Science Communications on YouTube

It's similar to the benefits of attending lectures (or watching them on yt): there are more informal asides and intuition-pumps, and maybe more detailed explanations of intermediate steps in calculations than you usually get in books.

And for videos specifically, it can obviously help understanding in many cases to have animated visualizations

I find videos are a convenient way to get an overview of something I'm interested in, yet not so deeply invested in that I want to learn it in depth. In other words, I can do the chores and learn a bit more about the world in the process. In that respect, I would say that reading is much less efficient.

If it is something I am interested in learning in depth, then I would agree that books are usually more efficient.

Well, with a caveat.

Some people appear to record themselves as they pursue their hobbies, then post it to YouTube. (Sometime's it's organic. Sometimes it's partially planned out.) In those cases it is a bit like a very one-sided mentorship. The host will either realize they're doing something that they would never write about, whether it is in a script or a blog or a book, then discuss it. Other times they don't make note of what they're doing, for the same reason they wouldn't write about it, but you see it because they are doing it. Written communication can be lossy.

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.”

-Confucius [1]

For certain concepts such as Linear Algebra, for instance books allow me to "do" and understand. Which is why I read more than I watch videos.

1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2826962/

3blue1brown has great math visualizations. I find the top 10% of YouTube videos are worth the time over reading, and the bottom 90% are comparable or slower. Those are also nice though because you can put them on while doing other stuff, like eating or doing the laundry.

It's not science communication, but I don't know where to find anything quite like Perun's content in written form. It's military/economics issues, often pretty granular, at just the right level of detail for an interested layman.

I can watch/listen to videos while doing many other menial tasks pretty effectively (laundry, cleaning, washing, etc).

Also, some of the videos are pretty dang entertaining.

Who has time for reading? Audio content at least allows you to absorb information while your hands and eyes can be busy with other things: cleaning, driving, etc.

Besides, teaching videos and also books often share a common weakness: low information density. Youtubers and Authors both like to talk so damn much without saying anything. Give me a good story or documentation catalogue any day, but stop mixing the two.

I'm a much more auditory/visual learner, so these videos work really great for me. I'm glad that reading works for you!

I want to hijack this comment to plug AlphaPhoenix (https://youtube.com/@alphaphoenixchannel), who is responsible for by far the best explanations of electricity that I've encountered in any format. For instance, this one that clarifies what happens when you try to send electricity on an open circuit, and (IIRC this is the right one) what impedance mismatch is actually about: https://youtu.be/2AXv49dDQJw

ScienceClic has extremely good animations. And it's run by some guy in his early 20s. He knows the physics, he can create these amazing animations and he comes up with genuinely novel metaphors and perspectives.

PBS also did a recent live stream on the topic of science communication with some notable YouTubers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPKxk3s-8Yc

Link for the lazy: https://www.youtube.com/c/pbsspacetime

> Richard Behiel

Behiel is to 3Blue1Brown as a popular children's cartoon is to its late sequel series that aged up with its audience.

Excellent work.

I especially like his more recent trend of going line by line through famous papers. EPR and Bell's Inequality to date.

She's very hit or miss in her quality IMO. Also, she's explicitly disclaimed the title of "science communicator", so she might not want to be on this list anyway. :)

I kind of wish they hadn't included Veritasium either. He seems to have gone downhill.

An who can forget Lord Nice!

I was an avid viewer until he stepped in my area of expertise and leveraged technicalities, half-truths, and misrepresentation to really juice up the click-baityness and "wow!" factor.

My interest in his videos plunged after that, and it seemed like he was re-alinging for consistent high views over straight hard factual education. Frankly I wish I could purge him from my feed at this point (youtube still recommends all his videos incessantly, despite me not watching one for at least a year now. On paper I am the ideal viewer though, so...)