Having worked as a professional science communicator for 4+ years now, I was surprised at the vast differences in fact checking rigor by different large channels. SciShow and Crash Course do their due diligence by fact-checking multiple times per script, and by hiring independent, dedicated fact checkers and subject-area experts as writers and consultants. They know that their trust with their audience is important, but they also recognize the platform they have and responsibility to publish accurate information. And then there are....other....large channels that put whatever they want out into the world. I agree with you -- audience doesn't give you credibility. Transparency of research process gives you credibility.
I'd love, love to hear what other channels you view as high quality! I'm always looking for good stuff to link to people who are trying to self-learn ^^ those two are favorites, for sure!
@@AlloAnder Veritasium has had major errors, though personally I think they've sparked debate and I still like a lot of his work. His insightful videos tend to be a bit more hyped up than the underlying tech *quite* warrants. Eg his video about the importance of understanding fields in understanding the flow of electricity was *extremely* good in making my thinking better... but it didn't do the right thing until I watched a bunch more electromagnetism videos, many of which were from actual universities and quite long and had very low view counts, and there were a bunch of disagreeing followup videos as well.
I'm confused about where I fall, because I don't agree with the elitists that think that a college education is the only way to become an expert, but I also don't agree with the anti-intellectuals who think that college is useless and you can learn everything you need on the internet or with books.
You don't have to "pick a side" at all. They're both wrong. There is a common thread with both approaches that can lead someone to knowledge. Doing one doesn't preclude you from doing the other anyways. The most brilliant people I know tend to be college educated, and spend a ton of their personal time learning even more. College grads who are lazy and stop learning outside of the bare minimum to get their degree and keep up with continuing ed, I don't have much trust in. Just as I wouldn't have much faith in someone who thinks nothing of value comes out of colleges.
Yeah, I was thinking the same regarding that. But as is often the case, I think it lies somewhere in the middle. Optimally in this case would probably be the combination of both, as the first reply pointed out - college or such (formal education) as an introduction and overview of the topic, providing some guidelines and tools to use and then own interest and time spent to further advance, going more in-depth or maybe also diversifying/branch out into related topics.
@@dennisjungbauer4467 Problems with colleges 1)Too costly compared to alternatives (even if college's tuition is for free, additional road/rent must be compared to internet cost) and usually stress (such as dead lines, especially if you are perfectionist); 2)Their inability to adapt to rapidly changing world, technological innovation fast enough (study plans need to be approved MINIMUM 1 year in advance); 3)Generelised, not individualised courses (usually 50%+ is something you will not use, might not fit to your learning style); 4)Padding, not effective learnt testing methods (such as writing papers, where you half of time spend to double check grammar and transitions, translate, write references etc., instead of concentrated presentation); 5)Delayed economical integration (instead of learning, while working, or making foundations for bussiness in appropriate order, your output is basically never used practically no matter how well made).
@@dennisjungbauer4467 yeah that is exactly what is happening with my self learning journey. My background of my mom's nurturing and good private school + me practice self learning even for school subjects (even in school i only understand once i learn, most time the teacher is not needed, but the direct interaction and feedback is cool). If you have a good basics you can learn anything alone. You books videos articles and a ton of thinking.
I used to think academics were pretentious (and still do tbh lmao) until I went to university myself and realised how important it was to acquire formal training before calling yourself an expert in something, how important your credentials are. So many people are self-taught these days, as well as the rise of "coaches" in a number of fields and I find it to be problematic. The internet has made it so easy for people to share unchecked information with questionable research methods, especially on tiktok.
I think it still depends on the vocation. For a lot of creative fields, the credential is just a way to make certain employers want to even look at your portfolio at all, even if your portfolio alone shows you have the skills. Institutions also are a way of gate keeping certain networking opportunities in some cases, leading some to skip straight to starting their own business or something (I think of how a popular radio host just went directly to a radio station consistently and hung around to learn in their spare time). We can't really fault some of these people for finding a way to not make student loan debt a garuntee when access to some of the resources found in institutions can be bought by the average consumer.
no. the internet is used for self taught when colleges in their country is not free or low cost. you cannot fault people to be fiscally more cautious. That's why countries with free education is usually the more successful ones economically.
Fun fact, I'm a licensed trainer, and am only legally allowed to run courses in fields where I'm an actual certified expert. So many people call themselves "coaches" or "trainers" who are basically paid performers on a spectrum between entertainer and scam artist.
true and also all these reaction channels and video formats where people just say their opinion on certain topics, mainly a big media issue, are so problematic. Viewers just believe the opinions of these youtubers eventhough there is barely any actual research behind it ( and if so it's very poorly done)
lmao academics are super pretentious. Not sure how much formal training helps with critical thinking, but I do agree it helps. Some people go through university and still can't do this properly, and some people never go through university and are still able to fact-check. I feel like the main issue with university is that a lot of people advertise it as being the sure way to general career success, but that isn't true. That's why we see people going against universities, they feel like we're being misled - which is true to a certain degree. Universities also aren't a completely reliable source of information (there is no such thing), that's why they try to teach you how to fact check in the first place. I do think people can use the internet to become experts (due to sheer amount of information), but they can also use the university. For most, I think using both is best. As long as you don't trust anything blindly.
I came to this channel when you had less than half the number of subscribers you have now. This has quickly become one of my favourite channels on TH-cam. Love to see your growth!
Same here. Came when I saw the Alt-Self Help video and this has rapidly become one of my favourite channels. Any suggestions for other high quality channels like this?
@@nicduynstee2171 Off the top of my head… Tiffanyferg, Tara Mooknee, Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, Kat Blauqe, Salari, Jordan Theresa, Shaun, Annamarie Forchino, MIA Mulder, Saint Andrewism, Ash Tanya, Khadijah Mbowe.. Some of them might not be what you were hoping for, and overall the recommendations definitely lean to the left politically but all of them are insanely gifted creators!
What should people who cannot afford college do, then? I could but I literally almost see every day people who I seriously doubt ever could have. I know, it's the system/society, but when that translates into that result, should we personally evaluate them negatively? When we make wildly-disseminated advices like these on public fora to everyone and their dog, how should we take into account those people?
This is critical and in my opinion is a skill taught by parents to children or mentor to mentee (1 on 1). The modern perception of older people as stupid and unreliable massively impacts their ability to effectively transmit their knowledge across generations. "Listen to me, someone your age with a massive conflict of interest [I literally benefit from you failing]"
To became an expert you need years of experience, and in the very beginning that someone had taught you his/her experiences... then you can make your own path... but the point is nobody will transfer you quality content of this kind over a youtube channel, and if done, it should be 2 hours video daily and would take years....
When we start learning from our success and start teaching how we got successful, we are actually teaching them our experience, not educating them. Our believes are based on biases. That experience can or cannot be very good for the other person. University education is tough, boring and lengthy but it is better than learning from experience of successful people. It taught us to critically think, makes us problem solver.
I agree. I'm a self taught artist, that's a field you can definitely learn on your own. But I have a a degree in business administration. I believe it's still interesting to learn about other people's experiences in their fields, but that should just be a first step into further investigation. Personal experiences are not rules or a perfect guide to the rest of the world.
And how do you think people in university learn? Do they acquire this superior ability where you can bypass experience and directly access reality as it is? lol
@@DaviAreias no but in university you read a lot of experiences, which reduces the misconceptions. Opposing arguments is something a lot of people don't really seek out but in university we have to sit through all sides.
What should people who cannot afford college do, then? I could but I literally almost see every day people who I seriously doubt ever could have. I know, it's the system/society, but when that translates into that result, should we personally evaluate them negatively? When we make wildly-disseminated advices like these on public fora to everyone and their dog, how should we take into account those people?
I feel it's important that people don't get attached to their information even if it's credible, keep it open ended because there's still more to discover, that way it can grow naturally through our intuition.
Exactly and this is the issue I have with the scientific community sometimes scientists just want to hang on to old theories and dismiss other scientists. So I don't put full faith in colleges
The most terrifying thing is becoming knowledgeable (I wouldn't even go so far as to say, "an expert") in one tiny field, seeing the extent to which information related to that field is misrepresented in the media and/or the absolutely horrifying diaspora of "educational" TH-cam presentations on the topics, and then extrapolating that misrepresentation to, well, everything there is. The number of people interesting in looking smart >>>>> the number of people who actually want to figure out how things work.
Exactly! That's what makes me afraid. The education system can be boring and old-fashioned, but it makes sure you cover the most important aspects, and it forces you to see what you don't want to see. Imagine if doctors or psychologists were licensed without having all the necessary skills? In addition, studying on your own makes you dig deep in what you think is important, and that doesn't mean that this knowledge will be useful to society.
I feel that a lot of what higher education teaches is how and where to learn. It wasn't until my first year in college that I learned how to properly find and check articles/research papers for credibility. This alone has made it easier for me to avoid some of the media traps using false or weak information. Yes, there are some studies you can learn on your own and be successful without higher education. However, I think that there isn't much of a substitute for helping people learn how to learn or to be competently resourceful.
As a student in the final year of his degree, I can say that a formal education for me has been extremely useful, but NOT for the reasons you may think. I still firmly believe that the internet along with reading books (which you can also now find on the internet) is the best way to become an expert at anything. The thing college helped me with was to filter out what was relevant. If I set out to learn Linear Algebra for example, the field is so vast that you don't know how much is too much or too little. A formal course gives you the minimum set of topics needed to build a solid foundation. I do believe however, that you don't NEED a university just for the purpose of filtering relevant information. At the end of the day, all learning is self learning.
I’ve had a phase in life where I didn’t want to attend University and just taken a job after I finished my school. Slowly, I realised that I needed a University education because it really does help you in the long run.
it really depends. my economics degree has been of no value. whats really valuable is experience and networking with people and in the field you wish to grow and develop in. college is one of many ways and a well paved path. do not limit yourself do your research
I don't believe the internet can make everyone an expert; I believe it can make them as knowledgeable and educated as they want to be (if they know how to properly research/cross reference as you stated). But to be considered an expert requires provable and demonstrative experience and contribution across that field.
the fact that i take breaks from studying dentistry by watching your video shows how they are so relaxing and pleasing keep posting cuz it's something i always look out for thank youuu
in Italy sometimes even universities fail in teaching critical thinking which is so sad, but it explains so much of what is going on here :'( the pink mask thing was hilarious
The fact that information itself-specifically academic articles, scientific research-is so often locked behind a paywall is egregious and limits human potential.* Digital information is near-infinitely reproducible at near-zero marginal cost. To charge money to access this information is wild. The money from journal subscriptions does not go to the authors or researchers, and peer reviewers almost never receive compensation. (Also, in the U.S., we are the ones that pay for a ton of research in the first place with our tax dollars. A plurality of U.S. research is funded through grants from the federal government (like via the NSF). Why are we being charged again to access it??)
I agree with your main point stating that we should conduct ourselves according to reliable sources, but from my point of view the educational landscape and specifically the universities are undergoing a crisis of decentralization, These days university's unique selling point for students is getting a job, choosing a path that is stable. not really offering to teach learning high-resolution critical thinking which is offered in masses when googling the correct words. You yourself found true "success" from Modern devices, University didn't teach you to articulate your thoughts in front of the camera or edit a video, you saw an opportunity presenting itself true modern technology means and you went for it.
@Shimmy Shai Yes dffinatly. but i belive even more inportent is the ability to formulate and organize an informed, coherent and sophisticated set of ideas.
I had this feeling for quite a while. Self learning requires a very specific mindset... same as being an athlete to make things more visual. You have to have discipline or you will spin in circles and going nowhere. Either searching for the "perfect" source. Or jumping from topics and variants. You need a sense of plan, progress, honesty facing ignorance and understanding.. and mastery. Until you get the diligence and brutal honesty about what constitute a success (even a small step along the plan) you will probably fail.
When I worked for a govt in lab in the US, I was shocked to see how some of my colleagues, even those with PhD degrees in science and BS or MS in Engineering, thought that they could become experts in philosophy and statistics by internet foraging to the point that they would undermine, using their positions, those of us who were trained in above areas and would feel obliged to point out their errors. So even those educated in one discipline believed that they could become the equivalent of those with formal training in another field. It happens at all levels. A good book discussing this matter is "The Death of Expertise".
What should people who cannot afford college do, then? I could but I literally almost see every day people who I seriously doubt ever could have. I know, it's the system/society, but when that translates into that result, should we personally evaluate them negatively? When we make wildly-disseminated advices like these on public fora to everyone and their dog, how should we take into account those people?
Also the internet just doesn’t have all the information, I’m in maths and it’s happened all the time that I didn’t even find what I was looking for on the internet
I really appreciate the nuanced approach to every topic you cover. It's incredibly challenging to do so, especially in the current climate. Confirmation bias has really taken hold of the American populace, and made science a matter of subjectivity, which at times can be truly terrifying. Always look forward to the questions your videos propose.
1:17, I believe you can have both. A fixed mindset for certain issues and a growth mindset for issues that can change for the better. I don't think there's one or the other people have to be. Not every situation can change while some can change.
I think it really just depends on the career path someone is trying to embark on and learn about. Because I feel you truly can use the internet as a valuable resources for your growth in more artistic fields. I've been pretty much self taught for years, reading books and using tutorials and other online materials, to understand the fundamentals, and more complex aspects to the art I am pursuing . And now, even though I decided to get formal training by attending college for my interest I realize that there isn't some profound difference of the level of education I'm getting by my professors that I couldn't have just taught myself. My main benefits I'm receiving is now being around other like minded students I can collaborate with and give each other pointers about our art. So basically networking is easier when you study in universities, but if you found ways to find similar people to engage with as a self taught artist you'd still be fine.
