Who has time for videos? I know lots watch them, but wow - reading is so much more efficient. I can skip ahead - and skim - or revisit; I can annotate; I can save, transcribe (copy/paste), I read so much faster than even accelerated video can play .... and all so much more easily.<p>By sticking to reading, am I missing out on content?<p>Edit: Not a criticism of watching video, I'm wondering if I'm missing substantial things. If I didn't read, for example, I'd miss a lot that doesn't exist in video or audio. Same thing with podcasts.
It's similar to the benefits of attending lectures (or watching them on yt): there are more informal asides and intuition-pumps, and maybe more detailed explanations of intermediate steps in calculations than you usually get in books.<p>And for videos specifically, it can obviously help understanding in many cases to have animated visualizations
A good point. Personally, I've never liked attending lectures except for the chance to ask questions. If I must 'attend', I prefer afterward at 2x.
Lectures have the added benefit of not relying on video, though. You can consume them when doing chores, driving, etc.
Yes, maybe, but for many maths or physics lectures you might have to imagine what's going on as you're listening to the squeaking of chalk on the blackboard:)
For serious lectures (not story telling like history or other humanities) you can't be doing anything on the side if you want to understand. Try listening to a math lecture, or chemistry lecture while doing dishes :)<p>I found the same to be true with audiobooks, nothing serious can't be "just listened to". I've tried to "listen" to a good biology non-fiction on how live evolved from the primordial soup. Shit, in the first chapters there were covalency chemistry and other stuff that I needed to sit down and write to understand.<p>Too stupid to do it while doing chores I guess...
I agree about serious lectures, but ...<p>> not story telling like history or other humanities<p>Those are not serious humanities lectures. The serious ones are not storytelling, but serious examination of the evidence or of its analysis. There are far more factors, complexity, and uncertainty in an historical event or process than in a petri dish, and the event can't even be reproduced. It's impossible to use the same kind of scientific method and obtain the same kind of certainty, and requires far more critical thinking, judgment, and analysis.<p>What caused Andrew Jackson to be elected? There's a relatively simple story told, but the reality is enormously complex and uncertain.
Referring to "math" as serious just makes me want to discount your opinion entirely. Lectures (or indeed any linear encoding) are a bad medium for discussing formal languages. This has nothing to do with how much you care about a topic or whatever "serious" is supposed to imply here.<p>Regardless, listening to something intently and doing mechanical actions are not exclusive.
Well try to listen to a group theory lecture (for example on cohomology of groups) while doing chores :) But the lecture was indeed useful if you stop and rewind and see how the lecturer was explaining (there were some interesting graphs).<p>Your brain can't hold the context long enough to go to the required level of abstraction, while you're multitasking (may be walking or something deeply automated doesn't count.
I would say the main reason it's hard to follow abstract maths lectures by listening is not the difficulty of the concepts per se, but simply because it's so visual: it relies on notation and diagrams<p>But mathematicians can talk to each other about arbitrarily abstract concepts, as long as they have enough shared background, and they don't (always) need a blackboard to do it.<p>Conversely, you can have conceptually very simple things that are basically impossible to follow just by listening, like multiplying two nine-digit numbers or following one of Euclid's proofs in plane geometry. The difficulty isn't about abstraction, but how many things you have to hold in working memory
> listening to something intently and doing mechanical actions are not exclusive<p>If it's 'serious' and worthwhile, I often don't even have the bandwidth to keep up with the lecture or book. Why spend my time on anything less?
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.<p>If it is something I am interested in learning in depth, then I would agree that books are usually more efficient.<p>Well, with a caveat.<p>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.”<p>-Confucius [1]<p>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.<p>1. <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2826962/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2826962/</a>
3blue1brown has great math visualizations. I find the top 10% of YouTube videos are worth the time over reading, and the bottom 90% are comparable or slower. Those are also nice though because you can put them on while doing other stuff, like eating or doing the laundry.
I'm a much more auditory/visual learner, so these videos work really great for me.
I'm glad that reading works for you!
I'm not criticizing, sorry; just trying to understand.<p>I find video more compelling, generally. Obviously video has more ways to communicate - graphically, empirically, etc. It's not that reading works more effectively, but far more efficiently.
It's not science communication, but I don't know where to find anything quite like Perun's content in written form. It's military/economics issues, often pretty granular, at just the right level of detail for an interested layman.
I can watch/listen to videos while doing many other menial tasks pretty effectively (laundry, cleaning, washing, etc).<p>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.<p>Besides, teaching videos and also books often share a common weakness: low information density. Youtubers and Authors both like to talk so damn much without saying anything. Give me a good story or documentation catalogue any day, but stop mixing the two.
> teaching videos and also books often share a common weakness: low information density<p>Here we agree, but for books I don't need to read the low-density material. Review articles, for example, are fantastic. Scholarly books can be overwhelming due to density x size.<p>> Audio content at least allows you to absorb information while your hands and eyes can be busy with other things: cleaning, driving, etc.<p>Not with high-density content, IME.
Let me turn your question around, what are the benefits of communicating science via video such that it's a very popular medium that people use to learn about science?
I think video is much more compelling to people in many ways (similar to TV vs reading a book), including to me. Part of that is seeing a person talking to you with all the cues of expression, voice, etc. There's a lower cognitive threshhold for engaging.<p>Video also has communication modes that text/print lacks: dynamic graphics and empirical video (showing the thing itself happening), audio, speech and expression (as described above).<p>With all that, I find it quite frustrating to see it consume so much time that could be spent reading and processing several things. How do others on HN - intellectually curious and serious, often busy - reconcile that?<p>Though my question is really, am I missing things by not watching video - things I won't realistically get through print? I mean high-quality things - I want the equivelant of a paper, review paper, or book by a professional in the field.
They are good summaries. They’ve essentially replaced low- to mid- depth magaize articles, and some of the high depending on the topic