Honestly, I didn't like this video very much. It succeeded in its primary intent (making me less trustful of kurzgesagt), but I disliked its methods. It was heavy on rhetoric, and it castigated...
Honestly, I didn't like this video very much. It succeeded in its primary intent (making me less trustful of kurzgesagt), but I disliked its methods. It was heavy on rhetoric, and it castigated its subject for some quite innocuous things.
People should feel free to skip at least the first 8 minutes. It's a bunch of I-don't-like-where-they're-getting-their-money rhetoric with his own cherry picked data points to support why with no...
Exemplary
People should feel free to skip at least the first 8 minutes. It's a bunch of I-don't-like-where-they're-getting-their-money rhetoric with his own cherry picked data points to support why with no real reason to back up his opinion other than "they're rich and I'm not".
First actual criticism comes at the 9 minute mark about a video about world poverty which he decides to blame Kurzgesagt for misleading because they used the data that goes back too far (fair point) and used an accepted standard for the metric instead of a new metric some other say should be used; and then showed his own charts that use the unaccepted metric and purposefully excluded China (with no reason given) because he likes his charts to reflect his own biases.
Pot:Kettle:Black (which I'm guessing will be a continuing theme here as I'm typing this as I go)
He does add in valid related (some more than others) points such as hunger, rich/poor gap, and slavery, but this is a constant argument when statistics are presented. Nothing can be all encompassing and there's always someone who wants to pick it apart because it doesn't include some other item they think is involved.
Facts are, per the accepted standard, global poverty has nosedived even when you only count the last 30 years, from 1.9B people in 1990 to 729M in 2015. Don't like the standard? Then change it, but don't complain that they're not using a made up metric you like more.
Next up is the 10 minute mark complaint about carbon emissions and what percentage of carbon emissions are the fault of which countries/areas. Kurzgesagt video uses one data set with specific criteria, this guy uses another data set with different criteria, and (shocking, I know) the statistics aren't the same! There's fair criticism of carbon capture, but then a tangent against GMOs because it "hasn't solved world hunger so far" but somehow thinks that organic farming will and fires shots against nuclear energy (another one of these solar and wind are all we'll ever need sort?)...
Legitimate complaint about when a sponsor for a video should be announced and I can see both sides of the argument here. His is that "it's at the end and most people don't watch the end of videos" the other side is every piece of media has the credits at the end and not at the beginning, would you still go to the movie theater if they played the 15 minute credit sequence before the movie?
Followed by a complaint about a law requiring a notice if a channel is gov't funded, but not privately funded with statements about what "should" happen. How dare Kurzgesagt not uhh... change the way youtube has built the site to show a banner that they have no control over?
Then the continued theme complaint: Sponsor of Kurzgesagt is also a sponsor of one of the many data sources used by Kurzgesagt. One where he conveniently neglects to mention has their own citations and sources.
Let's do a thought experiment: If you (a random person) were going to quote a statistic read on NPR to a friend, would you send that friend the NPR article or scroll to NPR's citations, find the study they were reporting on, and send the study? Except for a few pedantic contrarians reading this, you'd send the article. Kurzgesagt cites where they got the data, the data source cites where they got it or their methodology for gathering it, those sources cite their sources, and so on and so forth. Where is the point that the source should be cited? Should Kurzgesagt link every study used by their sources, or perhaps the actual people in the study, or maybe the mothers of the people in the study to find out if the study author(s) were good kids growing up to give you a sense of whether they should be trusted.
In short: Criticize the data, not the source. If you can't find fault with the data, then you don't have a leg to stand on (which is the vast majority of this video).
Is Gates a saint? Hell no and neither is any billionaire, billionaires shouldn't exist.
However, it ties into his ending/overall theme he wants to get across: How dare Kurzgesagt take money from rich people to make videos on subjects they agree with!
He even pushes this point near the end with the fact that Kurzgesagt has made anti-oil videos in an attempt to connect the two with the implication that Kurzgesagt would make pro-oil videos if the oil companies wrote them a big enough check.
So, I'm going to be up front with you. This comment has upset me quite a bit, and I honestly probably wouldn't be responding to it right now if not for that. For what it's worth, I've slept on it...
Exemplary
So, I'm going to be up front with you. This comment has upset me quite a bit, and I honestly probably wouldn't be responding to it right now if not for that. For what it's worth, I've slept on it since and I'm going to try to do my best to be careful with my tone, and I want to emphasize that I do not have an issue with you personally — just this comment specifically.
Plainly speaking, your comment reads like you already decided you didn't like the video before you'd even seen it; it's formatted like a summary of the video's arguments, but is very misrepresentative of them throughout. Furthermore, you appear to have missed the original point of the video, and even suggest skipping eight minutes of it, despite the section in question being among the most important parts.1
This was a video that was made to point out the numerous undisclosed conflicts-of-interest present in Kurzgesagt's funding and sources, but you seem to have taken it as an attempt to tear down the entire channel wholesale. I don't entirely blame you, as the video is presented very dramatically. The backing audio, the camera angles, the strong vignette, the title – all of these things are far too strong relative to the points being made, and I can understand how that would put some folks off from what it says and make them feel as though the video were not genuine.
But the content of the video is sound. I've watched it three times now, once with your criticisms at the forefront of my mind, and it holds up2:
The starting portion of the video – the part you recommended others skip – sets up the reasoning upon which the rest of the video stands by stating why billionaire funding should be cause for concern.
The section about world poverty is arguing against the usage of the "accepted metric" because it's a terrible one, as it is unfair to expect virtually anyone to live off $1.90 per day, especially when considering it's on a purchasing power parity basis.
Removing China from the poverty equation is not arbitrary, nor unfair, as a) the original graph is kept alongside the adjusted one, and b) seeing as China represents most of the world's poverty reduction for decades, it is an outlier and would skew any statistic intended to represent the planet as a whole.