I’ve seen this problem in media consumption as well: The news is consumed by a lot of people on Instagram here and it’s not possible to always make it bite sized and aesthetically appealing. One has to read a lot and deal with unsettling phenomena.
I know it wasn't the focus of this video, but I think it's important to also mention the agendas, paradigms and dominant discourses implicit in the academic world. Scientific research is not some infallible source of truth! It's dangerous to trust a source simply because it comes from 'big names, big universities, big publications'. As Foucault said, everything is dangerous - I would consider 'big institutions' to be far more likely to perpetuate hegemonic norms, given the stake they hold in the 'status quo'. That's why we read, read, read, and critically reflect. But given how inaccessible the academic world is for so many, I would be very wary of holding it in such high esteem; oh boy, it is so far from perfect. Of course the nihilist implications of postmodernism and 'post truth' society are concerning, but instead of running back to the familiarity of institutions why not embrace and negotiate the world of difference? There is a whole world of democracy, potentiality, dialogue, nuance and uncertainty out there. People who are not formally educated have a right to contribute to that too
everyone who ever sat on an academic board, even if only a students board at a faculty knows there are also politics in play there as well. And big names or much funding does not necessarily mean better research/science/papers. That is why there are also other researchers around, often trying to rig or game the s ystem in their studies, sometimes being successful with it (what then often makes it into the mainstream news). And rightfully so. Pear Review is often lacking, publish or perish incentive is bad, we need binding and standardized data policies as well, but also correct identification of researchers, what and how they did their work and so on. Often times, you can skip this, if you are just a "big name". But you shouldn't be. All have to be hold to the same scrutiny and standards.
I think that depends on the discipline a lot, but anthropologists are leading the way in that kind of research,although it still needs a shitload of training and interpersonal abilities to really integrate non-academic participants in formal publications.
With the blessing of having massive access to so much data thanks to the internet, it is now our duty to filter out what is true, false, and propaganda
I’m old enough to be your grandfather and I find you completely refreshing. In my lifetime I’ve seen the dumbing down of people. I know that I’ve been complicit in an attempt to earn a living and complete feel the karma. People are not taught how to learn but what to learn. Writing essays have been replaced by multiple choice from a given set of answers. Vocational education has replaced liberal education. I could go on. I was able to provide an alternative education for my own daughter. It’s great to believe nothing. It’s okay to have strong suppositions.
i self teached myself to write code, previously i tried with presencial courses with teachers and didn't work for a diverse array of reasons, i am not an expert by any means, but what i learned is that the only thing that truly shows if i know about something is not the time in years or hours i spend doing it, or the "success" i achieved, it's the work i did and the ability of explain this subjects to other people, it haves to do more about the experience doing stuff and failing a lot of times than simply the amount of time tracked. I think that while you can learn a lot of things by yourself with the right online resources, there is a shit ton of bad articles and tutorials, most of them are not made with bad intentions. learning online does not mean you can or should throw all the traditional learning methods and institutions to the trash, this ones haves really useful knowlage that digs deep into things that are not always covered online, also teaches you more than the nesesary to do your job, it teaches you to think in a certain way, to be critical about things, it haves a kind of culture that goes along with anything you do in your profesional or personal life. i don't know if it should be private or 100% in-class like it always haves been, maybe it should have a better and cheaper (or even free) online option
My stepfather when he was in college studied social sciences but he didn't graduate for a reason. That's why he can't get a decent job now. Later he became a moderator of a scientific website along with others and talked a lot with people and read a lot on the internet... Now he has been a moderator of that scientific website for 10 years and many people rate him as the level of an academic even though he has no degree. Now I want to achieve the same thing but I don't know yet how to be social on the internet, I sometimes go into conversation with people on discord but that's about it. I as a 16 year old am still in school but i am already diligent to learn more than school offers me. I'm curious to know a lot about history so that I can learn why things are as they are now, for example the history of science, I am interested in philosophy to an extent and in literature.
Encore une excellente vidéo! I really want to start my own channel and I'm questioning why and what I want to bring... Currently finishing a degree in Sexology that, right now, feels a bit pointless. I'm "happy" that I will get recognition and "gain" credibility but the truth is, I've learned so much more from people deconstructing concepts online than my, sometimes sex-negative, teachers.
Why is the intro so accurate for my yt feed lol. I follow an influencer (not going to name any names) who gets accused of "glamourising being rich". Part of her brand is an "abundance mindset". One way of getting back at the haters is posting DM's from people claiming they spent money on luxuries they didn't "let themselves afford" before, and out of nowhere "the universe" got them a promotion, a sum of money, or luxury items/services for free. In her eyes it's evidence that the abundance mindset works. Another thing she gets defensive about is people saying yes anyone, but not everyone can be rich. But affirmations, coffee as a ritual that belongs in a video, and affectionate names for the audience are things a lot of my favourite youtubers do. I don't know what to do with spotting patterns like these. Once it helped me in quitting trying to be vegan, because I realised I didn't actually care enough, I just wanted to be like the young female influencers I saw on youtube. Ashley from bestdressed said she got comments that made her feel pressured to be vegan, when she said that she doesn't reckon male youtubers would get these comments, and that the pressure comes from young women amongst each other, I decided to wait and see when I'm ready to feel like veganism is something I want to do because of my personal beliefs and not others'.
Critical thinking and learning "how to learn" are often overlooked in favor of what "feels right" or what confirms our preconceived biases. I get it though - a lot of what we do is driven by emotion and it can be difficult to stay informed on a multitude of topics - especially considering how saturated the media landscape is. A lot of the time I have to rely on convenience - whether skimming headlines, articles in the news - simply because I only have a given amount of time and brain real estate. That being said, I do agree that with the right foundational skill set, one can not only make the distinction between "accurate information" or "misinformation" but also choose to dive deeper into the nuances of a subject (depending on the subject of course ... theoretical physics is a bit out of my wheelhouse). Having a bit of self-awareness to recognize your own limitations (whether they are 'bias', lack of understanding, or recognizing that there's no way you can possibly parse through the material) goes a long way - a healthy degree of skepticism. That way you end up less like "Rogan" and more like "Alice" 😄
@@Jay_hendy Oh hey Jay, I never said I “distrust” Rogan. If you enjoy his podcast, that’s fine! I used to listen to the JRE years ago when he had discussions about spirituality or had an intriguing guest on the pod. I stopped listening after a while, not because of any controversy, but I gradually lost interest. 3-4 hour discussions can be quite time-demanding and found the quality to be very hit-or-miss. I was being a bit cheeky with using “Rogan” in my example, since he’s currently topical for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 (either through himself or through his guests - an “unhealthy degree of skepticism”, if you will). Even before this, I’d always take his claims with a grain of salt - Joe presents himself as an independent thinker, but is still prone to bias and bad takes. If you view the JRE as “just entertainment”, once again, that’s totally cool - I’m not going to judge you for it. I can see the appeal. We all have our personal tastes. But the key thing is - it’s entertainment. It doesn’t matter whether the details are coming from Joe Rogan, Alice, or whomever - ultimately when it comes to scientific/medical information, I’m always going to defer to the doctors, epidemiologists and-or other medical professionals because “The internet won’t make you an expert”😉
@@TheZatzman Haha okay cool. I also take what I here on podcasts/TH-cam vids with a grain of salt. I do find that I have similar interests as Joe, so I like most of his serious podcasts. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a glaring flaw! Thanks for the reply!
you challenged me to see the better way to democratize education- by democratizing peer review access and knowledge of it and its applications. while it takes resources to achieve this, i now think that metaverse and the servers used/will require are more resource heavy than the efforts democratizing peer review AND the more resource heavy the less ability ~we~ have to utilize and learn different perspectives and ideas b/c human exploitation is necessary for such rabid energy/resource demands.
I used to do work on mechanical and electrical equipment, and while me an my coworkers were knowledgeable about a great deal of things, we never received proper training or education on the equipment we used or built. This led to a long line of technicians just keeping notes and procedures on what they found that worked. When a delicate machine would break, they would try and get us to fix it first before getting a trained technician from outside, even on stuff that was far more advanced and newer than the stuff we typically worked on. One thing I've learned from my experience doing that work is that being self-taught can only take you so far when much of the information you need is simply not publicly available. I find this true for many fields and things I've dipped my feet into, however, I have met other self-taught individuals who do work that exceeds the level and skill of people who have gone to training for the same equipment. Maybe it's different when it comes to working on equipment you can personally take apart and perhaps doesn't translate to academia. But I can say from my own experience, sometimes it's nigh on impossible just to find sources for things. Perhaps the academic framework would help.
I think it definitely depends on the field. I am currently working on my uni in Material Sciences in building industry and a lot of mechanisms, methods and substances are company's secrets but that is not the worst part... simply there is no way of learning many of the analytical methods, research the properties or confirm your suspicions if you don't posses the equipment. And that is worth thousands of dollars (or in my case pln) that an average self learner just doesn't have. Not to mention that it is simply a field in which noone will hire you without a formal education in at least similar field. Not that universities teach you everything, if they teach you basics, show you how to read science papers and give you the access to the equipment it is already a lot. But definitely there are some fields that being an expert based on internet history or even amount of books read is just not enough.
The thing that's salient about university and academia's expertise is that you actually have to defend your ideas to your peers. Internet gurus rarely have to do that, all they have to do is appeal to marketing. That means universities are more capable of generating competent thinkers, whereas internet-based expertise is always going to be more uneven and frequently that means conventional incompetence.
The internet will make you an expert on the theory when you use it properly, you can read and do your own math. When it comes to practice, really only a mentorship can meke you skilled.
i think another interesting way to "vibe-check" work is through incentive analysis. if there are conflicts of interest, if the "expert" is trying to sell something (this can include a personality, or a course), it's ussually not the best source probably.
The opening to this video was so great!! The little skit in the beginning lol, I loved your opening transition, and even your sponsorship incorporation was informative and relevant but concise. Love what you're doing!!
This is such an excellent video!! Its concise and gets the message across without any unnecessary BS :) I like learning stuff, and the internet and how it has democratized access to information, has really been a very important and quite a lot of the times, only , learning resource that I can access. And I learn stuff for the very simple reason that I just like to learn new things, and even this _relatively_ casual reason doesn't let me not validate information that I'm going through on a daily basis. Its one thing for someone who is actively trying to learn something to verify the information because as a student its your responsibility to do so, but to whom I think the most disingenuous amount of misinformation is circulated , is the general person who just opened up their news feed on their smartphone on their break. If some article seems to try way to hard at reeling you into going through it, the more skeptical one should be of the information in it. People need to trust what science says, and I think it would be much easier if everyone just took information on the internet with just a grain of salt, that's all :)
@@shimrrashai-rc8fq True ! Blindly believing in something because its labelled as "scientifically proven" or if its said by some scientific institution is exactly the same as following some random dogma. "Science" is supposed to be proven, following the scientific method. The method is constant and reliable, but the humans are still variables in this equation, and so is the data in some instances. So "science" maybe incorrect , in the best case due to the data in question changing with time, thus the paper requiring updates. Or in the worst case, due to disingenuous people who somehow got into positions where they could publish their personal agendas and label them as "science" .
I am happy I've been finding so many young youtubers following some ethical journalist practices in the commentary and topical community (at least in my personal experiences). I have been trying to surround myself with more content that seeks to lay out both sides of a topic in depth, with people not afraid to say "I don't know" every once in a while. It's refreshing when you find people who practice some humility. And admit when they are wrong. tbh channels like yours really give me hope for the future of humanity, because the truth is there are a lot of bright thinkers in the world today and I think in (most) everyone's heart, we want a good outcome for all those around us. We are all on this spinning rock together, after all so why not make the best of it? Love the video essays, keep it up :)
Just wrote an essay about "Don't look up" and science communication :D I am subscribed to your channel since a time where you had only about a thousand subscribers. Every video is such a good reason to keep it that way. They are so interesting and well researched. I already bought several books which you cited. Keep up the amazing work🔥
Tell me how shit-poor my videos are by comparison. Tell me please. I want people to be honest, frank, and factual with me. I feel honesty-deprived throughout my life, honestly more like trauma kinda
I’m not sure I completely agree with this one. . . While I agree with your opinion about the importance of rigorous research methods, you seem to have conflated self-taught with many other things which aren’t necessarily associated with it. As you said, you hope to expand on this topic in future videos so hope to hear more of your thoughts on this. Thank you, I really enjoy your content😊
Epistemology; the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
I discussed the same topic with one of my friend yesterday. To understand how different 'self thought from internet' and what we learnt from authentic books , search some topic we already know in Wikipedia/TH-cam or else where in internet . We will be surprised by the fact that whatever we learnt from college/school and what we found on web is so different . Web provide periferal knowledge but university give us deep insights. Reading authorised books are much needed (whether it is soft copy or hard copy) if you want to study something which we are not learn before (in college/school/kindergarten) . Thank you for your video.
I"d love to hear more about your thoughts on the democratization of the process that you mentioned at the end! This video is such important information as young people are rightly questioning the ethics and motivations behind textbook publishers and those that create curricula. If activists are pointing out that education has been biased then that leaves students wondering who they can trust. So-called "experts" are often found as having an agenda so they have lost trust in the idea of an expert.
Very few things discussed online are a Law. Theory is about as good as your usually going to get. It's frightening to me how few people understand that postulations evolve, like viruses for example.
