I'm not sure how much I trust all these Kurzgesagt hit pieces coming out lately. Kurzgesagt has been very transparent about their funding and how they source any claims made in their videos. 65%...
I'm not sure how much I trust all these Kurzgesagt hit pieces coming out lately. Kurzgesagt has been very transparent about their funding and how they source any claims made in their videos. 65% of their income comes from viewers via merch sales and crowdfunding. Commercial sponsorships and grants account for 24%, and their sponsorship contracts explicitly forbid editorial influence.
Happening to draw similar conclusions to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation on topics like climate change is not evidence of nefarious behavior. I'm going to need to see evidence that they are deliberately misleading viewers with false information.
This one is much less a hit piece than some of the others; I think that the The Hated One video really soured the potential viewership for videos like this and that a 50-minute video to talk about...
This one is much less a hit piece than some of the others; I think that the The Hated One video really soured the potential viewership for videos like this and that a 50-minute video to talk about the issue is an incredible amount of overkill, but they do sum up some issues that I think are pretty valid. If I was to condense the video into points:
it is stated on multiple occasions that it is okay to enjoy Kurzgesagt
the main issues with Kurzgesagt is when they state specific and debatable opinions as facts
the most notable example is citing "green growth" as a way to deal with climate change
the author thinks that various funding is why Kurzgesagt makes these claims, and calls into question their integrity
I'd like to suggest that it's entirely believable that the Kurzgesagt channel just believes in what they're saying, and that they aren't producing billionaire propaganda. People should probably listen to experts over people who draw cartoons on the internet to reduce intensely complex problems that require multiple years and degrees to understand into bite-size ad-supported bits of fun, and should only rely on Kurzgesagt specifically - and educational YouTube in general - to give them an incredibly superficial understanding of ideas. Green Growth is an interesting topic, and there are people on all sides making claims about it, but I think that it is certainly not required that one be bought and paid for by billionaires to support it, which I think is the main problem with this series of videos.
This very video addresses most of what you talk about here, including funding sources, editorial influence, their agreement with the Gates, and whether or not they spread false information. I...
This very video addresses most of what you talk about here, including funding sources, editorial influence, their agreement with the Gates, and whether or not they spread false information.
I don't know if or how much of the video you saw, but if you haven't already, I urge you to watch the full thing. It's careful, thorough, and persuasive. If you're one of the ones who disliked TheHatedOne's video on Kurzgesagt due to it's dramatic presentation, I can very much assure you this one has none of those issues at all, and is far more measured in tone.
They made already a big error in the first few minutes of the video, as it implied the grant was fully received and used to fund the company in 2015, despite the foundation's page clearly...
They made already a big error in the first few minutes of the video, as it implied the grant was fully received and used to fund the company in 2015, despite the foundation's page clearly indicating a period of 49 months.
Let's break down what they should have done:
2015-11-25, Kurzgesagt receives a grant of 320,000 for the purpose of "GLOBAL HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT PUBLIC AWARENESS AND ANALYSIS", a planned duration of 49 months and a total amount of 570,000
2016-06-28, report update by Kurzgesagt, Amount expended 0
2017, the total amount 570,000 was granted, "INFORM AND
ENGAGE COMMUNITIES" was added to the purpose of the grant
This is fair. Still, I think it's worth noting that an organization committing $320,000 to yours – even if just in the future – enables you to do things you otherwise couldn't, knowing that your...
This is fair. Still, I think it's worth noting that an organization committing $320,000 to yours – even if just in the future – enables you to do things you otherwise couldn't, knowing that your financial future is brighter than it was prior. Not as impactful, obviously, but not worth ignoring either.
Of course, it's important to point out here too that the early funding from Gates wasn't the main point of this video, and they even mentioned during it that the initial draft of their script left it out entirely. With that in mind, I don't think this is a major flaw with their video as a whole. Sure, they have issues with Kurz's funding, but this specific instance was not the pillar holding that criticism up.
The money is of course helpful for their channel growth but it is kinda missing the point of why they even clarified it in the first place. Their channel focuses a lot on transparency and biases...
The money is of course helpful for their channel growth but it is kinda missing the point of why they even clarified it in the first place. Their channel focuses a lot on transparency and biases which are in turn affected by their income sources. The "3%" figure is there to show how they aren't dependent on the foundation and therefore don't have a direct incentive to change their content against their own preferences.