The section about carbon emissions is again focused on conflicts of interest in the fact that the data Kurzgesagt uses paints a picture more favorable to the interests of its funding sources than other reputable ones might, and that they repeatedly and consistently bring up technologies that Gates has large investments in.
GMOs are not singled out. Industrialized agriculture with heavy pesticide use is criticized alongside them, and they are only criticized due to Gates' involvement with them, which continues the existing conflict-of-interest framing. At no point does the video author state they prefer or support organic foods.
The channel notice criticism is one of Youtube, not Kurzgesagt. A tangent, yes, but both a related one and an understandable complaint.
Ignoring the false equivalency of responsibility that is comparing "person sharing a link" to "animation studio with 20 million subscribers," your last argument again falls flat against the fact that the video is stating that it is disingenuous not to bring up the connections between Kurzgesagt's funding and conclusions, not that Kurzgesagt is wrong about everything it says.
But honestly, this all is secondary to my main issue with your comment, which is that despite the dismissiveness of it, at least two people appear to have taken it as a substitute for watching the video itself; to me, this is a huge disappointment to see. And those are just the ones who spoke up about it. I have no idea how many of those who've upvoted you or given you an Exemplary label might not have seen the video either, but it worries me.
It's a good video. I like it, and I find it sad to see people seemingly prefer what I see as an unnecessary step-by-step takedown of the video to the video itself. My goal here, more than anything, is to explain why I find this and your comment together to be so harmful. I think the video made good points and was decently structured, even if it did have an overly theatrical presentation to it, and so to come here and see some tear it apart and then have everyone jump up to give them applause? It hurts to see.
One last note: I should mention that I don't plan to argue this with you. It took me over a day to get around to writing this, and hours to actually make it happen. It took a lot of energy to write, and I can't guarantee I'll be able to do it again if you respond. If it helps any, I will read your response should you write one — I just don't want this to become a long and potentially toxic back-and-forth like what appears to have happened elsewhere in this thread. If I choose to leave the conversation or simply do not reply, please understand it is not meant as an insult.
Regardless, thank you for taking the time to read my comment. I hope you understand why I feel the way I do, and I hope I've managed to say so without being rude; I apologize in advance if not.
1. TheHatedOne even said as much in one of his comments in a thread asking to talk to people who disagreed with this very video:
The first three minutes of my video show in great detail how Kurzgesagt got things wrong when presenting the history of NTDs. When you skipped those, you would have lost an important context and lens of my critique of Kurzgesagt.
2. It is worth noting that some of this is just my take on the video, and my interpretation is not necessarily the authors intent. For what it's worth, I have read several comments by the author on reddit to gather extra context, including the thread mentioned in [1] as well as some comments he responded to in a r/Breadtube thread about the video.
(Edited to fix a typo and correct the subscriber count for Kurzgesagt, as I mistakenly said they had 22 million when they have just under 20 million)
The big problem that I am seeing in this thread is that the video is trying to explain a specific perspective and people like you and @AgustusFerdinand are completely unwilling to attempt to...
The big problem that I am seeing in this thread is that the video is trying to explain a specific perspective and people like you and @AgustusFerdinand are completely unwilling to attempt to understand that perspective, presumably because you don’t like the window dressing. If you look at Agustus’ facts they are correct but they miss the point. Unless I missed something this video never once accused Kurzgesagt of lying. The issue is with the premise upon which those facts lie.
I don't want to hop on the train, but my perspective: not a Kurzgezagt fan because of reasons similar to what the video is about started watching the video because it aligns with my gut feeling...
I don't want to hop on the train, but my perspective:
not a Kurzgezagt fan because of reasons similar to what the video is about
started watching the video because it aligns with my gut feeling
had a hard time dealing with the video itself
I found the video detrimental to the point they are making. Maybe it's a generational thing - I don't like polemic videos, but there is so much polemic content out these days, it must be good for something.
This is absolutely a fair assessment. Honestly, it feels like it comes down to whether you feel the content's quality outweighs the bad presentation. For me, it does, but I can easily get why it...
This is absolutely a fair assessment. Honestly, it feels like it comes down to whether you feel the content's quality outweighs the bad presentation. For me, it does, but I can easily get why it wouldn't for others. "True crime" describes it excellently, too — I remember that descriptor being on the tip of my tongue when writing my comment, and I only didn't use it because I couldn't remember the exact term.
You're referring to my comment about "saving me ~22 minutes", I take it? Let me put it that way: I talked about having written a similar post to AugustusFerdinand's before. Your experience writing...
You're referring to my comment about "saving me ~22 minutes", I take it?
It took me over a day to get around to writing this, and hours to actually make it happen. It took a lot of energy to write, and I can't guarantee I'll be able to do it again if you respond.
Let me put it that way: I talked about having written a similar post to AugustusFerdinand's before. Your experience writing this post is pretty much exactly mine: It's tiring, exhausting even, to watch something where your bullshit meter is off the charts, pay attention to all the details, lots of lateral reading, and then you formulate it all in as concise a post as you can. I'm proud of that post, if I dare say so myself, but it was a lot of work. The video I argued with arguably wasn't even worth the effort.
My time on this planet is limited. And AugustusFerdinand's post resonated with my past experience. I don't have to watch this video. Frankly, AF hasn't saved me 22 minutes, he saved me hours if I wanted to approach the OP video with any amount of scrutiny, which I no doubt would want to. Hours I'd rather spend on other things.
There's a saying in german: "Der Ton macht die Musik" - the tone creates the music. The semantic translation would be something like "it's not in what you say, but how you say it". I'm not particularly interested to listen to overdramatized, overstated accusations, unless they're backed up with extraordinary evidence. There's a way and a place for the kinds of criticisms this video presumably wants to make, sure. And I'm not opposed to nuanced, long form discussions of complicated topics. Maybe that's what this video should've been instead. Given the reach of kurzgesagt (and the lightning rod-ness that comes with it), my assumption is that such a video would/does exist, if kurzgesagt is indeed as shady as alleged.
It would perhaps have been better to suggest then that this frustrated me when put in combination with what I saw as poor arguments. I can entirely understand not wanting to spend hours on a video...