To play devil's advocate a little: stuff being peer-reviewed is no guarantee it's actually valid. And of course there are no guarantees in life, but I believe things could be a bit better. Some studies that qualify by that metric have conflicts of interest lists longer than the study itself... Another example would be statistical significance vs utility. I apologize in advance for going into this only briefly, but studies might get a pass even if they have no real world utility, as long as they are statistically significant. This isn't exactly very good as far as being scientifically disciplined goes, it basically muddies the pool. Some fields do a lot better than others at applying scientific discipline, for a number of factors. For example, astrophysics. Getting stuff in space is very costly and risky, so there is incentive to get it right and do it well, can't say the same for nutrition science however. Ethics and politics prevent it from conducting long-term, randomized controlled trials to properly establish causality. After all, can't get identical twins to live in a metabolic ward for twenty years with every aspect of their lives controlled, even if they do sign up of their own volition. For this reason, the field is marred by epidemiology which, by virtue of its design in the specific context of nutrition, is prone to substantial hiccups. In its practice, the simple governing notion of correlation not equaling causation is often thrown out the window. Incidence and risk become synonyms even though they most definitely aren't, same for absolute risk vs relative risk. Stuff like that. Lots of things that give way for so much smoke and mirrors. Ultimately it trickles down from experts all the way to the public, leading to misinterpretation. Ever heard of the term "publish or die"? If on one end of the spectrum there's the arrogance of self teaching, on the other there's the zealotry of having blind faith in science/academia. But I don't want to be sensational and overblow it, so I'll stop here... Bottom line, peer-review is not enough, I would suggest anyone to go an expensive step further, if they can afford to, and apply to study statistics (preferably not self taught!). It is a great and much needed tool to tell if the numbers in a given study add up or not. At the end of the day, science is an empirical discipline and as such statistics will take you beautifully far.
Statistical significance not having any practical utility is extremely common. I would also add that the current higher education atmosphere seems very reluctant to acknowledge the limitations of empiricism, especially in fields where controlled experiments are impossible or difficult. Sometimes, an a priori approach or one based on experience and anecdote is best. Which to even suggest such a thing is blasphemy to many. There isn't much sense in dogmatically clinging to the "gold standard" RCT, when every trial you conduct is riddled with confounding variables that you cannot possibly ever control for.
@@Theviewerdude Well said, my opinion on the matter doesn't differ too much from yours. I find the situation disgusting because of how insidious and opaque the issues it's causing are. It is not something people at large are aware of. Regardless, it's funny that simple and straightforward methods such as anecdotal evidence can trump and highlight how myopic and absurd things can get in studies. You made a good example of how something doesn't have to be scientific to be useful. Unfortunately though, I don't think things will change, it's the status quo. Low quality studies will continue to be churned out as long as the fields in question have too many people and too little interest/funds, leading to a tendency to treat studies as tools to further one's career and add visibility to related institutions moreso than their original purpose. More onto the garbage pile, and more confusion for people seeking answers.
@@Laolunzuo my first foray into the world of science and truly understanding it was exercise science and nutrition, so I'm intimately aware with all of the things you mentioned in your original comment. The more I learned in those fields, the more often I found that my own experience and my own reasoning based on what I could establish to be true was more reliable than any random study. A very good example of the sort of misleading nonsense you find in the research are weight loss studies comparing low carb/no carb (keto) diets to any other sort of diet, controlled for calories. To explore the validity of the carb-insulin hypothesis and calorie balance equation. In plenty of these studies, you'll find that the low carb / keto group loses more WEIGHT... but upon further examination, this is only over the duration of the short trial period of say a few weeks. When you control for things like protein intake and water retention, or you just have the trial last longer than a few weeks, turns out the difference between weight lost disappears. Meaning, short term, keto diets cause more weight loss in the short term due to loss of water, but not more fat loss, which is what people are actually concerned with. And this is still only the sort of thing you can hope to find after extensive critical analysis of dozens of studies on the subject, looking at the ones that were actually designed well. The vast majority of the research of that sort relies on participants to track and self report their own diets and results - which means it is unreliable garbage. Some of these studies don't even make it clear when that is the case, there may only be a sentence or two mentioning it deep within the methods, if there is any mention at all. I still don't understand how some studies get published without being crystal clear on the methods. But as you say, we will never have strong evidence for what happens long term for anything. It is unethical and unfeasible to stick identical twins in a metabolic wards for a couple decades. While through very carefully controlled and well designed research we CAN figure out pretty well what does happen over a period of 8-12 weeks or so, it is difficult to impossible to tell after that. For some things, we don't really need longer research periods, as what happens in the body over the course of that time period is unlikely to change over a longer period of time. A 12 week trial is more than enough time to observe how someone's metabolism can slow down as a result of aggressive dieting, so we can establish some strategies for how to avoid that happening over a longer period of time, in a real world scenario where someone may be dieting on and off over the course of two or more years. For something like determining the risk of heart disease from a lifetime of a diet high in saturated fat, it's nearly impossible to tell. For more advanced athletes and lifters, the most popular forms of organizing their training involve sophisticated, rotating cycles of training that span over the course of several seasons and even years. Simply referred to as periodization, or more generally as programming. Anyone who's ever trained at a more advanced level or trained others knows very well you can't just keep doing the same exact thing for months and keep expecting great results, you need to constantly adjust based on your body's needs, and sometimes you need to focus more on one thing more than another to reap the benefits of both - such as powerlifters sometimes training as bodybuilders. There is virtually no possible way to test any of these long term periodization and programming methods in a clinical setting. Regardless of the issues with feasibility and ethics, there is so much individual variance between people that you'd have to conduct the research with an absurd amount of people to even begin recognizing trends. By their very nature, we are primarily concerned with how these things play out in the longer term, after 3 months. You often can't even measure results in any shorter window of time, you really don't get a clear picture until 6 months or after. In this field, you really have nothing to rely on BUT anecdote and your own reasoning. Through scientific research you can develop some axioms for how the body works and responds to training. From there you can use your reasoning to establish some methods worthy of trying out, but these are theories at best. Adjust based on your experience trying your own methods and listen to what other experienced people in the field do and have success with and over time you can blindly stumble your way through the dark. I trained others for over 5 years and I tried to treat programming like a single person experiment and it never works. Even the most dedicated and consistent of my clients went off plan often enough to muddy the results. Had to work late, misses one workout, entire plan is changed for the week. Tweaks his knee, have to adjust plan on the fly. New job which means less sleep and more stress, can't compare any new results to anything I tested before. It was impossible to take a few training blocks of 6 weeks which were identical and only differing on a few variables. At best I could piece a few things together and sometimes just make wild guesses and see if it works. Ultimately this is how humans figured out anything about everything before modern science. Even early medicine was this, essentially. The story of how early Italian doctors found how silver coins can patch holes in skulls is incredible, and later how drilling holes in them allows the bone to regrow over it. Pure deductive reasoning. It works, but it's slow and buggy. Many of the things old school bodybuilders from Arnold's era believed in are being found to be true. Even completely nonsensical shit like "fish thins the skin" might have some truth to them, due to chicken (the alternative they would eat) containing high amounts of linoleic acid, which seems to have some odd effects with fat retention. But there's still some which is undoubtedly hearsay. Ultimately a bunch of cavemen managed to figure out selective breeding at the end of the paleolithic era. Did they have peer reviewed journals back then? To sum up, deeply understanding this field truly taught me that empiricism has some substantial limitations, in some cases. Once understanding that for one field, I began to see a similar thing in other fields. I also have a deep interest in economics and there is a compelling argument from the Austrian School for why empiricism is grossly overused in that field. It all comes down to when you mix in more human behavior and genetic variance into the field, clinical research becomes less reliable as it is more difficult to control for. Exercise and nutrition relies heavily on human behavior and genetic variance. Economics, it is impossible to observe two identical countries, economies, universes differing on a single economic policy. The field of economics is the study of human behavior - how people trade resources. Psychology, same issues. Chemistry? Physics? You can control for that pretty well. Putting rockets into space based on simulations proves that. Yet our entire society and culture has thrown our whole weight behind this notion that empiricism can provide the answers for everything. I'm not one to discount someone's competency in a field or their intellectual prowess based on their lack of "official" qualifications, but the woman who posted this video is. By her own standards, she's not in any position whatsoever to weigh in on this issue of the limitations of empiricism. Which makes the video quite ironic. Who is she to say otherwise, as an expert of only the language she teaches? Like I said, I personally don't believe that reasoning. It's just odd to be making her argument when she is in no position of authority herself, by her own standards. I think over the next few decades we are going to witness a bit of a revolution in this regard. The "old guard" of intellectual elitism will evolve. There will be less gatekeeping, less appeals to authority and more judgement of the validity of an idea or statement based on its merits. That will include things like less reliance on empiricism for all things, at it is primarily the higher education institutions which are perpetuating this.
@@Theviewerdude That was a fantastic reply! I have to count myself lucky because it's extremely rare to be able to exchange words like this on this platform. Thanks for sharing a bit about your background. Since I have no qualifications in exercise physiology I really appreciated your view on it. I suspected it would be like this, but obviously lacked the clarity and experience to put it into words as clearly and articulately as you did. Agreed on things like water retention affecting weight. It's a flawed measure, we should look at effective body composition instead, except, it's not nearly as easy to measure so you really have to be observant and learn to know your body, just like you said. Do you know of nitrogen isotope testing on human bone remains? Its findings alone can already tell quite a lot about human nutrition across hundreds of thousands of years. When something works for such a long span of time, as proven by the fact we are still here and as a dominant species to boot, it should be hard to dismiss and overlook, yet that's exactly what has happened. You also mentioned no carb/low carb and calories, so maybe I can try to add my thoughts on that as well: another flaw often found in such studies is that their standards for what no carb and even low carb are, almost always prove unsatisfactory. The people followed are found to still consume a considerable amount of carbs even in the so called "no carb" group, and on the other hand, to even have a low carb group, one must first be able to establish what exactly low carb is. The exact number or range should not be taken for granted. Even health organizations and so called experts vary quite significantly in their recommendations. Often what is regarded as low carb on such studies most definitely isn't, and is actually absurdly high, just ask any diabetic or pre-diabetic. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say this straight up invalidates the study from the get go. And I can totally get behind your disbelief at how studies like these just get a pass, especially since very often the abstract, which should hold relatively little weight as a whole, already shows invalidating red flags left and right, before even getting into the empirical nitty gritty. If that's not shameful when there are practices such as peer-review in place, then I don't know what is. And on the calorie side, I'm pretty sure you will agree it's an awkward measure because of thermodynamics. Living organisms are considered open systems. We freely exchange energy and matter with other things. A calorimeter used to measure calories is instead considered a closed system, as it only exchanges energy. It's therefore highly reductionist to talk about calories the way it is being done at large, and not just in terms of semantics. It just doesn't work for a person the way it does in a calorimeter, as an entire core component, the exchange of matter, is being completely taken out of the equation. I really hope you are right on your final take though. It's hard to predict such things and expectations often lead to disappointment. I will admit sometimes I find myself morbidly hoping for some catastrophe or crisis originating from the malpractice in these fields, because without a proper shake up, I find it hard to believe there will be any significant change. So fingers crossed it won't come down to that.
I don't think I have much to add to the interesting conversation but I would say there is a huge gap in between Humanities and Sciences which can solve the issue of people in higher education not willing to listen to each other. Questions of practical utility are multi-faceted, so it's both arrogant and partially stupid to think there is one way can solve every problem. Anecdote and priori approach is much more accepted in Humanities and I personally feel the both sides can learn from other. Education have a tendency to fall short when tackling real life problems and that creates the "It's backed by Science!" sticker on almost everything, because for every shitty product there is a controlled experiment done by some underpaid research facility. Slowly but surely, "Science-based" have became more of a buzz word than something credible since so often research in controlled environment contradict each other. It also have eliminated that empathy that we all experience. For example: "if this one research support that people who are different from us are "mentally ill" then surely it must be right, and I can be hateful and then claim science is on my side", no longer are morals considered because people justify their lack of empathy to be backed by science. Forgive me for rambling lol
It seems that there is a polarisation in our society on people who trust the scientific expertise and those who don’t. It could lead us to a several conflicts in info space 😦. Thanks for a great video! 😉
Difference btw who is experts and who's not Who's is to be taken seriously and who not Textbook or internet or both Reserch method matters Fact checking, peer review Read and dissect papers.and know diff btw good and mad High quality workk
OMG! Alice! You’ve just articulated something I’ve had in mind for a very long time. The internet is not really doing anyone a favour by making content creation so easy. We’ve started to value content creation now, more than the actual content itself. Things like the TH-cam algorithm isn’t helping the case either. Creators are forced to consistently upload when its completely impractical to deliver content this frequently. We need shift the definition of success in the content creation space from volume to quality. Thanks a lot for this! More people seriously need to watch this.
I feel like she may not add time stamps because she can't easily split the video cleanly into separate topics as all of them are connected and the transition from one to another may not be so clear. But I personally would also like time stamps lol.
Why does it soud like you advocating for absoluto unregulation of behaviour and spreading of hate-speech using "free speech" as a moral shield. Right now free speech Is a buzz-word to "attack whoever i want without any consequences" even when it ends up killing real people.
@@kiriki4558 Hate speech should not be regulated. I'm sorry but you either believe in autonomy of a individual to speak freely or not. Calling to action or inciting voilence is another thing i don't support but i don't believe any controversial ideas should be censored.