It's indeed not the main point of the video but it's a significant part of it, as they refer back to it multiple times throughout the video and mention it again at the end of the video, where I have also a big gripe with them and in extent kinda the whole video.
At 49:50 they mention how "Kurzgesagt is purposefully omitting the timing of the funding which in turn allowed them to grow this much". A few issues with that:
The exact timing of their funding isn't important for the point they are trying to make, but still, they do mention in the video that their income sources were varying over time.
They show which videos were funded by the foundation, as they also always do at the end of each video. Curious people can themselves figure out which videos were sponsored. It's in plain sight.
"allowed them to grow this much" Where do they have this insight from? Their financials aren't public to that extent, so how did they reach this conclusion?
Which leads to my main gripe with the video. They mention how their first Kurzgesagt critic reached millions of clicks which is a significant milestone for them. It seems to me that they smelled blood and now created another one with the hefty bias of needing to find something wrong about the channel to generate the same viral response. The previously mentioned mistakes or oversights are, it seems, a result of it.
You see people calling this a hit piece because it simply looks like it. Why did they have to focus on Kurzgesagt? The people behind it seem to be honest about their intentions and are an exemplary transparent channel. Why do you need to pull them into this discussion which covers much bigger topics than them; the overproportional influence of rich people on the public opinion, their desire to uphold the class hierarchy, the flaws of science, lying by omission? They could have created the same video without mentioning them and it would have overall been more concise.
Also, what is about them having to repeatedly mention the phrase "trust science"? A main point of science is to not trust anything. This is the reason for the channels focus on transparency; all the sources are provided so people don't have to trust them. They constantly try to show people differing opinions on contentious topics. Do people see the simple act of providing a source as an excuse to not check for themselves? Yes, but what is a better alternative?
It seems to me that while your problems with the video's funding criticisms are not unfounded, you've forgotten the rest of the video's value in the process. In particular, one of the biggest...
It seems to me that while your problems with the video's funding criticisms are not unfounded, you've forgotten the rest of the video's value in the process. In particular, one of the biggest things this video tries to point out is that being transparent does not mean you aren't propagating problematic ideas. You can do harm without lying or intent, after all.
The video mentions twice, for example, that Kurzgesagt doesn't need to have their opinions bought; after all, Kurz already agrees with the ideas encouraged by their funding sources. Sure, they "don't have a direct incentive to change their content against their own preferences," but it doesn't matter — The B&MG Foundation supports them likely due to the fact that Kurzgesagt already believes in the ideas they want spread. This video was made to point that out, and the fact that these ideas have many issues.
It's possible to discuss this without dragging Kurzgesagt into it, yes. Such a video would likely have been less controversial to those who saw it. But Kurzgesagt is still a channel with roughly 20 million subscribers, and that's a huge platform to have going around spreading ideology you see as harmful, so I don't exactly have trouble understanding why T3 would want to address it. You may see it as smelling blood, but I see it as an opportune moment to discuss a prevalent world issue with ample well-known context to use as a point of reference.
With that out of the way, some more nitpicky things:
They show which videos were funded by the foundation, as they also always do at the end of each video. Curious people can themselves figure out which videos were sponsored. It's in plain sight.
T3 explicitly says they only have problems with "about a dozen" of Kurzgesagt's videos. They're well aware of this, and make such clear in the introduction. Additionally, some of the recent videos regarding Kurzgesagt (in particular, TheHatedOne's video) have criticized this separately as being insufficiently done, as they feel that these sponsorship disclosures should be happening at the beginnings of videos instead of at the end like they currently are. Many viewers will stop watching the video as soon as they realize it's over, and thus miss any disclosures that happen after.
"allowed them to grow this much" Where do they have this insight from? Their financials aren't public to that extent, so how did they reach this conclusion?
Inference from context? They're not proving it as true, but it's a reasonable deduction to make absent the tax info you posted earlier. They were wrong, but I don't blame them for not thinking to investigate tax returns for a tangential point they didn't even originally plan to include at all.
[...] A main point of science is to not trust anything.
I don't think that most laypeople's idea of science is to "not trust anything." They tend to think of it, insofar as I'm aware, more along the lines of "carefully finding out what's true." You're generally correct, but this is subjective, and so I don't really think it's a useful point; T3 isn't speaking with regard to the technical definition of science, after all.