It would perhaps have been better to suggest then that this frustrated me when put in combination with what I saw as poor arguments. I can entirely understand not wanting to spend hours on a video trying to get a solid understanding of it — shit, I can understand not wanting to watch a lengthy video at all, so on it's own, that doesn't really bother me. Besides, as I stated in my original post, this video definitely has an off-putting presentation, and in that context a tepid-at-best response makes even more sense.
So really, I should emphasize that I'm not upset at you or anyone else who might've done this at all. It's perfectly normal and understandable to take shortcuts when evaluating something's validity if you don't have the energy to do that yourself; most of us don't, and that's okay. There's only so much time and energy in a day. I just worry the shortcut was made poorly, and thus put decent content in a bad light.
This one's on me for not making this more clear in my original post. Sorry about that.
It's all good. I think my comment reads more standoffish and ...hostile?... than I actually felt. It's not like I'm offended or anything, just wanted to share why I felt it's not worth it to dive...
It's all good. I think my comment reads more standoffish and ...hostile?... than I actually felt. It's not like I'm offended or anything, just wanted to share why I felt it's not worth it to dive into this one. I have a learned disdain for hatchet jobs, hit pieces and associated youtube drama. As a general rule, I find they, well, are often the same as what this one's being criticized as. Ya know, outrage drives engagement. That's not to say they can't be worthwhile or important, but I much prefer a calmer, more rational, strongly evidenced approach. In that sense, I stand by my shortcut, though I'll ask /u/cfabbro to share what changed his mind about KG, maybe he's got a source I should have a gander at.
I have read your reply and while I do not agree with all of your points, I do agree with some and I thank you for taking the time to write it all out. I won't reply further as I believe this...
I have read your reply and while I do not agree with all of your points, I do agree with some and I thank you for taking the time to write it all out.
I won't reply further as I believe this thread has run it's course and it'll be a rehashing of the same.
Hasn't this been an important point to illuminate lately, with Patagonia being "given away"? The benevolent billionaire myth is real and is worth paying attention to, for as long as a single...
How dare Kurzgesagt take money from rich people to make videos on subjects they agree with!
Hasn't this been an important point to illuminate lately, with Patagonia being "given away"? The benevolent billionaire myth is real and is worth paying attention to, for as long as a single person can wield enough money to sway public opinion and governmental efforts. In Patagonia's case, what has really changed?
A highly-popular channel spouting points authoritatively will always require a second glance. One that receives massive amounts of funding from the rich of the rich? Doubly so.
It's not about money, of course. If you sustain yourself by eating a pair of deer antlers every day, and I just happened to have a steady supply for deer antlers for a tad over four years, and I give it to you for exchange for whatever content you make, and that said content just happens to align with my beliefs and investments of the prized deer antler currency elsewhere... You see where I'm going with this?
Billionaires shouldn't exist. The benevolent billionaire is a myth. You should undoubtedly take a long hard look at what is being said, pushed, published, supported, etc. by anyone and especially...
Billionaires shouldn't exist.
The benevolent billionaire is a myth.
You should undoubtedly take a long hard look at what is being said, pushed, published, supported, etc. by anyone and especially someone with enough money to create coverage in their favor.
I'm not arguing against any of those points.
My argument is that this video purports that Kurzgesagt "cooks propaganda for billionaires" and fails to prove any of it.
Using different metrics doesn't prove Kurzgesagt reported data wrong.
Taking money from a billionaire while saying climate change is bad isn't propaganda just because the billionaire also thinks climate change is bad.
And that's the main point of the video, that X took money from Y and "I don't like Y or the fact that Y and Z use their money at all regardless of what X did with it."
This is the first line of the video's description, the maker of the video fails to prove such: Kurzgesagt is not just a popular science outreach channel. It's a major tool for propaganda of their billionaire sponsors.
The only way Kurzgesagt produces "propaganda" is if you disagree with the subject matter, regardless of who provided some funding. In the case of this youtuber, the subject matter they seem to disagree with is climate change, GMOs, vaccines, and nuclear energy.
"Prove" is a strong word easily abused when you don't have the documents portrayed any person spoken of as having these exact motivations. The whole point of investigative journalism is taking a...
Exemplary
My argument is that this video purports that Kurzgesagt "cooks propaganda for billionaires" and fails to prove any of it.
"Prove" is a strong word easily abused when you don't have the documents portrayed any person spoken of as having these exact motivations. The whole point of investigative journalism is taking a few data points and drawing a line across them.
Granted, I'm not a fan of the video's approach – way too much vitriol and scaremongering (like calling a VP of a company its "lieutenant") – but it is still a piece of investigative journalism worth paying attention to.
Using different metrics doesn't prove Kurzgesagt reported data wrong.
Uh... Yes. Yes, it does exactly that.
Misrepresenting a point in statistics is how you can turn good into bad and vice versa. Saying "poverty has declined massively all over the globe" doesn't sound nearly as bad as "the actual poverty around the world is trending neutral at best".
"Well, the accepted metric is--" — Here's a thought experiment: I give you a buck fifty a day to survive on. No supplementary income. Maybe government subsidies. Or I give you $7.50 a day, same conditions. Which would you take?
Exactly.
So you see, the way we measure poverty matters. Feeding the narrative of "actually everything is fine" is no bueno when you have people in the US struggling to pay for necessities. Nevermind a country is deep poverty somewhere in Africa or Asia. Just because Kurzgesagt used a metric in general practice by a major organization operating on the subject matter doesn't mean the resulting message is 100% on point.
And that's the main point of the video, that X took money from Y and "I don't like Y or the fact that Y and Z use their money at all regardless of what X did with it."
W--huh--wuh--huh??
I'd be immediately skeptical of anyone making points on popular topics if they receive sponsorship from anyone currently invested in said topics. The Hated One cites numerous occasions where videos on certain topics just happened to be sponsored by Gates' organizations. The is the essence of investigative journalism.