My Industry, graphic design, is one where you see so many people online saying "You don't need a degree! No one really cares about credentials if you have the skill!" ....and that's true. But in hiring designers we've always considered those without degrees and judged people on portfolio when deciding who to call in. We have not hired a single designer without an art degree. There have been none without that were even in serious consideration. The degree itself doesn't grant any skills, but the experiences involved in earning that degree typically do. We might not necessarily have 'research methods' but we do have critique. You learn so much on presenting work constantly and discussing, and sometimes defend it like a thesis, with peers. Having that consistent set of peers that critique your work, and that you often perform that work around and sometimes collaborate with is invaluable. You get to know each other and each other's styles and methods to provide insight on a body of work rather than just a piece. You can also discover bias that could be present in critique, and identify what is taste vs what is inherent. Seeking critique online I often see people either getting softball critiques that don't really challenge them, or getting torn into on really granular details that won't really give the artist direction for true growth. I'm sure there are some who are so talented that they don't really need that level of critique, or are so incredibly self-aware they can do it themself, or they have experienced creatives in their life who are able to provide quality feedback... But I get the feeling that those cases are rare. There are many examples of designers who have made it big without a degree and are extremely successful and well regarded... but they are the anomalies rather than the norm. There are also a ton of people finding success in creative fields that don't really have the creative chops, but are masters on the business end of things... and for any self-employed creator, the business chops usually are more important than the creative edge. But I see it over, and over again... an extremely consistent trend of designers without either the institutional or work experience just not being able to cut the mustard. I also have seen PLENTY of designers who have gone through the training, and gotten the degree, and had some on the job experience who still can't make par. I've also seen designers hiding behind their experience and training as if it absolves them of their shortcomings, or that their excess of experience makes them more correct even if they have fallen way behind the state of the industry. I guess my point is that self-taught success is valid, but formal education usually helps. Degrees don't matter, but experiences can. Education and experience don't make you, but they can help you improve yourself.
Thanks for the video, Alice! I agree that university education often helps us to hone our research methods - but I also feel like peer review, in the way you are referring to it, can be a tricky thing to unequivocally rely on. I don't work in academia, but from what I know, it can be a biased and faulty process. I mention it because there is often merit in studying non-peer-reviewed sources, too. The extent of it will, of course, depend on the field - but I did my masters on performance and gender and had to refer to public intellectuals and activists whose work is unaffiliated with universities or major publications for various reasons, including those institutions not being safe or welcoming spaces for everyone. I don't believe you need to wait until you're "an expert" to distinguish trustworthy sources - but learning how to check those is a crucial part of becoming one!
The real solution is to study the first principles of every field. Learn the first principles well and thoroughly. Like the reason people think COVID-19 vaccines or other vaccines don't work is because almost always (in my experience) they don't understand even a FEW first principles of immunology. Like that vaccines aren't therapies they are "training" for your immune system, so there's no contradiction between "strengthen your immune system" and "get a vaccine" - it's like a fighter, a fighter trains his muscles but also learns technique and skill and not only CAN you do both, doing EITHER one without the other is to put yourself on a serious back foot. College can help with this and _ideally it SHOULD_ - BUT only if you get a good Professor. I remember coming into my first year Engineering Physics I course because that was required and I did great but honestly the instructor was so terrible that I knew that if it hadn't been for all the self-learning (primarily Internet!!) I'd done on the topic before then, I'd likely have been royally confused. What's ridiculous is there are colleges like that out there that let such people teach such courses and/or that the system lets them. Literally I corrected this "instructor" when they repeated a common mistake about Newton's third law(*) to their whole class right in the classroom, and I remember how much murmuring came out of that class and ... I think I have about as much to say on this topic as the video author does because I have experience thoroughly with both the pitfalls and advantages of college/formal learning AND self-learning being also totally self- and home-taught prior to college, then going to colleges - two of them now. The way I see it, college nor self-learning is not inherently better. But self-learning is also perhaps for not as many people, maybe only those with special talent; ironic when we consider that college is supposed to conventionally indicate you are "smart". But then colleges, they have a _responsibility_ to be truly good teachers, and it shouldn't be that you should have to go to Harvard, Yale, or MIT just to NOT have a _basic error_ like the one I mentioned "taught" to you. We seem to have a social class-formation where that the less advantaged are literally deceived by bad teaching because they get those colleges, and I would argue that's an absolutely unacceptable crime, whether it's a legal crime or not. --- (*) for those with physics savvy and/or interest: that the normal force on a book lying down on the table is the reaction force to the gravitational force from the Earth. This is wrong! The reaction force is the force _ON THE EARTH (incl. table) FROM THE BOOK._
Thank you! I noticed average people are not quite familiar with science theory and particular with medical science theory as we see with the pandemic. The whole point is... it is a theory, an hypothesis. It can be proven or not, supported or not, nuanced, completed... And what you described as " a contradictory opinion" is a normal conversation between scientists. Science evolves with those conversations. Science needs time. Self taught person don't take this time (including myself haha), we want all the knowledge immediately in a 5 min video.😅 Je viens juste de découvrir ta chaîne. Je m'abonne !
"Respectable media outlets have built very robust fact checking systems" Bahahahaha. Is that a joke? The list of retractions those outlets have had to make in the last 2 years could fill an entire wall...
Cool video. Far to often folks really connect person made a lot of money in 1 area so sure they can transfer that success in a completely different & opposite o their original success. One of my best skill I learned in high school was how to research info. Seek out direct sources, was the study peer reviewed etc. My art teacher use to stress learning & mastering the basics/rules of things. Only then when you know all the rules you can effectively break them to suit the needed at hand.
There is a very nuanced, and dare I say hidden, issue with solely trusting scientific research published by "superstar" experts. Let me explain, sometimes figures in the scientific community can show remarkable expertise in their field, exceptional track record and has built some sort of prestigious label in their name, so much so that even other experts in the same field are often biased towards this "superstar expert" and become less critical of their works. A well-known example is the case of Paolo Macchiarini. Who was allowed to perform untested surgical procedures on human patients by the institution he worked in because he's a prestigious surgeon? And I have found that this problem is a lot more common than what everyone might expect. In my short journey making science videos on YT, I have encountered a superstar expert-induced bias myself. Trusting renowned experts and scientific institutions is a good rule of thumb, but we must also remain wary of such biases. Anyways, excellent video Alice!
Fascinating video, thanks for sharing! It feels to me that even if one were to completely disregard knowledge from University courses and above, the interactions with professors, experts brought to class from time to time, the structure of assignments and the experience your peers bring to class enriches critical thinking. While not unique to that experience, seems to me to help us develop it further and with a wider perspective. It may have nothing to do with the institution itself, and more that we have centralized the methodology of nurturing this kind of growth into academics, I don’t know. It is certainly an unteresting topic!
Hi Alice, great video! This is a topic I've had mixed thoughts about for a long time. I've seen the damage that misinformation can do to society and the problems caused by a lack of critical thinking. But I also don't think the reliance on universities and established institutions is healthy. I am informed by my personal experience. I come from India, and the craze here is for Engineering or Medicine. There is a very high bar of entry for premier institutions and a low bar of entry for the remaining ones. I have seen a very unhealthy trend here, namely the emphasis of rote learning and clearing exams with no critical thinking by a large percentage of the population - Political awareness is quite low. Even though I graduated from a premier institution, I was disillusioned because the job I got after graduating did not utilise even 2% of what I learned in college! I feel that post-college, students are either disillusioned by the lack of meaningful connection to what they dedicated years of their life to, or they get into a delusional mode of thinking that anything can be learned on the internet in a short span of time thanks to "thinkfluencers." I am acquainted with both kinds of thinking. The final problem is (although it's probably exaggerated quite a bit) that universities/colleges don't encourage risk-taking. There is a gamut of "acceptable" ideas for study and a bias towards theory instead of practice which is quite unhealthy. Students are not encouraged to pursue unconventional lines of thought in many cases (I'm not speaking based on Ted talks here). Figures like Musk or Gates or Bezos are fascinating to youngsters because they seem to have "rebelled against institutions and found their own path." The reality, that they were funded by their parents to a great extent, and were set up to succeed in many ways does not surface as much. But the very fact that people who "do" are more venerated than people who "prove what they are saying is right" says something about the system. This desire for risk-taking has to be channelized in some way without giving rise to celebrity worship or delusion. What do you think?
I'm glad I stumbled upon this channel I don't agree with everything with what she says. But she's awesome. I am sure she understands that everyone has different mindset
What a great video! I love the final point you made about democratizing the scientific method! This should encompass everything, from paywalls on academic publications, high tuition fees and student debt, to the use of excessive jargon and inaccessible language. Because at the moment universities’ accessibility mostly perpetuates inequalities 😞
The most relevant issue that I've heard and concur with is when scientists/researchers fail to distinguish the difference between philosophical ideas and/or lab results (which are controlled) and the impact and reality of the largely uncontrolled and chaotic way life plays out. This seems most evident in economics.
Internet expertise when done in the right way, i guess it could work well with non stem fields. - which is the approach most of these anti college discourse aims for, as I see it at least, bc how you gon learn to be a nurse via TH-cam? Or electrical engineering or medicine… What we need is broaden access to higher education because it is still the safest way of starting a career (I don’t understand the loan debt that americans often refer to bc my university is state funded) so yeah I guess this is more nuanced than we think it really is. It’s always nice to listen to you Alice 💌💌💌 merci
The principle of listening to experts worked quite well in the past when they were filtered by traditional media and gated through formal institutions - universities, companies, civil organizations, etc. In the age of social media, the nature of expertise has changed as the digital space isn't mediated by traditional institutions but instead as a principle is open to all. Therefore experts can and must establish themselves within the digital space. An expert in the digital space is measured not primarily by professional reputation nor accolades but instead by how effectively an expert communicates their expertise with laypersons (and to a lesser extent other experts). These qualities are those favored by the algorithm. Algorithms can not yet and foreseeably will not be able to rank based on truth. While this new expertise can be a source of innovation in many new fields especially the creative and technological, but at the same time the encroachment of experts in the digital space onto certain fields brings great dangers (the medical field especially). I can't see any other solution to this problem other than the so-called "old" or pre-digital experts must adopt better and more diverse communication strategies in the digital space. Society hopefully will get smarter and we'll reach a new equilibrium where we can have more trust in experts establshed in the digital space.
There are encyclopedias online. Most college students I've talked to pirate their textbooks. Besides the college system doesn't have a monopoly on skepticism or the scientific method. Not all great thinkers attended college or completed it. For example: Galileo, Pascal, George Green, Charles Dickens, Oliver Heaviside, etc. Colleges around the world continue to benefit from their knowledge and work.
sorry this is slightly off-topic but i think it's so interesting how each country has a different version of shark tank or dragons den and the animals are all slightly different! it's lions cave/den in germany and money tigers in japan i'm pretty sure
I am a physicist and I cannot emphasize enough how many people think they "understand" quantum physics because they read a book about the law of attraction or whatever lol
I’ve read a huge ton of books and have been amazed about physics ever since I was little. I’d say Physics gives you a thinking framework to those books. Never read ‘The Secret’ the main law of attraction book I think but I’d say it would probably help someone out there who knows.
The "hi girl bosses" intro triggered my fight or flight response lol
😂😂
I had to unsubscribe from someone because of that.
Having worked as a professional science communicator for 4+ years now, I was surprised at the vast differences in fact checking rigor by different large channels. SciShow and Crash Course do their due diligence by fact-checking multiple times per script, and by hiring independent, dedicated fact checkers and subject-area experts as writers and consultants. They know that their trust with their audience is important, but they also recognize the platform they have and responsibility to publish accurate information.
And then there are....other....large channels that put whatever they want out into the world. I agree with you -- audience doesn't give you credibility. Transparency of research process gives you credibility.
I'd love, love to hear what other channels you view as high quality! I'm always looking for good stuff to link to people who are trying to self-learn ^^ those two are favorites, for sure!
@@laurenpinschannels While I'm not OP, I believe Kurzgezagt could be another example of a high-quality education channel that values transparency.
@@leodahvee Confirmed. They link to a line-by-line breakdown of their sources in the description.
I would be interested which big channels aren't doing a good job regarding research. Are you willing to name any?
@@AlloAnder Veritasium has had major errors, though personally I think they've sparked debate and I still like a lot of his work. His insightful videos tend to be a bit more hyped up than the underlying tech *quite* warrants. Eg his video about the importance of understanding fields in understanding the flow of electricity was *extremely* good in making my thinking better... but it didn't do the right thing until I watched a bunch more electromagnetism videos, many of which were from actual universities and quite long and had very low view counts, and there were a bunch of disagreeing followup videos as well.
I'm confused about where I fall, because I don't agree with the elitists that think that a college education is the only way to become an expert, but I also don't agree with the anti-intellectuals who think that college is useless and you can learn everything you need on the internet or with books.
You don't have to "pick a side" at all. They're both wrong. There is a common thread with both approaches that can lead someone to knowledge. Doing one doesn't preclude you from doing the other anyways.
The most brilliant people I know tend to be college educated, and spend a ton of their personal time learning even more.
College grads who are lazy and stop learning outside of the bare minimum to get their degree and keep up with continuing ed, I don't have much trust in.
Just as I wouldn't have much faith in someone who thinks nothing of value comes out of colleges.
Yeah, I was thinking the same regarding that. But as is often the case, I think it lies somewhere in the middle. Optimally in this case would probably be the combination of both, as the first reply pointed out - college or such (formal education) as an introduction and overview of the topic, providing some guidelines and tools to use and then own interest and time spent to further advance, going more in-depth or maybe also diversifying/branch out into related topics.
@@dennisjungbauer4467 Problems with colleges 1)Too costly compared to alternatives (even if college's tuition is for free, additional road/rent must be compared to internet cost) and usually stress (such as dead lines, especially if you are perfectionist); 2)Their inability to adapt to rapidly changing world, technological innovation fast enough (study plans need to be approved MINIMUM 1 year in advance); 3)Generelised, not individualised courses (usually 50%+ is something you will not use, might not fit to your learning style); 4)Padding, not effective learnt testing methods (such as writing papers, where you half of time spend to double check grammar and transitions, translate, write references etc., instead of concentrated presentation); 5)Delayed economical integration (instead of learning, while working, or making foundations for bussiness in appropriate order, your output is basically never used practically no matter how well made).