They constantly try to show people differing opinions on contentious topics.
This is something on which I think T3 would especially disagree with you, as a chunk of their video describes how they're disappointed with the presentation of the concept of degrowth, and how little time is spent on ideas like it when compared with ideas that Kurzgesagt supports.
This is another great video by Think That Through on the problems with Kurzgesagt's politics and associated philosophy. As usual for them, it tends towards the long end of the scale at about 50 or...
This is another great video by Think That Through on the problems with Kurzgesagt's politics and associated philosophy. As usual for them, it tends towards the long end of the scale at about 50 or so minutes; a summary is available at the 48:54 timestamp if you don't have the time or energy to sit through the whole thing, thankfully.
Of note, this isn't the first video they've done on Kurzgesagt — they initially did another one regarding their climate change videos, which was also posted to Tildes here.
Christ. I neither want to, nor do I have the energy to write another incredibly long response to a post like this. Thankfully, my existing one already addresses most of the points the post you...
Christ.
I neither want to, nor do I have the energy to write another incredibly long response to a post like this. Thankfully, my existing one already addresses most of the points the post you linked brings up, as it was responding to that person's initial complaints.
But even still, hit job? Really? To me, this video was very thorough and well-said, and I find that description of it frankly insulting. It leaves me wondering if you've even watched the summary I linked.
If this is the kind of response I can expect, then I guess I need to stop posting about Kurzgesagt in the future.
If you step back, it’s difficult not to see this stuff as a hit job yeah. Popular YouTuber made a collab with someone controversial, thus attracted further controversy. Once that bell has rung,...
If you step back, it’s difficult not to see this stuff as a hit job yeah.
Popular YouTuber made a collab with someone controversial, thus attracted further controversy. Once that bell has rung, there’s no going back, if you’re popular enough you’re always always always going to have people digging for whatever thing is off, even if they’re chasing ghosts.
This is why I’m personally overwhelmingly uninterested in this controversy. I have a limited amount of time in my life (80.000 hours if you believe some sponsors), why the hell should I waste some of that precious time on this particular drama, in videos that come in chunks of 1+ hour? Instead of watching this, or this, or this, all three of them which have been sitting in my watchlist for years?
And by the way, I give the same treatment to most other controversies that concern the authors of high quality content (within reason). But this idea that there could be pennies out of place in a company of 100+ employees that produces overwhelmingly transparent and high quality content is not something I’m going to waste my focus on, and I imagine a lot of people on tildes feel the same way.
It's perfectly fine not to want to invest hours of your time watching videos that criticize a creator you love. I watched this video because I found it interesting, and that made it easy for me....
It's perfectly fine not to want to invest hours of your time watching videos that criticize a creator you love. I watched this video because I found it interesting, and that made it easy for me. If it's work to you, I can't blame you in the least for not wanting to view it.
The problem I have is with using this as a reason to describe these videos as "hit jobs." Not wanting to spend a large amount of time watching them is fine; passing harsh judgement on them like such despite this is not. These videos had a huge quantity of effort invested into them and – at least to me – make very high-quality arguments, so describing them sight-unseen as a hit job is incredibly disrespectful and unfounded.
The appropriate response in these situations is to leave them alone, as you yourself seem to do. Don't watch, don't pass judgement. Continue as you were. We all have limited energy to spend on things, and not every discussion can be afforded by everyone. Think That Through included a disclaimer along similar lines in their introduction:
And before we begin, a disclaimer: Yes, it's okay to enjoy Kurzgesagt. They have 174 videos, out of which we only have problems with perhaps a dozen. In almost all cases they stick to natural sciences, and they are good at what they do. It's only when they stray into politics that things get... hairy. And this is our major concern, with funding being secondary.
(Incidentally, I want to emphasize the fact they mention "funding being secondary" — T3 is not worried about there being "pennies out of place," they're worried about bad politics, bad philosophy, and dishonest presentation.)
First I've heard of any of this. For my part, seeing their opening thesis was actually more helpful than the tl;dr conclusion you linked. I'm still a long way from forming an actual opinion on it,...
First I've heard of any of this.
For my part, seeing their opening thesis was actually more helpful than the tl;dr conclusion you linked.