Besides, I think you get the wrong impression with regards to The Hated One and his attitude towards Bill Gates. Just because the latter happens to be the subject of the conversation doesn't make him the villain of the story – or, in your words, "I don't like Y". I think you're getting the general attitude of "I don't like this shit" confused for "I don't like this man", which I find an unfair point to ascribe against the video.
This is the first line of the video's description, the maker of the video fails to prove such: Kurzgesagt is not just a popular science outreach channel. It's a major tool for propaganda of their billionaire sponsors.
Promoting the point of a person or institution in power to placate, agitate, or disenfranchise the population is propaganda. In fact, this is pretty much a condensed version of the definition given on Wikipedia:
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. Propaganda can be found in news and journalism, government, advertising, entertainment, education, and activism and is often associated with material which is prepared by governments as part of war efforts, political campaigns, health campaigns, revolutionaries, big businesses, ultra-religious organizations, the media, and certain individuals such as soapboxers.
In this case, of course, Wikipedia points at governments as the primary perpetrators, but the fact that lobbying in politics is so commonplace these days suggests the state is hardly the boundry for this activity.
The only way Kurzgesagt produces "propaganda" is if you disagree with the subject matter, regardless of who provided some funding.
...you mean all funding, given that each of the given videos are specifically and solely described as "funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" or some other Gates organization?
the subject matter they seem to disagree with
The man has provided sources for how these specific environmental and related projects have not yet been found sustainable and/or a better alternative than the proven methods currently employed worldwide. How did you come to the conclusion of "well he must hate these things then" based on that?
So no proof and yet states "Kurzgesagt propagandizes for billionaires" is okay? Point wasn't misrepresented. The data was given per the accepted standard, there are likely other standards that...
Exemplary
"Prove" is a strong word easily abused when you don't have the documents portrayed any person spoken of as having these exact motivations. The whole point of investigative journalism is taking a few data points and drawing a line across them.
So no proof and yet states "Kurzgesagt propagandizes for billionaires" is okay?
Misrepresenting a point in statistics is how you can turn good into bad and vice versa. Saying "poverty has declined massively all over the globe" doesn't sound nearly as bad as "the actual poverty around the world is trending neutral at best".
Point wasn't misrepresented. The data was given per the accepted standard, there are likely other standards that would measure poverty differently than the cherry-picked one the video used. "Poverty is neutral if I change the way it's measured and exclude the countries that run counter to the narrative I'm trying to make" is misrepresenting data.
"Well, the accepted metric is--" — Here's a thought experiment: I give you a buck fifty a day to survive on. No supplementary income. Maybe government subsidies. Or I give you $7.50 a day, same conditions. Which would you take?
"Person will accept more money" isn't the gotcha you seem to think it is.
So you see, the way we measure poverty matters. Feeding the narrative of "actually everything is fine" is no bueno when you have people in the US struggling to pay for necessities. Nevermind a country is deep poverty somewhere in Africa or Asia. Just because Kurzgesagt used a metric in general practice by a major organization operating on the subject matter doesn't mean the resulting message is 100% on point.
So Kurzgesagt should have used an unaccepted method to measure poverty because it better suits the author of this video? None of the sources provided, that I can access, provide any data to back up the opinion that the poverty line should be higher other than "rich people are richer" which, while true, doesn't support the quoted increase.
I'd be immediately skeptical of anyone making points on popular topics if they receive sponsorship from anyone currently invested in said topics. The Hated One cites numerous occasions where videos on certain topics just happened to be sponsored by Gates' organizations. The is the essence of investigative journalism.
Besides, I think you get the wrong impression with regards to The Hated One and his attitude towards Bill Gates. Just because the latter happens to be the subject of the conversation doesn't make him the villain of the story – or, in your words, "I don't like Y". I think you're getting the general attitude of "I don't like this shit" confused for "I don't like this man", which I find an unfair point to ascribe against the video.
As I've already stated, you should be skeptical of any claims from anyone. However, the video fails to actually attack the data, likely because there's no fault they can find, and instead attacks the source of the funds.
Promoting the point of a person or institution in power to placate, agitate, or disenfranchise the population is propaganda. In fact, this is pretty much a condensed version of the definition given on Wikipedia:
Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is being presented. Propaganda can be found in news and journalism, government, advertising, entertainment, education, and activism and is often associated with material which is prepared by governments as part of war efforts, political campaigns, health campaigns, revolutionaries, big businesses, ultra-religious organizations, the media, and certain individuals such as soapboxers.
Today you found out that anything can be "propaganda" if you define it wide enough. I'm not going to get into a semantics argument on the literal definition of a word when we both know that the video is pushing propaganda to mean deception/lies.
...you mean all funding, given that each of the given videos are or some other Gates organization?
So we're going forward with the assumption that there were no ads on the videos, not a single dollar of patreon supporter money, merchandise, or ad revenue was spent in the making of it and ignoring the fact that no where is there any evidence they were: specifically and solely described as "funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation"
If you can find where that statement exists outside this video, I welcome it.
The man has provided sources for how these specific environmental and related projects have not yet been found sustainable and/or a better alternative than the proven methods currently employed worldwide. How did you come to the conclusion of "well he must hate these things then" based on that?
Based on watching the video and linking his little quips together and looking at his subreddit. Carbon capture is probably a dead end, but he also has little bits decrying nuclear, vaccines, GMOs (in favor of organic of all things).
He really should stick to privacy videos, because a video that is summed up as "I don't like where they're getting their money, but can't actually disprove anything said" doesn't work very well. And please, lets not give titles like "investigative journalist" that mean something to a youtuber that lacks everything that it stands for and just has a conspiracy theorist axe to grind.
Is speculation based on evidence forbidden now? Half of journalism is "We don't have the exact details, but here's what we understand given the data points present". Or, wait: you don't like the...
So no proof and yet states "Kurzgesagt propagandizes for billionaires" is okay?
Is speculation based on evidence forbidden now? Half of journalism is "We don't have the exact details, but here's what we understand given the data points present".