@@dennisjungbauer4467 yeah that is exactly what is happening with my self learning journey. My background of my mom's nurturing and good private school + me practice self learning even for school subjects (even in school i only understand once i learn, most time the teacher is not needed, but the direct interaction and feedback is cool). If you have a good basics you can learn anything alone. You books videos articles and a ton of thinking.
Im on the same fence as you are but I think we can use both
I used to think academics were pretentious (and still do tbh lmao) until I went to university myself and realised how important it was to acquire formal training before calling yourself an expert in something, how important your credentials are. So many people are self-taught these days, as well as the rise of "coaches" in a number of fields and I find it to be problematic. The internet has made it so easy for people to share unchecked information with questionable research methods, especially on tiktok.
I think it still depends on the vocation. For a lot of creative fields, the credential is just a way to make certain employers want to even look at your portfolio at all, even if your portfolio alone shows you have the skills. Institutions also are a way of gate keeping certain networking opportunities in some cases, leading some to skip straight to starting their own business or something (I think of how a popular radio host just went directly to a radio station consistently and hung around to learn in their spare time). We can't really fault some of these people for finding a way to not make student loan debt a garuntee when access to some of the resources found in institutions can be bought by the average consumer.
no. the internet is used for self taught when colleges in their country is not free or low cost.
you cannot fault people to be fiscally more cautious.
That's why countries with free education is usually the more successful ones economically.
Fun fact, I'm a licensed trainer, and am only legally allowed to run courses in fields where I'm an actual certified expert. So many people call themselves "coaches" or "trainers" who are basically paid performers on a spectrum between entertainer and scam artist.
true and also all these reaction channels and video formats where people just say their opinion on certain topics, mainly a big media issue, are so problematic. Viewers just believe the opinions of these youtubers eventhough there is barely any actual research behind it ( and if so it's very poorly done)
lmao academics are super pretentious. Not sure how much formal training helps with critical thinking, but I do agree it helps. Some people go through university and still can't do this properly, and some people never go through university and are still able to fact-check.
I feel like the main issue with university is that a lot of people advertise it as being the sure way to general career success, but that isn't true. That's why we see people going against universities, they feel like we're being misled - which is true to a certain degree.
Universities also aren't a completely reliable source of information (there is no such thing), that's why they try to teach you how to fact check in the first place. I do think people can use the internet to become experts (due to sheer amount of information), but they can also use the university. For most, I think using both is best. As long as you don't trust anything blindly.
"Hi girlbosses, I hope you're doing well"
Me, a cis guy: "hiiiii queen!"
😂😂😂
Yea me as a man didn't know what to think watching the intro lol
same
Same, I wonder what % of her audience we represent 😅
Just started watching and subbed about a week ago. Totally fell for it. I was crushed. Thanks for the laugh! (still subbed).
I came to this channel when you had less than half the number of subscribers you have now. This has quickly become one of my favourite channels on TH-cam. Love to see your growth!
Damn this is a GOOD video.
Thanks so much 😭✨
Same here. Came when I saw the Alt-Self Help video and this has rapidly become one of my favourite channels.
Any suggestions for other high quality channels like this?
@@nicduynstee2171 Off the top of my head… Tiffanyferg, Tara Mooknee, Contrapoints, Philosophy Tube, Kat Blauqe, Salari, Jordan Theresa, Shaun, Annamarie Forchino, MIA Mulder, Saint Andrewism, Ash Tanya, Khadijah Mbowe..
Some of them might not be what you were hoping for, and overall the recommendations definitely lean to the left politically but all of them are insanely gifted creators!
Agreed!!💯
I love how your videos are structured, the academy award winning acting, and the overall vibe! Thank you for another interesting video :3
What should people who cannot afford college do, then? I could but I literally almost see every day people who I seriously doubt ever could have. I know, it's the system/society, but when that translates into that result, should we personally evaluate them negatively? When we make wildly-disseminated advices like these on public fora to everyone and their dog, how should we take into account those people?
You can learn anything you want and even became an expert but you need for this just the right resources.
This is critical and in my opinion is a skill taught by parents to children or mentor to mentee (1 on 1). The modern perception of older people as stupid and unreliable massively impacts their ability to effectively transmit their knowledge across generations. "Listen to me, someone your age with a massive conflict of interest [I literally benefit from you failing]"
And also the aptitude for the field you are interested in. I could never be a surgeon, for instance.
@@penultimateh766 True
To became an expert you need years of experience, and in the very beginning that someone had taught you his/her experiences... then you can make your own path... but the point is nobody will transfer you quality content of this kind over a youtube channel, and if done, it should be 2 hours video daily and would take years....
@@maurivillalobos Good point, but I think it also depends on what you learn. For example, if you study Philosophy, what experience do you need to get?
When we start learning from our success and start teaching how we got successful, we are actually teaching them our experience, not educating them. Our believes are based on biases. That experience can or cannot be very good for the other person.
University education is tough, boring and lengthy but it is better than learning from experience of successful people. It taught us to critically think, makes us problem solver.
I agree. I'm a self taught artist, that's a field you can definitely learn on your own. But I have a a degree in business administration. I believe it's still interesting to learn about other people's experiences in their fields, but that should just be a first step into further investigation. Personal experiences are not rules or a perfect guide to the rest of the world.
And how do you think people in university learn? Do they acquire this superior ability where you can bypass experience and directly access reality as it is? lol
@@DaviAreias no but in university you read a lot of experiences, which reduces the misconceptions. Opposing arguments is something a lot of people don't really seek out but in university we have to sit through all sides.
What should people who cannot afford college do, then? I could but I literally almost see every day people who I seriously doubt ever could have. I know, it's the system/society, but when that translates into that result, should we personally evaluate them negatively? When we make wildly-disseminated advices like these on public fora to everyone and their dog, how should we take into account those people?
I feel it's important that people don't get attached to their information even if it's credible, keep it open ended because there's still more to discover, that way it can grow naturally through our intuition.
Exactly and this is the issue I have with the scientific community sometimes scientists just want to hang on to old theories and dismiss other scientists. So I don't put full faith in colleges
So true
The most terrifying thing is becoming knowledgeable (I wouldn't even go so far as to say, "an expert") in one tiny field, seeing the extent to which information related to that field is misrepresented in the media and/or the absolutely horrifying diaspora of "educational" TH-cam presentations on the topics, and then extrapolating that misrepresentation to, well, everything there is. The number of people interesting in looking smart >>>>> the number of people who actually want to figure out how things work.
Exactly! That's what makes me afraid. The education system can be boring and old-fashioned, but it makes sure you cover the most important aspects, and it forces you to see what you don't want to see. Imagine if doctors or psychologists were licensed without having all the necessary skills? In addition, studying on your own makes you dig deep in what you think is important, and that doesn't mean that this knowledge will be useful to society.
How do I know if my "wanting to figure out how things work" is then really sincere or I'm just fooling myself with that a million times over?
I feel that a lot of what higher education teaches is how and where to learn. It wasn't until my first year in college that I learned how to properly find and check articles/research papers for credibility. This alone has made it easier for me to avoid some of the media traps using false or weak information. Yes, there are some studies you can learn on your own and be successful without higher education. However, I think that there isn't much of a substitute for helping people learn how to learn or to be competently resourceful.
So what should people who can't afford college do?
You can learn anything on the internet, but that also includes learning the wrong thing, it goes both ways.
As a student in the final year of his degree, I can say that a formal education for me has been extremely useful, but NOT for the reasons you may think. I still firmly believe that the internet along with reading books (which you can also now find on the internet) is the best way to become an expert at anything. The thing college helped me with was to filter out what was relevant.
If I set out to learn Linear Algebra for example, the field is so vast that you don't know how much is too much or too little. A formal course gives you the minimum set of topics needed to build a solid foundation. I do believe however, that you don't NEED a university just for the purpose of filtering relevant information. At the end of the day, all learning is self learning.
could just search online for a linear algebra course syllabus and go off of that
I’ve had a phase in life where I didn’t want to attend University and just taken a job after I finished my school. Slowly, I realised that I needed a University education because it really does help you in the long run.
it really depends. my economics degree has been of no value. whats really valuable is experience and networking with people and in the field you wish to grow and develop in. college is one of many ways and a well paved path. do not limit yourself do your research
well exactly this question is bothering me right now and i switched sides more often than i can count
If it didn't cost so much money, then yes.
I don't believe the internet can make everyone an expert; I believe it can make them as knowledgeable and educated as they want to be (if they know how to properly research/cross reference as you stated). But to be considered an expert requires provable and demonstrative experience and contribution across that field.
the fact that i take breaks from studying dentistry by watching your video shows how they are so relaxing and pleasing keep posting cuz it's something i always look out for
thank youuu
in Italy sometimes even universities fail in teaching critical thinking which is so sad, but it explains so much of what is going on here :'( the pink mask thing was hilarious
Not only in Italy but I believe here in Germany too. I know plenty of people who went to the university but can't think critically nor fact check.
The fact that information itself-specifically academic articles, scientific research-is so often locked behind a paywall is egregious and limits human potential.* Digital information is near-infinitely reproducible at near-zero marginal cost. To charge money to access this information is wild. The money from journal subscriptions does not go to the authors or researchers, and peer reviewers almost never receive compensation.
(Also, in the U.S., we are the ones that pay for a ton of research in the first place with our tax dollars. A plurality of U.S. research is funded through grants from the federal government (like via the NSF). Why are we being charged again to access it??)
Absolutely agreed. Also that college is not wholly a taxpayer-funded public service just as the K-12 is.
I agree with your main point stating that we should conduct ourselves according to reliable sources, but from my point of view the educational landscape and specifically the universities are undergoing a crisis of decentralization, These days university's unique selling point for students is getting a job, choosing a path that is stable. not really offering to teach learning high-resolution critical thinking which is offered in masses when googling the correct words.
You yourself found true "success" from Modern devices, University didn't teach you to articulate your thoughts in front of the camera or edit a video, you saw an opportunity presenting itself true modern technology means and you went for it.
@Shimmy Shai This type of stuff?
@Shimmy Shai Yes dffinatly. but i belive even more inportent is the ability to formulate and organize an informed, coherent and sophisticated set of ideas.
I had this feeling for quite a while. Self learning requires a very specific mindset... same as being an athlete to make things more visual. You have to have discipline or you will spin in circles and going nowhere. Either searching for the "perfect" source. Or jumping from topics and variants. You need a sense of plan, progress, honesty facing ignorance and understanding.. and mastery. Until you get the diligence and brutal honesty about what constitute a success (even a small step along the plan) you will probably fail.
What should people who cannot afford college do, then?
When I worked for a govt in lab in the US, I was shocked to see how some of my colleagues, even those with PhD degrees in science and BS or MS in Engineering, thought that they could become experts in philosophy and statistics by internet foraging to the point that they would undermine, using their positions, those of us who were trained in above areas and would feel obliged to point out their errors.
So even those educated in one discipline believed that they could become the equivalent of those with formal training in another field.
It happens at all levels.
A good book discussing this matter is "The Death of Expertise".
What should people who cannot afford college do, then? I could but I literally almost see every day people who I seriously doubt ever could have. I know, it's the system/society, but when that translates into that result, should we personally evaluate them negatively? When we make wildly-disseminated advices like these on public fora to everyone and their dog, how should we take into account those people?
I told myself this is my year to go after my goals this year with no remorse and love that you foster that mindset 🙏🏽💜
Which actually shows the right-wing has some valid points. Has she explicitly said those words? She should, then?
Also the internet just doesn’t have all the information, I’m in maths and it’s happened all the time that I didn’t even find what I was looking for on the internet
I really appreciate the nuanced approach to every topic you cover. It's incredibly challenging to do so, especially in the current climate. Confirmation bias has really taken hold of the American populace, and made science a matter of subjectivity, which at times can be truly terrifying. Always look forward to the questions your videos propose.
peer review & fact-checking, i will forever have it ingrained
1:17, I believe you can have both. A fixed mindset for certain issues and a growth mindset for issues that can change for the better. I don't think there's one or the other people have to be. Not every situation can change while some can change.
I think it really just depends on the career path someone is trying to embark on and learn about. Because I feel you truly can use the internet as a valuable resources for your growth in more artistic fields. I've been pretty much self taught for years, reading books and using tutorials and other online materials, to understand the fundamentals, and more complex aspects to the art I am pursuing . And now, even though I decided to get formal training by attending college for my interest I realize that there isn't some profound difference of the level of education I'm getting by my professors that I couldn't have just taught myself. My main benefits I'm receiving is now being around other like minded students I can collaborate with and give each other pointers about our art. So basically networking is easier when you study in universities, but if you found ways to find similar people to engage with as a self taught artist you'd still be fine.
I’ve seen this problem in media consumption as well: The news is consumed by a lot of people on Instagram here and it’s not possible to always make it bite sized and aesthetically appealing. One has to read a lot and deal with unsettling phenomena.
you forgot the plug to the "empowering" 50€ book/course at the end of the video lmaoo
loved your analysis and point of view, i just subscribed 🥰🥰
I know it wasn't the focus of this video, but I think it's important to also mention the agendas, paradigms and dominant discourses implicit in the academic world. Scientific research is not some infallible source of truth! It's dangerous to trust a source simply because it comes from 'big names, big universities, big publications'. As Foucault said, everything is dangerous - I would consider 'big institutions' to be far more likely to perpetuate hegemonic norms, given the stake they hold in the 'status quo'. That's why we read, read, read, and critically reflect.