I'm still a long way from forming an actual opinion on it, but first impressions are feeling a bit "tempest in a teapot"-ish.
I’m firmly resolved to never watch any political videos so I’m not sure I should care about this? But it looks like Wikipedia has a decent article if you don’t even know who or what Kurzgesagt is.
I’m firmly resolved to never watch any political videos so I’m not sure I should care about this? But it looks like Wikipedia has a decent article if you don’t even know who or what Kurzgesagt is.
Politics isn't the same thing as tension. Kurzgesagt has done many videos involving politics in the past; they remain political regardless of the criticism they did or did not draw. The author of...
Politics isn't the same thing as tension. Kurzgesagt has done many videos involving politics in the past; they remain political regardless of the criticism they did or did not draw.
The author of this video even says as much that they have no issue whatsoever with Kurzgesagt's science-focused videos1 — it's just the political ones they have problems with.
1. To be clear, when I say this, I'm talking about things like their videos on ants, or black holes, etc.
They are educational videos meant to help lay people understand scientific topics like how the immune system works. They've done videos on vaccines and climate science which has made them a target...
They are educational videos meant to help lay people understand scientific topics like how the immune system works.
They've done videos on vaccines and climate science which has made them a target for right wing crazy people who view science as some kind of liberal conspiracy designed to make kids not believe in Jesus or turn them into communists.
Important to note here that the criticism leveled at Kurz that's posted here is not from a right-wing perspective at all, but from a left-wing one instead. Neither TheHatedOne nor Think That...
Important to note here that the criticism leveled at Kurz that's posted here is not from a right-wing perspective at all, but from a left-wing one instead. Neither TheHatedOne nor Think That Through consist of any anti-vaxxers or climate deniers. cc @skybrian
I think you misinterpreted me here. I didn't mean to imply necessarily that the criticism being left-wing made it automatically better, but rather trying to clarify, as the post I was replying to...
I think you misinterpreted me here. I didn't mean to imply necessarily that the criticism being left-wing made it automatically better, but rather trying to clarify, as the post I was replying to (likely unintentionally) carried an implication that the criticizers here were "right wing crazy people."
I used to consume their content when I stumbled upon their video one way or another. They're great at presenting the gist of a complex yet verifiable or falsifiable topic in a digestible manner....
I used to consume their content when I stumbled upon their video one way or another. They're great at presenting the gist of a complex yet verifiable or falsifiable topic in a digestible manner.
Last year, they put out a video on climate change, which I found to be unsatisfactory and have been keeping distance since then. (I won't get into the specifics here.)
I think, when they try to cover a topic that's multifaceted and multiperspectival, like our outlook of the future, sticking to a digestible format limits them to a small subset of the possible viewpoints, intended or not. And putting forth one's views on what will be as a consequence of our actions can easily be interpreted as what we ought to do, which is pretty much political, intended or not.
I prefer longer and longer YouTube videos these days anyway (within reason), so that alone is reason enough for me to skip their videos, which are generally around 10-20 minutes.
You can do a lot with a little time, if you trust your audience to keep up. One of my favorite YouTube channels is PBS Space Time, which has some of the densest and most technical popular science...
I prefer longer and longer YouTube videos these days anyway (within reason), so that alone is reason enough for me to skip their videos, which are generally around 10-20 minutes.
You can do a lot with a little time, if you trust your audience to keep up. One of my favorite YouTube channels is PBS Space Time, which has some of the densest and most technical popular science content on the platform (they actually work through equations sometimes, gasp!). Their runtime is also around 15 minutes on average. But they frequently have callbacks to previous episodes. Kurzgesagt seems to aim at "this is everything you need to know in 10 minutes, zero background necessary" which is quite different (and nearly impossible).
I love PBS, but I like both channels. I believe Kurzgesagt helps a lot with building intuition about a system. Intuition is super important because it stays with you and settles; you don’t need to...
Kurzgesagt seems to aim at "this is everything you need to know in 10 minutes, zero background necessary" which is quite different (and nearly impossible).
I love PBS, but I like both channels. I believe Kurzgesagt helps a lot with building intuition about a system. Intuition is super important because it stays with you and settles; you don’t need to grok the concept yet. As you rethink of the world with that intuition in mind, you will later be able to more easily understand more in-depth material.