Or, wait: you don't like the conclusion, so anything short of a paper slip saying "I did it, Love, Bill Gates" would not satisfy your incredibly high criteria? Is that what I'm seeing here?
I get a sense that this gotcha-fest is going to go on from here.
The data was given per the accepted standard
"Accepted" doesn't mean "of high quality", which is a point you'd glanced over in my response. You thought it's a "gotcha" moment when I gave you two valid metrics for poverty around the world. If buck fifty a day is "poverty", then what is seven fifty a day? "Livable"? Or maybe – just maybe – "barely survivable", which is why presenting this "unaccepted" metric was important.
(I'd even raised that same concern and addressed it preemptively in my response, because you were stubborn enough to stand by an appeal to authority even when presented with an alternative.)
The minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour.
And no, China did not make enough difference to suggest the entire thing is somehow moot. You can see it with your own two eyes, given that it's a graph. The point stands: poverty has not gone down if you take human standards to count.
"Person will accept more money" isn't the gotcha you seem to think it is.
Oh hey, a "gotcha".
So Kurzgesagt should have used an unaccepted method to measure poverty because it better suits the author of this video?
No, it should've been more honest about which metric they used, why, and what are the important points to consider about it – because it benefits the audience of a popular science and philosophy channel.
And maybe – just maybe – give a brief mention to the alternatives which could put a dent in their point, because intellectual honesty is an important factor in evaluation one's data.
Or are the views all that matter? Because getting more eyes on incomplete, unscrutinized data is how you trick people into believing horseshit.
I say we ask more of someone who gets eyes and ears. I've seen Tom Scott publish at least two separate videos where he scrutinizes his own research, because that's what intellectual honesty is. Why should Kurzgesagt get a pass? Because visuals and getting a half-baked idea across is more important?
However, the video fails to actually attack the data <...>
Because it wasn't aiming to.
A five-persons production team gets a large sponsorship deal from a megarich dude's funds, skyrockets to a 20-some-member poduction house, and then just happens to come up with the same points that Bill Gates has invested money in? And you don't find it the least bit suspicious?
<...> and instead attacks the source of the funds.
It doesn't do that either.
What it does is highlight the connection between Bill Gates, his sponsorships, and an influx of points that prop up his investments across multiple industries.
When a study of "sugar is good, fat is bad, eat more sugar and less fat" is funded by the sugar industry, that shows a conflict of interests. As far as I'm concerned, we're seeing something eerily similar here.
Today you found out <...>
Hello, smugness, my old friend.
<...> when we both know <...>
Don't pick my position for me.
So we're going forward with the assumption <...>
Feel free to. My point wasn't that the channel'd received no funding outside of the Gates foundation: my point was that it just so happened the points aligning with Gates' investments were made under the banner of said foundation.
And please, lets not give titles like "investigative journalist" that mean something to a youtuber that lacks everything that it stands for and just has a conspiracy theorist axe to grind.
Ah, the "amateur photography is not really photography" argument. Not a fan.
Let's keep calling it that, because it's okay to do something poorly. Bellingcat and The Hated One are in the same boat, they're just rowing very differently.
I'm gonna stop there, 'cause this is getting ridiculous. You may consider it a victory for yourself, the common sense, countermisinformation, or whichever cause you'd prefer to win this for.
The thing is: I agree with you: the video isn't well-made. It could itself be much more careful with its arguments or its sources. I just don't think your case is as bulletproof as you and the Exemplaries you receive suggest. I didn't enjoy being sniped for points, either.
Thank you for saving be ~22 minutes, lol. I've seen this kind of video before; in fact I've written roughly your post on an entirely different topic before. It seems to me, once you've reached a...
Thank you for saving be ~22 minutes, lol. I've seen this kind of video before; in fact I've written roughly your post on an entirely different topic before.
It seems to me, once you've reached a certain size of audience, people will start complaining no matter how many crosses your 'i's and dots your 't's have. At that point, the question isn't whether you get this kind of criticism, but how well-founded it is, whether it's experts criticizing you, and how much it is.
Maybe it's because this is tildes, but these takedown videos seem to be targeted at the people who are doing it mostly right - Veritasium, or Kurzgesagt. There are, from what I can gather, way worse examples out there with similar reach, but I guess those never crop up on the radar of skeptics such as the author of this video.
And one of these days, we're going to have to have a beer and a conversation about renewables and nuclear power, but not today. Then again, might be a braindead take by the video author you're referring to. But it's not like you need nuclear for a carbon-free grid, is my point.
Thank you for taking the time to watch the video and write this grand video for those of us who ofte tl;dw. I cannot properly define or deconstruct it, but I find there's something off about...
Thank you for taking the time to watch the video and write this grand video for those of us who ofte tl;dw.
I cannot properly define or deconstruct it, but I find there's something off about Kurzgesagt. It has a similar intuitive feel as utopian cults. At least it's a lot better than the afterskool series. But I suspect this producer has had the same intuitive experience, and kudos to him, taken some time to create a response. It appears he may have missed the mark in many places, but again, kudos to his efforts.
Thinking about it further now, it may be that what I have seen in Kurzegesagt content is their attitude, common among technically inclined, that we can "fix" the world's problems without a fundamental and messy re-think about what it means to be a human on the planet at this point. Also, that we can transform from that re-thinking without feeling some real pain. And further, that there is something wrong with feeling pain.
I can't point to data, but I suspect that many wealthy folks, among the ones who arrived at their wealth through significant effort*, are doing their best to escape feeling pain. That is, they are feeling the pain, but wish to avoid cognizance and presence of the feeling, and so pursue wealth and influence with all the gusto that addicts pursue dope. Another conversation.
*this is not to suggest that many if not most (if not all) of the extremely wealthy didn't begin life with significant advantages including a lot of wealth. This is the ones who spent a lot of effort on getting wealthier, and in some cases, like Trump, didn't end up that much wealthier in the end but still spent a lot of effort and are still really damn wealthy
I'm completely with you. I feel as if Kurzgesagt's videos run counter to the (perhaps more realistic) doom-and-gloom takes on several of the subjects they cover and that can be perceived, as you...