But given how inaccessible the academic world is for so many, I would be very wary of holding it in such high esteem; oh boy, it is so far from perfect. Of course the nihilist implications of postmodernism and 'post truth' society are concerning, but instead of running back to the familiarity of institutions why not embrace and negotiate the world of difference? There is a whole world of democracy, potentiality, dialogue, nuance and uncertainty out there. People who are not formally educated have a right to contribute to that too
everyone who ever sat on an academic board, even if only a students board at a faculty knows there are also politics in play there as well. And big names or much funding does not necessarily mean better research/science/papers. That is why there are also other researchers around, often trying to rig or game the s ystem in their studies, sometimes being successful with it (what then often makes it into the mainstream news). And rightfully so. Pear Review is often lacking, publish or perish incentive is bad, we need binding and standardized data policies as well, but also correct identification of researchers, what and how they did their work and so on. Often times, you can skip this, if you are just a "big name". But you shouldn't be. All have to be hold to the same scrutiny and standards.
Such insights. Love your view. Also support it
I think that depends on the discipline a lot, but anthropologists are leading the way in that kind of research,although it still needs a shitload of training and interpersonal abilities to really integrate non-academic participants in formal publications.
Yes! Was hoping to see a comment like this
With the blessing of having massive access to so much data thanks to the internet, it is now our duty to filter out what is true, false, and propaganda
I would love to see you do a video on critical thinking skills and research methods!
Thank you, Alice! I love your channel, I'm from brazil I study social sciences and I learn a lot with your videos! Keep posting more!
I’m old enough to be your grandfather and I find you completely refreshing. In my lifetime I’ve seen the dumbing down of people. I know that I’ve been complicit in an attempt to earn a living and complete feel the karma. People are not taught how to learn but what to learn. Writing essays have been replaced by multiple choice from a given set of answers. Vocational education has replaced liberal education. I could go on. I was able to provide an alternative education for my own daughter. It’s great to believe nothing. It’s okay to have strong suppositions.
i self teached myself to write code, previously i tried with presencial courses with teachers and didn't work for a diverse array of reasons, i am not an expert by any means, but what i learned is that the only thing that truly shows if i know about something is not the time in years or hours i spend doing it, or the "success" i achieved, it's the work i did and the ability of explain this subjects to other people, it haves to do more about the experience doing stuff and failing a lot of times than simply the amount of time tracked. I think that while you can learn a lot of things by yourself with the right online resources, there is a shit ton of bad articles and tutorials, most of them are not made with bad intentions. learning online does not mean you can or should throw all the traditional learning methods and institutions to the trash, this ones haves really useful knowlage that digs deep into things that are not always covered online, also teaches you more than the nesesary to do your job, it teaches you to think in a certain way, to be critical about things, it haves a kind of culture that goes along with anything you do in your profesional or personal life. i don't know if it should be private or 100% in-class like it always haves been, maybe it should have a better and cheaper (or even free) online option
My stepfather when he was in college studied social sciences but he didn't graduate for a reason. That's why he can't get a decent job now. Later he became a moderator of a scientific website along with others and talked a lot with people and read a lot on the internet...
Now he has been a moderator of that scientific website for 10 years and many people rate him as the level of an academic even though he has no degree. Now I want to achieve the same thing but I don't know yet how to be social on the internet, I sometimes go into conversation with people on discord but that's about it. I as a 16 year old am still in school but i am already diligent to learn more than school offers me. I'm curious to know a lot about history so that I can learn why things are as they are now, for example the history of science, I am interested in philosophy to an extent and in literature.
Encore une excellente vidéo! I really want to start my own channel and I'm questioning why and what I want to bring... Currently finishing a degree in Sexology that, right now, feels a bit pointless. I'm "happy" that I will get recognition and "gain" credibility but the truth is, I've learned so much more from people deconstructing concepts online than my, sometimes sex-negative, teachers.
19 hrs ago?
@@JM-st1le patreon lol! Join usssss
@@ravenitz oh
5:52 I’ve heard this and it’s a very dangerous precedent to set for one’s viewers. Some of us can’t just be reliant on ourselves.
Why is the intro so accurate for my yt feed lol. I follow an influencer (not going to name any names) who gets accused of "glamourising being rich". Part of her brand is an "abundance mindset". One way of getting back at the haters is posting DM's from people claiming they spent money on luxuries they didn't "let themselves afford" before, and out of nowhere "the universe" got them a promotion, a sum of money, or luxury items/services for free. In her eyes it's evidence that the abundance mindset works. Another thing she gets defensive about is people saying yes anyone, but not everyone can be rich. But affirmations, coffee as a ritual that belongs in a video, and affectionate names for the audience are things a lot of my favourite youtubers do. I don't know what to do with spotting patterns like these. Once it helped me in quitting trying to be vegan, because I realised I didn't actually care enough, I just wanted to be like the young female influencers I saw on youtube. Ashley from bestdressed said she got comments that made her feel pressured to be vegan, when she said that she doesn't reckon male youtubers would get these comments, and that the pressure comes from young women amongst each other, I decided to wait and see when I'm ready to feel like veganism is something I want to do because of my personal beliefs and not others'.
Critical thinking and learning "how to learn" are often overlooked in favor of what "feels right" or what confirms our preconceived biases. I get it though - a lot of what we do is driven by emotion and it can be difficult to stay informed on a multitude of topics - especially considering how saturated the media landscape is. A lot of the time I have to rely on convenience - whether skimming headlines, articles in the news - simply because I only have a given amount of time and brain real estate. That being said, I do agree that with the right foundational skill set, one can not only make the distinction between "accurate information" or "misinformation" but also choose to dive deeper into the nuances of a subject (depending on the subject of course ... theoretical physics is a bit out of my wheelhouse).
Having a bit of self-awareness to recognize your own limitations (whether they are 'bias', lack of understanding, or recognizing that there's no way you can possibly parse through the material) goes a long way - a healthy degree of skepticism. That way you end up less like "Rogan" and more like "Alice" 😄
Would you elaborate on why you distrust Rogan? Sincerely asking, because I like to listen to his podcast.
@@Jay_hendy Oh hey Jay, I never said I “distrust” Rogan. If you enjoy his podcast, that’s fine! I used to listen to the JRE years ago when he had discussions about spirituality or had an intriguing guest on the pod. I stopped listening after a while, not because of any controversy, but I gradually lost interest. 3-4 hour discussions can be quite time-demanding and found the quality to be very hit-or-miss.
I was being a bit cheeky with using “Rogan” in my example, since he’s currently topical for spreading misinformation about COVID-19 (either through himself or through his guests - an “unhealthy degree of skepticism”, if you will). Even before this, I’d always take his claims with a grain of salt - Joe presents himself as an independent thinker, but is still prone to bias and bad takes.
If you view the JRE as “just entertainment”, once again, that’s totally cool - I’m not going to judge you for it. I can see the appeal. We all have our personal tastes. But the key thing is - it’s entertainment. It doesn’t matter whether the details are coming from Joe Rogan, Alice, or whomever - ultimately when it comes to scientific/medical information, I’m always going to defer to the doctors, epidemiologists and-or other medical professionals because “The internet won’t make you an expert”😉
@@TheZatzman Haha okay cool. I also take what I here on podcasts/TH-cam vids with a grain of salt. I do find that I have similar interests as Joe, so I like most of his serious podcasts. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a glaring flaw! Thanks for the reply!
you challenged me to see the better way to democratize education- by democratizing peer review access and knowledge of it and its applications. while it takes resources to achieve this, i now think that metaverse and the servers used/will require are more resource heavy than the efforts democratizing peer review AND the more resource heavy the less ability ~we~ have to utilize and learn different perspectives and ideas b/c human exploitation is necessary for such rabid energy/resource demands.
Just discovered this channel and absolutely love it. Your literary taste is amazing and your ideas against consumption are amazing Alice
I used to do work on mechanical and electrical equipment, and while me an my coworkers were knowledgeable about a great deal of things, we never received proper training or education on the equipment we used or built. This led to a long line of technicians just keeping notes and procedures on what they found that worked. When a delicate machine would break, they would try and get us to fix it first before getting a trained technician from outside, even on stuff that was far more advanced and newer than the stuff we typically worked on. One thing I've learned from my experience doing that work is that being self-taught can only take you so far when much of the information you need is simply not publicly available. I find this true for many fields and things I've dipped my feet into, however, I have met other self-taught individuals who do work that exceeds the level and skill of people who have gone to training for the same equipment. Maybe it's different when it comes to working on equipment you can personally take apart and perhaps doesn't translate to academia. But I can say from my own experience, sometimes it's nigh on impossible just to find sources for things. Perhaps the academic framework would help.
I think it definitely depends on the field. I am currently working on my uni in Material Sciences in building industry and a lot of mechanisms, methods and substances are company's secrets but that is not the worst part... simply there is no way of learning many of the analytical methods, research the properties or confirm your suspicions if you don't posses the equipment. And that is worth thousands of dollars (or in my case pln) that an average self learner just doesn't have. Not to mention that it is simply a field in which noone will hire you without a formal education in at least similar field.
Not that universities teach you everything, if they teach you basics, show you how to read science papers and give you the access to the equipment it is already a lot. But definitely there are some fields that being an expert based on internet history or even amount of books read is just not enough.
The thing that's salient about university and academia's expertise is that you actually have to defend your ideas to your peers. Internet gurus rarely have to do that, all they have to do is appeal to marketing. That means universities are more capable of generating competent thinkers, whereas internet-based expertise is always going to be more uneven and frequently that means conventional incompetence.
You've just become my favourite video essayist. Beijos do Brasil!
🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷
Would you mind if you could recommend some reliable, interesting video essayists other than Alice, shanspeare, and mina le?
@@glo3475 Solar sands, lonerbox ,the right opinion
@@Fracasse-0x13 thank you
The internet will make you an expert on the theory when you use it properly, you can read and do your own math. When it comes to practice, really only a mentorship can meke you skilled.
however: do not confuse mentorship with imitation, the latter ven a monkey can do
i think another interesting way to "vibe-check" work is through incentive analysis. if there are conflicts of interest, if the "expert" is trying to sell something (this can include a personality, or a course), it's ussually not the best source probably.
The opening to this video was so great!! The little skit in the beginning lol, I loved your opening transition, and even your sponsorship incorporation was informative and relevant but concise. Love what you're doing!!
This is such an excellent video!!
Its concise and gets the message across without any unnecessary BS :)
I like learning stuff, and the internet and how it has democratized access to information, has really been a very important and quite a lot of the times, only , learning resource that I can access. And I learn stuff for the very simple reason that I just like to learn new things, and even this _relatively_ casual reason doesn't let me not validate information that I'm going through on a daily basis.
Its one thing for someone who is actively trying to learn something to verify the information because as a student its your responsibility to do so, but to whom I think the most disingenuous amount of misinformation is circulated , is the general person who just opened up their news feed on their smartphone on their break. If some article seems to try way to hard at reeling you into going through it, the more skeptical one should be of the information in it. People need to trust what science says, and I think it would be much easier if everyone just took information on the internet with just a grain of salt, that's all :)
Well, "science" can be wrong, too. But one should generally bet it is right first before betting it is wrong.
@@shimrrashai-rc8fq True ! Blindly believing in something because its labelled as "scientifically proven" or if its said by some scientific institution is exactly the same as following some random dogma. "Science" is supposed to be proven, following the scientific method. The method is constant and reliable, but the humans are still variables in this equation, and so is the data in some instances. So "science" maybe incorrect , in the best case due to the data in question changing with time, thus the paper requiring updates. Or in the worst case, due to disingenuous people who somehow got into positions where they could publish their personal agendas and label them as "science" .
i've never seen someone sponsored by the guardian on youtube and i hope wont see another.
I am happy I've been finding so many young youtubers following some ethical journalist practices in the commentary and topical community (at least in my personal experiences). I have been trying to surround myself with more content that seeks to lay out both sides of a topic in depth, with people not afraid to say "I don't know" every once in a while. It's refreshing when you find people who practice some humility. And admit when they are wrong.
tbh channels like yours really give me hope for the future of humanity, because the truth is there are a lot of bright thinkers in the world today and I think in (most) everyone's heart, we want a good outcome for all those around us. We are all on this spinning rock together, after all so why not make the best of it?
Love the video essays, keep it up :)
Just wrote an essay about "Don't look up" and science communication :D
I am subscribed to your channel since a time where you had only about a thousand subscribers.
Every video is such a good reason to keep it that way. They are so interesting and well researched. I already bought several books which you cited. Keep up the amazing work🔥
Tell me how shit-poor my videos are by comparison. Tell me please. I want people to be honest, frank, and factual with me. I feel honesty-deprived throughout my life, honestly more like trauma kinda
Very very good advise! I hope a lot of people see this. Thx for making the effort. 😇
Love the satirical bokeh effect in the beginning - it’s like a symbol of the glamorous blur some creators place on hustle culture and self improvement
I’m not sure I completely agree with this one. . . While I agree with your opinion about the importance of rigorous research methods, you seem to have conflated self-taught with many other things which aren’t necessarily associated with it.
As you said, you hope to expand on this topic in future videos so hope to hear more of your thoughts on this. Thank you, I really enjoy your content😊
When Molly started speaking, I thought it was dubbed as a joke, LOL XD
Epistemology;
the theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion.
I discussed the same topic with one of my friend yesterday. To understand how different 'self thought from internet' and what we learnt from authentic books , search some topic we already know in Wikipedia/TH-cam or else where in internet . We will be surprised by the fact that whatever we learnt from college/school and what we found on web is so different . Web provide periferal knowledge but university give us deep insights. Reading authorised books are much needed (whether it is soft copy or hard copy) if you want to study something which we are not learn before (in college/school/kindergarten) . Thank you for your video.