And what makes this even more important: Kurzgesagt‘s animation and video style also makes this content very suitable for children. If you can teach kids to build an intuition about how certain non-intuitive systems work, you ready them for much more approachable, “hard” content they will encounter later in their education.
I'm not sure how much I trust all these Kurzgesagt hit pieces coming out lately. Kurzgesagt has been very transparent about their funding and how they source any claims made in their videos. 65% of their income comes from viewers via merch sales and crowdfunding. Commercial sponsorships and grants account for 24%, and their sponsorship contracts explicitly forbid editorial influence.
Happening to draw similar conclusions to the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation on topics like climate change is not evidence of nefarious behavior. I'm going to need to see evidence that they are deliberately misleading viewers with false information.
This one is much less a hit piece than some of the others; I think that the The Hated One video really soured the potential viewership for videos like this and that a 50-minute video to talk about the issue is an incredible amount of overkill, but they do sum up some issues that I think are pretty valid. If I was to condense the video into points:
I'd like to suggest that it's entirely believable that the Kurzgesagt channel just believes in what they're saying, and that they aren't producing billionaire propaganda. People should probably listen to experts over people who draw cartoons on the internet to reduce intensely complex problems that require multiple years and degrees to understand into bite-size ad-supported bits of fun, and should only rely on Kurzgesagt specifically - and educational YouTube in general - to give them an incredibly superficial understanding of ideas. Green Growth is an interesting topic, and there are people on all sides making claims about it, but I think that it is certainly not required that one be bought and paid for by billionaires to support it, which I think is the main problem with this series of videos.
Reminds me of the last time a similar video was posted here and this brilliant breakdown of it.
This very video addresses most of what you talk about here, including funding sources, editorial influence, their agreement with the Gates, and whether or not they spread false information.
I don't know if or how much of the video you saw, but if you haven't already, I urge you to watch the full thing. It's careful, thorough, and persuasive. If you're one of the ones who disliked TheHatedOne's video on Kurzgesagt due to it's dramatic presentation, I can very much assure you this one has none of those issues at all, and is far more measured in tone.
They made already a big error in the first few minutes of the video, as it implied the grant was fully received and used to fund the company in 2015, despite the foundation's page clearly indicating a period of 49 months.
Let's break down what they should have done:
ENGAGE COMMUNITIES" was added to the purpose of the grant
No change as of the 2021 tax return statement.
Source:
2015 tax returns
2016 tax returns
2017 tax returns
2018 tax returns
2019 tax returns
This is fair. Still, I think it's worth noting that an organization committing $320,000 to yours – even if just in the future – enables you to do things you otherwise couldn't, knowing that your financial future is brighter than it was prior. Not as impactful, obviously, but not worth ignoring either.
Of course, it's important to point out here too that the early funding from Gates wasn't the main point of this video, and they even mentioned during it that the initial draft of their script left it out entirely. With that in mind, I don't think this is a major flaw with their video as a whole. Sure, they have issues with Kurz's funding, but this specific instance was not the pillar holding that criticism up.
The money is of course helpful for their channel growth but it is kinda missing the point of why they even clarified it in the first place. Their channel focuses a lot on transparency and biases which are in turn affected by their income sources. The "3%" figure is there to show how they aren't dependent on the foundation and therefore don't have a direct incentive to change their content against their own preferences.
It's indeed not the main point of the video but it's a significant part of it, as they refer back to it multiple times throughout the video and mention it again at the end of the video, where I have also a big gripe with them and in extent kinda the whole video.
At 49:50 they mention how "Kurzgesagt is purposefully omitting the timing of the funding which in turn allowed them to grow this much". A few issues with that:
Which leads to my main gripe with the video. They mention how their first Kurzgesagt critic reached millions of clicks which is a significant milestone for them. It seems to me that they smelled blood and now created another one with the hefty bias of needing to find something wrong about the channel to generate the same viral response. The previously mentioned mistakes or oversights are, it seems, a result of it.
You see people calling this a hit piece because it simply looks like it. Why did they have to focus on Kurzgesagt? The people behind it seem to be honest about their intentions and are an exemplary transparent channel. Why do you need to pull them into this discussion which covers much bigger topics than them; the overproportional influence of rich people on the public opinion, their desire to uphold the class hierarchy, the flaws of science, lying by omission? They could have created the same video without mentioning them and it would have overall been more concise.