I cannot properly define or deconstruct it, but I find there's something off about Kurzgesagt. It has a similar intuitive feel as utopian cults. At least it's a lot better than the afterskool series. But I suspect this producer has had the same intuitive experience, and kudos to him, taken some time to create a response. It appears he may have missed the mark in many places, but again, kudos to his efforts.
Thinking about it further now, it may be that what I have seen in Kurzegesagt content is their attitude, common among technically inclined, that we can "fix" the world's problems without a fundamental and messy re-think about what it means to be a human on the planet at this point. Also, that we can transform from that re-thinking without feeling some real pain. And further, that there is something wrong with feeling pain.
I'm completely with you. I feel as if Kurzgesagt's videos run counter to the (perhaps more realistic) doom-and-gloom takes on several of the subjects they cover and that can be perceived, as you have, as a utopian outlook that is maybe not entirely in touch with reality or require one to have an optimistic outlook on the subjects. I for one don't actually believe we'll make the necessary changes to solve many of the problems without great suffering.
Kurzegesagt have mentioned many a fancy project to help resolve some major problem, but I recall they're usually tempered with a message of "this isn't the only solution and never could be." Their channel runs counter to the sky-is-falling content that many others run, but so long as it is truthful I see no problem with them having an overall positive outlook channel on subjects that trouble us all. I don't see issue with talking about the things people are trying to solve the problems instead of the usual discussion about all the problems with no discussion of what is being done about it. It's not for everyone, but neither are the-end-is-nighers.
It is a very bias video, but it's a good contravideo to Kurzgesagt's content. A video like this is more digestible compared to the nearly two hour long video another Youtube channel did, though...
It is a very bias video, but it's a good contravideo to Kurzgesagt's content. A video like this is more digestible compared to the nearly two hour long video another Youtube channel did, though not as detailed I imagine. I can't fathom going through a two hour long video (at double speed, mind you, so only an hour long) in one sitting. The bite size content attention economy has me in its grasp.
Even though I don't necessarily like the video, it's something that is needed. If someone created a Coffeezilla channel but for Sciencetube, I think it could be successful, but likely challenging.
This is an excellent video essay looking into some of the dubious sources and funding in Kurzgesagt videos. I don’t follow Kurzgesagt too closely, but their videos do pop up from time to time, and...
This is an excellent video essay looking into some of the dubious sources and funding in Kurzgesagt videos.
I don’t follow Kurzgesagt too closely, but their videos do pop up from time to time, and I usually enjoy them. They definitely portray themselves as giving a face to scientific consensus. As this video shows, it isn’t necessarily an actual scientific consensus.
I wrote a lengthy reply in another comment, but wanted to point out this quote as the video does nothing of the sort. In fact the video failed to do anything even close to disputing the data. He's...
As this video shows, it isn’t necessarily an actual scientific consensus.
I wrote a lengthy reply in another comment, but wanted to point out this quote as the video does nothing of the sort. In fact the video failed to do anything even close to disputing the data. He's just got a hard-on, as his other videos and social media show, for conspiracy theories and decrying anything that involves funding from rich people.
Honestly, the whole video is basically about whether to trust ourworldindata.org. Aside from being run by economists (which might explain the focus on the concept of "investment" which is...
Honestly, the whole video is basically about whether to trust ourworldindata.org. Aside from being run by economists (which might explain the focus on the concept of "investment" which is questionable but reasonable for discussion of global, social issues) I see no problem with their funding or expertise. It's a non-profit mostly run by researchers from Oxford.
Unless you have a problem with billionaires giving money to charities in general (I would argue it is a problem but not because of the billionaires but the system that allows billionaires to exist), I genuinely wonder what the fuss is about. Should they just keep the money? Should the government seize it (I say, yes, through taxation, but that's a different conversation)? The claim that Bill fucking Gates is just in it for the money (rather than trying to invest in projects he genuinely believes in) is ludicrous. Dude literally could buy everything that pops in his mind and buy it, live that way till he dies and support a few dozen generations of offspring. He's not trying to become a trillionaire with some malaria vaccine play.
Now, again, I do think there's a problem with so much money and thus influence being horded by a small group of individuals. I find some specific solutions they try to push ridiculous and I believe there might be problems with a guy like Bill Gates getting stubborn (not evil, stubborn) and using his power to block WHO guidelines or ignore research that tells him he's wrong. But I'd like to see the cold hard facts proving that Gates' charity, specifically, is a net-negative to society.
The main reason I bother to have an opinion on this is that the channel has some red-flags that push it dangerously close to "us vs them" conspiracy shit (sinister background music, like 50 videos on government surveillance, the channel name being "The Hated One" – which sounds like an "if everyone around you is an asshole..." kind of situation). While I believe it's healthy to be skeptical about propaganda, in recent years this backfired and the lack of trust in literally everything is becoming a destructive force. I am starting to actively decide to trust sources I can not 100% verify because the alternative is trusting no one which I believe is, ironically, a state more vulnerable to misinformation.
Most importantly, you can disagree and criticize specific, individual aspects of Kurzgesagt without making it about a conspiracy to sell vaccines and artificial meat or something. Does carbon capture work? I doubt it. But that doesn't mean it's a sinister plot.
To be upfront I have not watched this video yet, but if you're interested in understanding why Bill Gates' philanthopy could be considered bad, I recommend a book called The New Prophets of...
To be upfront I have not watched this video yet, but if you're interested in understanding why Bill Gates' philanthopy could be considered bad, I recommend a book called The New Prophets of Capital. It's pretty short, and Gates is one of the four "prophets" it discusses. Obviously I agree that Gates could do a lot worse with his money, but he could also do a lot better - I think Mackenzie Scott is the current best model for how to no-strings-attached give away billions that you shouldn't have.