I"d love to hear more about your thoughts on the democratization of the process that you mentioned at the end!
This video is such important information as young people are rightly questioning the ethics and motivations behind textbook publishers and those that create curricula. If activists are pointing out that education has been biased then that leaves students wondering who they can trust. So-called "experts" are often found as having an agenda so they have lost trust in the idea of an expert.
Very few things discussed online are a Law. Theory is about as good as your usually going to get. It's frightening to me how few people understand that postulations evolve, like viruses for example.
To play devil's advocate a little: stuff being peer-reviewed is no guarantee it's actually valid. And of course there are no guarantees in life, but I believe things could be a bit better. Some studies that qualify by that metric have conflicts of interest lists longer than the study itself...
Another example would be statistical significance vs utility. I apologize in advance for going into this only briefly, but studies might get a pass even if they have no real world utility, as long as they are statistically significant. This isn't exactly very good as far as being scientifically disciplined goes, it basically muddies the pool.
Some fields do a lot better than others at applying scientific discipline, for a number of factors. For example, astrophysics. Getting stuff in space is very costly and risky, so there is incentive to get it right and do it well, can't say the same for nutrition science however. Ethics and politics prevent it from conducting long-term, randomized controlled trials to properly establish causality. After all, can't get identical twins to live in a metabolic ward for twenty years with every aspect of their lives controlled, even if they do sign up of their own volition.
For this reason, the field is marred by epidemiology which, by virtue of its design in the specific context of nutrition, is prone to substantial hiccups. In its practice, the simple governing notion of correlation not equaling causation is often thrown out the window. Incidence and risk become synonyms even though they most definitely aren't, same for absolute risk vs relative risk. Stuff like that. Lots of things that give way for so much smoke and mirrors. Ultimately it trickles down from experts all the way to the public, leading to misinterpretation.
Ever heard of the term "publish or die"? If on one end of the spectrum there's the arrogance of self teaching, on the other there's the zealotry of having blind faith in science/academia. But I don't want to be sensational and overblow it, so I'll stop here...
Bottom line, peer-review is not enough, I would suggest anyone to go an expensive step further, if they can afford to, and apply to study statistics (preferably not self taught!). It is a great and much needed tool to tell if the numbers in a given study add up or not. At the end of the day, science is an empirical discipline and as such statistics will take you beautifully far.
Statistical significance not having any practical utility is extremely common.
I would also add that the current higher education atmosphere seems very reluctant to acknowledge the limitations of empiricism, especially in fields where controlled experiments are impossible or difficult. Sometimes, an a priori approach or one based on experience and anecdote is best.
Which to even suggest such a thing is blasphemy to many.
There isn't much sense in dogmatically clinging to the "gold standard" RCT, when every trial you conduct is riddled with confounding variables that you cannot possibly ever control for.
@@Theviewerdude Well said, my opinion on the matter doesn't differ too much from yours. I find the situation disgusting because of how insidious and opaque the issues it's causing are. It is not something people at large are aware of.
Regardless, it's funny that simple and straightforward methods such as anecdotal evidence can trump and highlight how myopic and absurd things can get in studies. You made a good example of how something doesn't have to be scientific to be useful.
Unfortunately though, I don't think things will change, it's the status quo. Low quality studies will continue to be churned out as long as the fields in question have too many people and too little interest/funds, leading to a tendency to treat studies as tools to further one's career and add visibility to related institutions moreso than their original purpose. More onto the garbage pile, and more confusion for people seeking answers.
@@Laolunzuo my first foray into the world of science and truly understanding it was exercise science and nutrition, so I'm intimately aware with all of the things you mentioned in your original comment.
The more I learned in those fields, the more often I found that my own experience and my own reasoning based on what I could establish to be true was more reliable than any random study.
A very good example of the sort of misleading nonsense you find in the research are weight loss studies comparing low carb/no carb (keto) diets to any other sort of diet, controlled for calories. To explore the validity of the carb-insulin hypothesis and calorie balance equation.
In plenty of these studies, you'll find that the low carb / keto group loses more WEIGHT... but upon further examination, this is only over the duration of the short trial period of say a few weeks. When you control for things like protein intake and water retention, or you just have the trial last longer than a few weeks, turns out the difference between weight lost disappears. Meaning, short term, keto diets cause more weight loss in the short term due to loss of water, but not more fat loss, which is what people are actually concerned with.
And this is still only the sort of thing you can hope to find after extensive critical analysis of dozens of studies on the subject, looking at the ones that were actually designed well.
The vast majority of the research of that sort relies on participants to track and self report their own diets and results - which means it is unreliable garbage. Some of these studies don't even make it clear when that is the case, there may only be a sentence or two mentioning it deep within the methods, if there is any mention at all. I still don't understand how some studies get published without being crystal clear on the methods.
But as you say, we will never have strong evidence for what happens long term for anything. It is unethical and unfeasible to stick identical twins in a metabolic wards for a couple decades. While through very carefully controlled and well designed research we CAN figure out pretty well what does happen over a period of 8-12 weeks or so, it is difficult to impossible to tell after that.
For some things, we don't really need longer research periods, as what happens in the body over the course of that time period is unlikely to change over a longer period of time. A 12 week trial is more than enough time to observe how someone's metabolism can slow down as a result of aggressive dieting, so we can establish some strategies for how to avoid that happening over a longer period of time, in a real world scenario where someone may be dieting on and off over the course of two or more years.
For something like determining the risk of heart disease from a lifetime of a diet high in saturated fat, it's nearly impossible to tell.
For more advanced athletes and lifters, the most popular forms of organizing their training involve sophisticated, rotating cycles of training that span over the course of several seasons and even years. Simply referred to as periodization, or more generally as programming. Anyone who's ever trained at a more advanced level or trained others knows very well you can't just keep doing the same exact thing for months and keep expecting great results, you need to constantly adjust based on your body's needs, and sometimes you need to focus more on one thing more than another to reap the benefits of both - such as powerlifters sometimes training as bodybuilders.
There is virtually no possible way to test any of these long term periodization and programming methods in a clinical setting. Regardless of the issues with feasibility and ethics, there is so much individual variance between people that you'd have to conduct the research with an absurd amount of people to even begin recognizing trends.
By their very nature, we are primarily concerned with how these things play out in the longer term, after 3 months. You often can't even measure results in any shorter window of time, you really don't get a clear picture until 6 months or after.
In this field, you really have nothing to rely on BUT anecdote and your own reasoning. Through scientific research you can develop some axioms for how the body works and responds to training. From there you can use your reasoning to establish some methods worthy of trying out, but these are theories at best. Adjust based on your experience trying your own methods and listen to what other experienced people in the field do and have success with and over time you can blindly stumble your way through the dark.
I trained others for over 5 years and I tried to treat programming like a single person experiment and it never works. Even the most dedicated and consistent of my clients went off plan often enough to muddy the results. Had to work late, misses one workout, entire plan is changed for the week. Tweaks his knee, have to adjust plan on the fly. New job which means less sleep and more stress, can't compare any new results to anything I tested before. It was impossible to take a few training blocks of 6 weeks which were identical and only differing on a few variables. At best I could piece a few things together and sometimes just make wild guesses and see if it works.
Ultimately this is how humans figured out anything about everything before modern science. Even early medicine was this, essentially. The story of how early Italian doctors found how silver coins can patch holes in skulls is incredible, and later how drilling holes in them allows the bone to regrow over it. Pure deductive reasoning. It works, but it's slow and buggy. Many of the things old school bodybuilders from Arnold's era believed in are being found to be true. Even completely nonsensical shit like "fish thins the skin" might have some truth to them, due to chicken (the alternative they would eat) containing high amounts of linoleic acid, which seems to have some odd effects with fat retention.
But there's still some which is undoubtedly hearsay.
Ultimately a bunch of cavemen managed to figure out selective breeding at the end of the paleolithic era. Did they have peer reviewed journals back then?
To sum up, deeply understanding this field truly taught me that empiricism has some substantial limitations, in some cases. Once understanding that for one field, I began to see a similar thing in other fields. I also have a deep interest in economics and there is a compelling argument from the Austrian School for why empiricism is grossly overused in that field.
It all comes down to when you mix in more human behavior and genetic variance into the field, clinical research becomes less reliable as it is more difficult to control for. Exercise and nutrition relies heavily on human behavior and genetic variance. Economics, it is impossible to observe two identical countries, economies, universes differing on a single economic policy. The field of economics is the study of human behavior - how people trade resources. Psychology, same issues.
Chemistry? Physics? You can control for that pretty well. Putting rockets into space based on simulations proves that.
Yet our entire society and culture has thrown our whole weight behind this notion that empiricism can provide the answers for everything.
I'm not one to discount someone's competency in a field or their intellectual prowess based on their lack of "official" qualifications, but the woman who posted this video is. By her own standards, she's not in any position whatsoever to weigh in on this issue of the limitations of empiricism. Which makes the video quite ironic. Who is she to say otherwise, as an expert of only the language she teaches?
Like I said, I personally don't believe that reasoning. It's just odd to be making her argument when she is in no position of authority herself, by her own standards.
I think over the next few decades we are going to witness a bit of a revolution in this regard. The "old guard" of intellectual elitism will evolve. There will be less gatekeeping, less appeals to authority and more judgement of the validity of an idea or statement based on its merits. That will include things like less reliance on empiricism for all things, at it is primarily the higher education institutions which are perpetuating this.
@@Theviewerdude That was a fantastic reply! I have to count myself lucky because it's extremely rare to be able to exchange words like this on this platform. Thanks for sharing a bit about your background.
Since I have no qualifications in exercise physiology I really appreciated your view on it. I suspected it would be like this, but obviously lacked the clarity and experience to put it into words as clearly and articulately as you did. Agreed on things like water retention affecting weight. It's a flawed measure, we should look at effective body composition instead, except, it's not nearly as easy to measure so you really have to be observant and learn to know your body, just like you said.
Do you know of nitrogen isotope testing on human bone remains? Its findings alone can already tell quite a lot about human nutrition across hundreds of thousands of years. When something works for such a long span of time, as proven by the fact we are still here and as a dominant species to boot, it should be hard to dismiss and overlook, yet that's exactly what has happened.
You also mentioned no carb/low carb and calories, so maybe I can try to add my thoughts on that as well: another flaw often found in such studies is that their standards for what no carb and even low carb are, almost always prove unsatisfactory.
The people followed are found to still consume a considerable amount of carbs even in the so called "no carb" group, and on the other hand, to even have a low carb group, one must first be able to establish what exactly low carb is. The exact number or range should not be taken for granted. Even health organizations and so called experts vary quite significantly in their recommendations. Often what is regarded as low carb on such studies most definitely isn't, and is actually absurdly high, just ask any diabetic or pre-diabetic. It wouldn't be an overstatement to say this straight up invalidates the study from the get go.
And I can totally get behind your disbelief at how studies like these just get a pass, especially since very often the abstract, which should hold relatively little weight as a whole, already shows invalidating red flags left and right, before even getting into the empirical nitty gritty. If that's not shameful when there are practices such as peer-review in place, then I don't know what is.
And on the calorie side, I'm pretty sure you will agree it's an awkward measure because of thermodynamics. Living organisms are considered open systems. We freely exchange energy and matter with other things. A calorimeter used to measure calories is instead considered a closed system, as it only exchanges energy. It's therefore highly reductionist to talk about calories the way it is being done at large, and not just in terms of semantics. It just doesn't work for a person the way it does in a calorimeter, as an entire core component, the exchange of matter, is being completely taken out of the equation.
I really hope you are right on your final take though. It's hard to predict such things and expectations often lead to disappointment.
I will admit sometimes I find myself morbidly hoping for some catastrophe or crisis originating from the malpractice in these fields, because without a proper shake up, I find it hard to believe there will be any significant change. So fingers crossed it won't come down to that.
I don't think I have much to add to the interesting conversation but I would say there is a huge gap in between Humanities and Sciences which can solve the issue of people in higher education not willing to listen to each other. Questions of practical utility are multi-faceted, so it's both arrogant and partially stupid to think there is one way can solve every problem. Anecdote and priori approach is much more accepted in Humanities and I personally feel the both sides can learn from other.
Education have a tendency to fall short when tackling real life problems and that creates the "It's backed by Science!" sticker on almost everything, because for every shitty product there is a controlled experiment done by some underpaid research facility. Slowly but surely, "Science-based" have became more of a buzz word than something credible since so often research in controlled environment contradict each other.
It also have eliminated that empathy that we all experience. For example: "if this one research support that people who are different from us are "mentally ill" then surely it must be right, and I can be hateful and then claim science is on my side", no longer are morals considered because people justify their lack of empathy to be backed by science.
Forgive me for rambling lol
It seems that there is a polarisation in our society on people who trust the scientific expertise and those who don’t. It could lead us to a several conflicts in info space 😦. Thanks for a great video! 😉
Difference btw who is experts and who's not
Who's is to be taken seriously and who not
Textbook or internet or both
Reserch method matters
Fact checking, peer review
Read and dissect papers.and know diff btw good and mad
High quality workk
OMG! Alice! You’ve just articulated something I’ve had in mind for a very long time.
The internet is not really doing anyone a favour by making content creation so easy. We’ve started to value content creation now, more than the actual content itself. Things like the TH-cam algorithm isn’t helping the case either. Creators are forced to consistently upload when its completely impractical to deliver content this frequently. We need shift the definition of success in the content creation space from volume to quality.
Thanks a lot for this! More people seriously need to watch this.