Also, what is about them having to repeatedly mention the phrase "trust science"? A main point of science is to not trust anything. This is the reason for the channels focus on transparency; all the sources are provided so people don't have to trust them. They constantly try to show people differing opinions on contentious topics. Do people see the simple act of providing a source as an excuse to not check for themselves? Yes, but what is a better alternative?
It seems to me that while your problems with the video's funding criticisms are not unfounded, you've forgotten the rest of the video's value in the process. In particular, one of the biggest things this video tries to point out is that being transparent does not mean you aren't propagating problematic ideas. You can do harm without lying or intent, after all.
The video mentions twice, for example, that Kurzgesagt doesn't need to have their opinions bought; after all, Kurz already agrees with the ideas encouraged by their funding sources. Sure, they "don't have a direct incentive to change their content against their own preferences," but it doesn't matter — The B&MG Foundation supports them likely due to the fact that Kurzgesagt already believes in the ideas they want spread. This video was made to point that out, and the fact that these ideas have many issues.
It's possible to discuss this without dragging Kurzgesagt into it, yes. Such a video would likely have been less controversial to those who saw it. But Kurzgesagt is still a channel with roughly 20 million subscribers, and that's a huge platform to have going around spreading ideology you see as harmful, so I don't exactly have trouble understanding why T3 would want to address it. You may see it as smelling blood, but I see it as an opportune moment to discuss a prevalent world issue with ample well-known context to use as a point of reference.
With that out of the way, some more nitpicky things:
T3 explicitly says they only have problems with "about a dozen" of Kurzgesagt's videos. They're well aware of this, and make such clear in the introduction. Additionally, some of the recent videos regarding Kurzgesagt (in particular, TheHatedOne's video) have criticized this separately as being insufficiently done, as they feel that these sponsorship disclosures should be happening at the beginnings of videos instead of at the end like they currently are. Many viewers will stop watching the video as soon as they realize it's over, and thus miss any disclosures that happen after.
Inference from context? They're not proving it as true, but it's a reasonable deduction to make absent the tax info you posted earlier. They were wrong, but I don't blame them for not thinking to investigate tax returns for a tangential point they didn't even originally plan to include at all.
I don't think that most laypeople's idea of science is to "not trust anything." They tend to think of it, insofar as I'm aware, more along the lines of "carefully finding out what's true." You're generally correct, but this is subjective, and so I don't really think it's a useful point; T3 isn't speaking with regard to the technical definition of science, after all.
This is something on which I think T3 would especially disagree with you, as a chunk of their video describes how they're disappointed with the presentation of the concept of degrowth, and how little time is spent on ideas like it when compared with ideas that Kurzgesagt supports.
This is another great video by Think That Through on the problems with Kurzgesagt's politics and associated philosophy. As usual for them, it tends towards the long end of the scale at about 50 or so minutes; a summary is available at the 48:54 timestamp if you don't have the time or energy to sit through the whole thing, thankfully.
Of note, this isn't the first video they've done on Kurzgesagt — they initially did another one regarding their climate change videos, which was also posted to Tildes here.
This hit jobs on Kurzgesagt have been thoroughly debunked before, even right here on Tildes
Christ.
I neither want to, nor do I have the energy to write another incredibly long response to a post like this. Thankfully, my existing one already addresses most of the points the post you linked brings up, as it was responding to that person's initial complaints.
But even still, hit job? Really? To me, this video was very thorough and well-said, and I find that description of it frankly insulting. It leaves me wondering if you've even watched the summary I linked.
If this is the kind of response I can expect, then I guess I need to stop posting about Kurzgesagt in the future.
If you step back, it’s difficult not to see this stuff as a hit job yeah.
Popular YouTuber made a collab with someone controversial, thus attracted further controversy. Once that bell has rung, there’s no going back, if you’re popular enough you’re always always always going to have people digging for whatever thing is off, even if they’re chasing ghosts.
This is why I’m personally overwhelmingly uninterested in this controversy. I have a limited amount of time in my life (80.000 hours if you believe some sponsors), why the hell should I waste some of that precious time on this particular drama, in videos that come in chunks of 1+ hour? Instead of watching this, or this, or this, all three of them which have been sitting in my watchlist for years?