I won't be able to do the argument justice in a comment, but the basic idea is that Gates uses his money to promote market philosophies in the areas he works, like healthcare and education. For example if he wants to extend the reach of vaccines in Africa, the problem he identifies is that poor countries just don't have enough money to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to produce what they need, so we just need to stimulate demand until these countries are able to pay a fair market price for the vaccines they need. This promotes the concept of healthcare as a commodity.
Another argument is that his philanthropy is undemocratic - since he has more money than the GDP of many African countries, he's able to come in and implement whatever he wants whether or not people like it. One example given is AGRA, a program to improve the efficiency and success of African farmers (good), and one method they use is to try to end the traditional practice of farmers harvesting and communally sharing their own seeds, and instead get them to start buying more efficient seeds from Monsanto and friends every year. Here's an article I just found about this issue: https://grain.org/en/article/6035-the-real-seeds-producers-small-scale-farmers-save-use-share-and-enhance-the-seed-diversity-of-the-crops-that-feed-africa. Gates is on the corporate side of this conflict.
This comment probably sounds very one-sided and unfair, but I promise the book, while obviously agenda-driven, is more even-handed and cites plenty of sources to make these arguments.
That sounds reasonable, I actually remember reading about them pushing Monsanto in Africa, which seems rather disgusting. I'm actually mostly playing devil's advocate, here, since I'm more and...
That sounds reasonable, I actually remember reading about them pushing Monsanto in Africa, which seems rather disgusting.
I'm actually mostly playing devil's advocate, here, since I'm more and more convinced my (general default state of) cynicism on these matters is really constructive. In terms of Africa, we've had decades of doomsday scenarios, charities mostly aiming to fight symptoms rather than causes and a level of instability that (while certainly caused to a large part by western colonialism) seems to be at least to a large part internal. The "effective altruism" crowd sometimes does parody-worthy, Silicon-Valley-bro things but at least they attempt to fight causes rather than symptoms. Some of it not working or being hijacked by corporate interest is of course disappointing but I doubt all or even most of it is a conspiracy to push Monsanto's profits and whatnot. I'm not sure if I even disagree with improving Africa's economic power being a good focus (even if some pharma companies benefit from it), we can't just have a billion people depend on charity for centuries.
One day, maybe only in another life, I'd like to try out a decentralized system of digital trust. I've written about it before, but the core idea is that there's people/orgs("entities") who you...
I am starting to actively decide to trust sources I can not 100% verify because the alternative is trusting no one which I believe is, ironically, a state more vulnerable to misinformation.
One day, maybe only in another life, I'd like to try out a decentralized system of digital trust. I've written about it before, but the core idea is that there's people/orgs("entities") who you explicitly trust. And those trust other entities. This forms a web, but is ultimately a bit simplistic. We can amplify this web: if your stated opinions on a set of topics strongly correlate with those of another person, then it's likely their opinions on topics you have not formed an opinion on yet might be relevant. Inversely if they tend to disagree with you. I'm imagining this as a giant filter through which to view the web. Of course, the usual caveats about filter bubbles apply, but it sure seems better to filter by trust rather than engagement, as social media platforms do it. Imagine reading mostly those product reviews online by people who pay attention to the same aspects as you. No bot farms giving out 5-star nondescript ratings to every paying company, only other users. No more conspiracy nuts on reddit, those just disappear into the background noise. Of course, all of it transparent to the user. You can peer behind the curtain, and see who the system thinks you should trust. And you could look at all the crap it weeds out.
The amount of bullshit floating around, and not knowing who to trust, is a scourge upon the current internet.
Isn't a lot of algorithmic bubble-forming done via correlating content rather than raw likes/upvotes already? How would you get out of a bubble of conspiracy theories? I'm generally fascinated by...
Of course, the usual caveats about filter bubbles apply, but it sure seems better to filter by trust rather than engagement
Isn't a lot of algorithmic bubble-forming done via correlating content rather than raw likes/upvotes already? How would you get out of a bubble of conspiracy theories?
I'm generally fascinated by (read: desperately hoping for) ways to create appropriate trust in big systems. One way that helped me a bit with my own paranoia was accepting a scale of trust (say, between 0 and 100) rather than making it binary. I trust this publication 90%. I trust this one 5%. And so on. Never 0, never 100, though. Also to identify "first principles" people base their opinions on and seeing them in that light, which helps to both find common ground and accept arguments based on elemental truth we can never agree on. Not sure how to automate any of this, though.
Here's another video (1h50min) I recently came across, diving into the topic of "Kurzgesagt Climate Greenwashing". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI
Here's another video (1h50min) I recently came across, diving into the topic of "Kurzgesagt Climate Greenwashing".
I'm not even halfway in and they bring up some other great topics for deep dives. I had forgotten about 'McDonaldization', and it accurately describes much of our lives.
I'm not even halfway in and they bring up some other great topics for deep dives.
I had forgotten about 'McDonaldization', and it accurately describes much of our lives.
Posted it here: https://tildes.net/~finance/14x8/the_business_behind_kurzgesagt I thought it was a great video and a good response to the criticism in general. I don't really understand much of...
I thought it was a great video and a good response to the criticism in general. I don't really understand much of the controversy behind Kurzgesagt; they seem pretty clean overall as far as youtube goes.
It happened a while ago, but since I found it off of Think That Through's recent video, I figured I'd add here anyways that Kurzgesagt has responded to this, and in turn TheHatedOne has responded...
It happened a while ago, but since I found it off of Think That Through's recent video, I figured I'd add here anyways that Kurzgesagt has responded to this, and in turn TheHatedOne has responded back. Take these for what you shall.
Honestly, I didn't like this video very much. It succeeded in its primary intent (making me less trustful of kurzgesagt), but I disliked its methods. It was heavy on rhetoric, and it castigated its subject for some quite innocuous things.
People should feel free to skip at least the first 8 minutes. It's a bunch of I-don't-like-where-they're-getting-their-money rhetoric with his own cherry picked data points to support why with no real reason to back up his opinion other than "they're rich and I'm not".