So evaluate my video critically for absent quality.
wow for a video essay channel, you're on fire with the subs girl keep it up
Yeah, I'm a shitbag
Alice, your audience would love if you'd put time stamps in your videos
whoops, here they are !
I feel like she may not add time stamps because she can't easily split the video cleanly into separate topics as all of them are connected and the transition from one to another may not be so clear. But I personally would also like time stamps lol.
Why does it soud like you advocating for absoluto unregulation of behaviour and spreading of hate-speech using "free speech" as a moral shield.
Right now free speech Is a buzz-word to "attack whoever i want without any consequences" even when it ends up killing real people.
@@kiriki4558 Hate speech should not be regulated. I'm sorry but you either believe in autonomy of a individual to speak freely or not. Calling to action or inciting voilence is another thing i don't support but i don't believe any controversial ideas should be censored.
@@jefrreyjeffery2192 Hate speech is in itself a crime, what you're saying is nonsense lol.
First video I watched this February and I love it!
My Industry, graphic design, is one where you see so many people online saying "You don't need a degree! No one really cares about credentials if you have the skill!" ....and that's true. But in hiring designers we've always considered those without degrees and judged people on portfolio when deciding who to call in. We have not hired a single designer without an art degree. There have been none without that were even in serious consideration.
The degree itself doesn't grant any skills, but the experiences involved in earning that degree typically do. We might not necessarily have 'research methods' but we do have critique. You learn so much on presenting work constantly and discussing, and sometimes defend it like a thesis, with peers. Having that consistent set of peers that critique your work, and that you often perform that work around and sometimes collaborate with is invaluable. You get to know each other and each other's styles and methods to provide insight on a body of work rather than just a piece. You can also discover bias that could be present in critique, and identify what is taste vs what is inherent.
Seeking critique online I often see people either getting softball critiques that don't really challenge them, or getting torn into on really granular details that won't really give the artist direction for true growth.
I'm sure there are some who are so talented that they don't really need that level of critique, or are so incredibly self-aware they can do it themself, or they have experienced creatives in their life who are able to provide quality feedback... But I get the feeling that those cases are rare.
There are many examples of designers who have made it big without a degree and are extremely successful and well regarded... but they are the anomalies rather than the norm.
There are also a ton of people finding success in creative fields that don't really have the creative chops, but are masters on the business end of things... and for any self-employed creator, the business chops usually are more important than the creative edge.
But I see it over, and over again... an extremely consistent trend of designers without either the institutional or work experience just not being able to cut the mustard.
I also have seen PLENTY of designers who have gone through the training, and gotten the degree, and had some on the job experience who still can't make par. I've also seen designers hiding behind their experience and training as if it absolves them of their shortcomings, or that their excess of experience makes them more correct even if they have fallen way behind the state of the industry.
I guess my point is that self-taught success is valid, but formal education usually helps. Degrees don't matter, but experiences can. Education and experience don't make you, but they can help you improve yourself.
But it needs to be affordable or all if we need success to happen like that
Thanks for the video, Alice! I agree that university education often helps us to hone our research methods - but I also feel like peer review, in the way you are referring to it, can be a tricky thing to unequivocally rely on. I don't work in academia, but from what I know, it can be a biased and faulty process.
I mention it because there is often merit in studying non-peer-reviewed sources, too. The extent of it will, of course, depend on the field - but I did my masters on performance and gender and had to refer to public intellectuals and activists whose work is unaffiliated with universities or major publications for various reasons, including those institutions not being safe or welcoming spaces for everyone. I don't believe you need to wait until you're "an expert" to distinguish trustworthy sources - but learning how to check those is a crucial part of becoming one!
The real solution is to study the first principles of every field.
Learn the first principles well and thoroughly. Like the reason people think COVID-19 vaccines or other vaccines don't work is because almost always (in my experience) they don't understand even a FEW first principles of immunology. Like that vaccines aren't therapies they are "training" for your immune system, so there's no contradiction between "strengthen your immune system" and "get a vaccine" - it's like a fighter, a fighter trains his muscles but also learns technique and skill and not only CAN you do both, doing EITHER one without the other is to put yourself on a serious back foot.
College can help with this and _ideally it SHOULD_ - BUT only if you get a good Professor. I remember coming into my first year Engineering Physics I course because that was required and I did great but honestly the instructor was so terrible that I knew that if it hadn't been for all the self-learning (primarily Internet!!) I'd done on the topic before then, I'd likely have been royally confused. What's ridiculous is there are colleges like that out there that let such people teach such courses and/or that the system lets them. Literally I corrected this "instructor" when they repeated a common mistake about Newton's third law(*) to their whole class right in the classroom, and I remember how much murmuring came out of that class and ... I think I have about as much to say on this topic as the video author does because I have experience thoroughly with both the pitfalls and advantages of college/formal learning AND self-learning being also totally self- and home-taught prior to college, then going to colleges - two of them now.
The way I see it, college nor self-learning is not inherently better. But self-learning is also perhaps for not as many people, maybe only those with special talent; ironic when we consider that college is supposed to conventionally indicate you are "smart". But then colleges, they have a _responsibility_ to be truly good teachers, and it shouldn't be that you should have to go to Harvard, Yale, or MIT just to NOT have a _basic error_ like the one I mentioned "taught" to you. We seem to have a social class-formation where that the less advantaged are literally deceived by bad teaching because they get those colleges, and I would argue that's an absolutely unacceptable crime, whether it's a legal crime or not.
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(*) for those with physics savvy and/or interest: that the normal force on a book lying down on the table is the reaction force to the gravitational force from the Earth. This is wrong! The reaction force is the force _ON THE EARTH (incl. table) FROM THE BOOK._
You had me at "hi girl bosses" and I immediately subbed!!!!
Pity the Guardian only accepts credit card payments, in the Netherlands you have to earn at least 1150 euros per month to be elegible.
Well, they're free and donating is optional so that's something.
literally just a few seconds into the intro and I'm all inspired omg!
Thank you! I noticed average people are not quite familiar with science theory and particular with medical science theory as we see with the pandemic. The whole point is... it is a theory, an hypothesis. It can be proven or not, supported or not, nuanced, completed... And what you described as " a contradictory opinion" is a normal conversation between scientists. Science evolves with those conversations. Science needs time. Self taught person don't take this time (including myself haha), we want all the knowledge immediately in a 5 min video.😅
Je viens juste de découvrir ta chaîne. Je m'abonne !
Alice back at it again with the real questions!
i really liked the part when you were showing stuff on the projector, it felt like a lesson :)
Oh thanks ! I thought it would be a nice change of scenery ✨
@@AliceCappelle you're videos are so interesting, you must be a great teacher
"Respectable media outlets have built very robust fact checking systems"
Bahahahaha. Is that a joke? The list of retractions those outlets have had to make in the last 2 years could fill an entire wall...
Cool video. Far to often folks really connect person made a lot of money in 1 area so sure they can transfer that success in a completely different & opposite o their original success.
One of my best skill I learned in high school was how to research info. Seek out direct sources, was the study peer reviewed etc.
My art teacher use to stress learning & mastering the basics/rules of things. Only then when you know all the rules you can effectively break them to suit the needed at hand.
There is a very nuanced, and dare I say hidden, issue with solely trusting scientific research published by "superstar" experts.
Let me explain, sometimes figures in the scientific community can show remarkable expertise in their field, exceptional track record and has built some sort of prestigious label in their name, so much so that even other experts in the same field are often biased towards this "superstar expert" and become less critical of their works.
A well-known example is the case of Paolo Macchiarini. Who was allowed to perform untested surgical procedures on human patients by the institution he worked in because he's a prestigious surgeon?
And I have found that this problem is a lot more common than what everyone might expect. In my short journey making science videos on YT, I have encountered a superstar expert-induced bias myself. Trusting renowned experts and scientific institutions is a good rule of thumb, but we must also remain wary of such biases. Anyways, excellent video Alice!
Fascinating video, thanks for sharing!
It feels to me that even if one were to completely disregard knowledge from University courses and above, the interactions with professors, experts brought to class from time to time, the structure of assignments and the experience your peers bring to class enriches critical thinking. While not unique to that experience, seems to me to help us develop it further and with a wider perspective. It may have nothing to do with the institution itself, and more that we have centralized the methodology of nurturing this kind of growth into academics, I don’t know. It is certainly an unteresting topic!
I was worried for a second when the video started. I thought you had gone over to the dark side.
😂😂
I can honestly say that this is one of the best videos that you ever published here. Great job!
Hi Alice, great video! This is a topic I've had mixed thoughts about for a long time. I've seen the damage that misinformation can do to society and the problems caused by a lack of critical thinking. But I also don't think the reliance on universities and established institutions is healthy.
I am informed by my personal experience. I come from India, and the craze here is for Engineering or Medicine. There is a very high bar of entry for premier institutions and a low bar of entry for the remaining ones. I have seen a very unhealthy trend here, namely the emphasis of rote learning and clearing exams with no critical thinking by a large percentage of the population - Political awareness is quite low. Even though I graduated from a premier institution, I was disillusioned because the job I got after graduating did not utilise even 2% of what I learned in college! I feel that post-college, students are either disillusioned by the lack of meaningful connection to what they dedicated years of their life to, or they get into a delusional mode of thinking that anything can be learned on the internet in a short span of time thanks to "thinkfluencers." I am acquainted with both kinds of thinking.
The final problem is (although it's probably exaggerated quite a bit) that universities/colleges don't encourage risk-taking. There is a gamut of "acceptable" ideas for study and a bias towards theory instead of practice which is quite unhealthy. Students are not encouraged to pursue unconventional lines of thought in many cases (I'm not speaking based on Ted talks here). Figures like Musk or Gates or Bezos are fascinating to youngsters because they seem to have "rebelled against institutions and found their own path." The reality, that they were funded by their parents to a great extent, and were set up to succeed in many ways does not surface as much. But the very fact that people who "do" are more venerated than people who "prove what they are saying is right" says something about the system. This desire for risk-taking has to be channelized in some way without giving rise to celebrity worship or delusion.
What do you think?
I'm glad I stumbled upon this channel I don't agree with everything with what she says.
But she's awesome. I am sure she understands that everyone has different mindset
What a great video! I love the final point you made about democratizing the scientific method! This should encompass everything, from paywalls on academic publications, high tuition fees and student debt, to the use of excessive jargon and inaccessible language. Because at the moment universities’ accessibility mostly perpetuates inequalities 😞
u the best 💗 thanks for making us think and reflect about the topics u talk about
I think I absolutely needed this video at this point of my life.
The most relevant issue that I've heard and concur with is when scientists/researchers fail to distinguish the difference between philosophical ideas and/or lab results (which are controlled) and the impact and reality of the largely uncontrolled and chaotic way life plays out. This seems most evident in economics.
I really like the classroom scene, thus making a deeper visual meta comment of making us experts! :D
Wow, you're sponsored by The Guardian! That's really amazing!
Omg bless you for making this point!
I like how thought-provoking your videos are. Great stuff!
Internet expertise when done in the right way, i guess it could work well with non stem fields. - which is the approach most of these anti college discourse aims for, as I see it at least, bc how you gon learn to be a nurse via TH-cam? Or electrical engineering or medicine…
What we need is broaden access to higher education because it is still the safest way of starting a career (I don’t understand the loan debt that americans often refer to bc my university is state funded) so yeah I guess this is more nuanced than we think it really is.
It’s always nice to listen to you Alice 💌💌💌 merci
i used to love the guardian!!!! I was glad when a wonderful writer from them sprouted into his own by creating the Intercept. Two great sources.
The principle of listening to experts worked quite well in the past when they were filtered by traditional media and gated through formal institutions - universities, companies, civil organizations, etc. In the age of social media, the nature of expertise has changed as the digital space isn't mediated by traditional institutions but instead as a principle is open to all.
Therefore experts can and must establish themselves within the digital space. An expert in the digital space is measured not primarily by professional reputation nor accolades but instead by how effectively an expert communicates their expertise with laypersons (and to a lesser extent other experts). These qualities are those favored by the algorithm. Algorithms can not yet and foreseeably will not be able to rank based on truth.
While this new expertise can be a source of innovation in many new fields especially the creative and technological, but at the same time the encroachment of experts in the digital space onto certain fields brings great dangers (the medical field especially).
I can't see any other solution to this problem other than the so-called "old" or pre-digital experts must adopt better and more diverse communication strategies in the digital space. Society hopefully will get smarter and we'll reach a new equilibrium where we can have more trust in experts establshed in the digital space.
Great video analysis!
Susan Jacoby is a great voice on this topic! Aswell, Richard Hofstadter.
There are encyclopedias online. Most college students I've talked to pirate their textbooks. Besides the college system doesn't have a monopoly on skepticism or the scientific method. Not all great thinkers attended college or completed it. For example: Galileo, Pascal, George Green, Charles Dickens, Oliver Heaviside, etc. Colleges around the world continue to benefit from their knowledge and work.
Quote of the Day: I am strong, I am powerful and I’m despicable.”
(P.S. You’re a good actress 😂)
sorry this is slightly off-topic but i think it's so interesting how each country has a different version of shark tank or dragons den and the animals are all slightly different! it's lions cave/den in germany and money tigers in japan i'm pretty sure
I am a physicist and I cannot emphasize enough how many people think they "understand" quantum physics because they read a book about the law of attraction or whatever lol
I’ve read a huge ton of books and have been amazed about physics ever since I was little. I’d say Physics gives you a thinking framework to those books. Never read ‘The Secret’ the main law of attraction book I think but I’d say it would probably help someone out there who knows.
And in the physics world, no one thinks they understand quantum physics…