And by the way, I give the same treatment to most other controversies that concern the authors of high quality content (within reason). But this idea that there could be pennies out of place in a company of 100+ employees that produces overwhelmingly transparent and high quality content is not something I’m going to waste my focus on, and I imagine a lot of people on tildes feel the same way.
It's perfectly fine not to want to invest hours of your time watching videos that criticize a creator you love. I watched this video because I found it interesting, and that made it easy for me. If it's work to you, I can't blame you in the least for not wanting to view it.
The problem I have is with using this as a reason to describe these videos as "hit jobs." Not wanting to spend a large amount of time watching them is fine; passing harsh judgement on them like such despite this is not. These videos had a huge quantity of effort invested into them and – at least to me – make very high-quality arguments, so describing them sight-unseen as a hit job is incredibly disrespectful and unfounded.
The appropriate response in these situations is to leave them alone, as you yourself seem to do. Don't watch, don't pass judgement. Continue as you were. We all have limited energy to spend on things, and not every discussion can be afforded by everyone. Think That Through included a disclaimer along similar lines in their introduction:
(Incidentally, I want to emphasize the fact they mention "funding being secondary" — T3 is not worried about there being "pennies out of place," they're worried about bad politics, bad philosophy, and dishonest presentation.)
First I've heard of any of this.
For my part, seeing their opening thesis was actually more helpful than the tl;dr conclusion you linked.
I'm still a long way from forming an actual opinion on it, but first impressions are feeling a bit "tempest in a teapot"-ish.
I’m firmly resolved to never watch any political videos so I’m not sure I should care about this? But it looks like Wikipedia has a decent article if you don’t even know who or what Kurzgesagt is.
Politics isn't the same thing as tension. Kurzgesagt has done many videos involving politics in the past; they remain political regardless of the criticism they did or did not draw.
The author of this video even says as much that they have no issue whatsoever with Kurzgesagt's science-focused videos1 — it's just the political ones they have problems with.
1. To be clear, when I say this, I'm talking about things like their videos on ants, or black holes, etc.
Do you find them informative, or are they more like TED talks?
They are educational videos meant to help lay people understand scientific topics like how the immune system works.
They've done videos on vaccines and climate science which has made them a target for right wing crazy people who view science as some kind of liberal conspiracy designed to make kids not believe in Jesus or turn them into communists.
Important to note here that the criticism leveled at Kurz that's posted here is not from a right-wing perspective at all, but from a left-wing one instead. Neither TheHatedOne nor Think That Through consist of any anti-vaxxers or climate deniers.
cc @skybrian
I think you misinterpreted me here. I didn't mean to imply necessarily that the criticism being left-wing made it automatically better, but rather trying to clarify, as the post I was replying to (likely unintentionally) carried an implication that the criticizers here were "right wing crazy people."
I used to consume their content when I stumbled upon their video one way or another. They're great at presenting the gist of a complex yet verifiable or falsifiable topic in a digestible manner.
Last year, they put out a video on climate change, which I found to be unsatisfactory and have been keeping distance since then. (I won't get into the specifics here.)
I think, when they try to cover a topic that's multifaceted and multiperspectival, like our outlook of the future, sticking to a digestible format limits them to a small subset of the possible viewpoints, intended or not. And putting forth one's views on what will be as a consequence of our actions can easily be interpreted as what we ought to do, which is pretty much political, intended or not.
I prefer longer and longer YouTube videos these days anyway (within reason), so that alone is reason enough for me to skip their videos, which are generally around 10-20 minutes.
You can do a lot with a little time, if you trust your audience to keep up. One of my favorite YouTube channels is PBS Space Time, which has some of the densest and most technical popular science content on the platform (they actually work through equations sometimes, gasp!). Their runtime is also around 15 minutes on average. But they frequently have callbacks to previous episodes. Kurzgesagt seems to aim at "this is everything you need to know in 10 minutes, zero background necessary" which is quite different (and nearly impossible).
I love PBS, but I like both channels. I believe Kurzgesagt helps a lot with building intuition about a system. Intuition is super important because it stays with you and settles; you don’t need to grok the concept yet. As you rethink of the world with that intuition in mind, you will later be able to more easily understand more in-depth material.
And what makes this even more important: Kurzgesagt‘s animation and video style also makes this content very suitable for children. If you can teach kids to build an intuition about how certain non-intuitive systems work, you ready them for much more approachable, “hard” content they will encounter later in their education.