever fly in STEM. I am an academic in mathematics. The standards could not possibly be more different than in business/management depts. The sophistication of their experiments is laughable.
They have a negative attitude towards real scientists, who they consider "nerds who just don't get it". They are right in the sense that we don't get politics...but we do science correctly, and that's enough for me.
I watch ALOT of TH-cam, but almost never comment. I was so impressed by this video I grabbed my phone to write this while the video was still running on my TV! You are spot on in drawing attention to the fact that for most people, nearly all the "science" we consume comes to us in the form of extremely carefully curated shorts (
I was almost worried that i have been consuming wrong content but your conclusion makes sense, you eat an elephant one bite at a time and don’t hold opinions so strongly you can change, again i quote you beauty of life is in its intricacies.
Great video, glad to see you are back
I try not to fault experts when they falter, and I think you highlight an aspect of the intellectual market I value. Humility, and from it, trust. Addressing your faults and weaknesses really show you care about your audience getting the truth. For me, trust is the most valuable currency in a market of ideas.
7:56
I always thought procrastinators were more creative since they have to come up with stuff on the spot, meaning more spontaneity, and we just remember the winners instead of the losers.
Love your profile photo lmao
danajonesx3 Ape Escape 4 when
I don’t know if you will ever read this... but this is one of the best videos I have ever seen. It’s just thorough, the content is 10/10 and the editing 10/10. Fantastic! Honestly this is so great!
Very happy to see the exurb1a reference
Kurzgesagt -i see what you did there
Thought same thing lol
Time stamp? I can't seem to find what you are referring to. :P
@@kingofpigs6630 it was a drama a while ago, CoffeeBreak pointed an error in their video (in a private communication), but then, suddenly Kurzgesagt go to great length of deleting videos & apologise in a 'Surprise' video. CoffeeBreak was just trying to do research for this video, not to shame Kurzgesagt, but in point of view of CoffeeBreak, Kurzgesagt's behaviour is questionable, possibly due to lack of communication, cooperation or honour. So CoffeeBreak retaliate with a public video calling out Kurzgesagt's behaviour.
@@xponen I know about that, I just thought that OP was referring to something in this video.
Also from the emails that were released it was shown that Coffee break had been very misleading in his portrayal of the situation. While it was understandable (from the clear amount of effort put in this video) that Coffee break was pissed off, he handled the situation very poorly in making it public and attacking Kurzgesagt with mostly false accusations. He has since apologized (I believe completely sincerely, ie. I trust him) for all of this, and that is why I've resubscribed and am back.
@@kingofpigs6630 I think Kurzgesagt deserve it... Why? because of being a jerk. CoffeeBreak wasn't making a "gotcha" video, as you read it in the email, Kurzgesagt worried about a "gotcha" video, but CoffeeBreak was not making that and explained, yet Kurzgesagt still acted like CoffeeBreak was gonna do that. So for a small price of getting haters & unsubscribe, CoffeeBreak gave Kurzgesagt what they wanted! which is; a "gotcha" video. Serve them right! I hate those negative thinking people, "strawman" (speculating & believe) people as bad guys.
I would describe Gladwell as a walking, talking confirmation bias.
It's just so amazing how you put all this effort to fact-check every source. Journalism could learn from this.