First actual criticism comes at the 9 minute mark about a video about world poverty which he decides to blame Kurzgesagt for misleading because they used the data that goes back too far (fair point) and used an accepted standard for the metric instead of a new metric some other say should be used; and then showed his own charts that use the unaccepted metric and purposefully excluded China (with no reason given) because he likes his charts to reflect his own biases.
Pot:Kettle:Black (which I'm guessing will be a continuing theme here as I'm typing this as I go)
He does add in valid related (some more than others) points such as hunger, rich/poor gap, and slavery, but this is a constant argument when statistics are presented. Nothing can be all encompassing and there's always someone who wants to pick it apart because it doesn't include some other item they think is involved.
Facts are, per the accepted standard, global poverty has nosedived even when you only count the last 30 years, from 1.9B people in 1990 to 729M in 2015. Don't like the standard? Then change it, but don't complain that they're not using a made up metric you like more.
Next up is the 10 minute mark complaint about carbon emissions and what percentage of carbon emissions are the fault of which countries/areas. Kurzgesagt video uses one data set with specific criteria, this guy uses another data set with different criteria, and (shocking, I know) the statistics aren't the same! There's fair criticism of carbon capture, but then a tangent against GMOs because it "hasn't solved world hunger so far" but somehow thinks that organic farming will and fires shots against nuclear energy (another one of these solar and wind are all we'll ever need sort?)...
Legitimate complaint about when a sponsor for a video should be announced and I can see both sides of the argument here. His is that "it's at the end and most people don't watch the end of videos" the other side is every piece of media has the credits at the end and not at the beginning, would you still go to the movie theater if they played the 15 minute credit sequence before the movie?
Followed by a complaint about a law requiring a notice if a channel is gov't funded, but not privately funded with statements about what "should" happen. How dare Kurzgesagt not uhh... change the way youtube has built the site to show a banner that they have no control over?
Then the continued theme complaint: Sponsor of Kurzgesagt is also a sponsor of one of the many data sources used by Kurzgesagt. One where he conveniently neglects to mention has their own citations and sources.
Let's do a thought experiment: If you (a random person) were going to quote a statistic read on NPR to a friend, would you send that friend the NPR article or scroll to NPR's citations, find the study they were reporting on, and send the study? Except for a few pedantic contrarians reading this, you'd send the article. Kurzgesagt cites where they got the data, the data source cites where they got it or their methodology for gathering it, those sources cite their sources, and so on and so forth. Where is the point that the source should be cited? Should Kurzgesagt link every study used by their sources, or perhaps the actual people in the study, or maybe the mothers of the people in the study to find out if the study author(s) were good kids growing up to give you a sense of whether they should be trusted.
In short: Criticize the data, not the source. If you can't find fault with the data, then you don't have a leg to stand on (which is the vast majority of this video).
Is Gates a saint? Hell no and neither is any billionaire, billionaires shouldn't exist.
However, it ties into his ending/overall theme he wants to get across: How dare Kurzgesagt take money from rich people to make videos on subjects they agree with!
He even pushes this point near the end with the fact that Kurzgesagt has made anti-oil videos in an attempt to connect the two with the implication that Kurzgesagt would make pro-oil videos if the oil companies wrote them a big enough check.
So, I'm going to be up front with you. This comment has upset me quite a bit, and I honestly probably wouldn't be responding to it right now if not for that. For what it's worth, I've slept on it since and I'm going to try to do my best to be careful with my tone, and I want to emphasize that I do not have an issue with you personally — just this comment specifically.
Plainly speaking, your comment reads like you already decided you didn't like the video before you'd even seen it; it's formatted like a summary of the video's arguments, but is very misrepresentative of them throughout. Furthermore, you appear to have missed the original point of the video, and even suggest skipping eight minutes of it, despite the section in question being among the most important parts.1
This was a video that was made to point out the numerous undisclosed conflicts-of-interest present in Kurzgesagt's funding and sources, but you seem to have taken it as an attempt to tear down the entire channel wholesale. I don't entirely blame you, as the video is presented very dramatically. The backing audio, the camera angles, the strong vignette, the title – all of these things are far too strong relative to the points being made, and I can understand how that would put some folks off from what it says and make them feel as though the video were not genuine.
But the content of the video is sound. I've watched it three times now, once with your criticisms at the forefront of my mind, and it holds up2:
But honestly, this all is secondary to my main issue with your comment, which is that despite the dismissiveness of it, at least two people appear to have taken it as a substitute for watching the video itself; to me, this is a huge disappointment to see. And those are just the ones who spoke up about it. I have no idea how many of those who've upvoted you or given you an Exemplary label might not have seen the video either, but it worries me.
It's a good video. I like it, and I find it sad to see people seemingly prefer what I see as an unnecessary step-by-step takedown of the video to the video itself. My goal here, more than anything, is to explain why I find this and your comment together to be so harmful. I think the video made good points and was decently structured, even if it did have an overly theatrical presentation to it, and so to come here and see some tear it apart and then have everyone jump up to give them applause? It hurts to see.
One last note: I should mention that I don't plan to argue this with you. It took me over a day to get around to writing this, and hours to actually make it happen. It took a lot of energy to write, and I can't guarantee I'll be able to do it again if you respond. If it helps any, I will read your response should you write one — I just don't want this to become a long and potentially toxic back-and-forth like what appears to have happened elsewhere in this thread. If I choose to leave the conversation or simply do not reply, please understand it is not meant as an insult.
Regardless, thank you for taking the time to read my comment. I hope you understand why I feel the way I do, and I hope I've managed to say so without being rude; I apologize in advance if not.
1. TheHatedOne even said as much in one of his comments in a thread asking to talk to people who disagreed with this very video:
2. It is worth noting that some of this is just my take on the video, and my interpretation is not necessarily the authors intent. For what it's worth, I have read several comments by the author on reddit to gather extra context, including the thread mentioned in [1] as well as some comments he responded to in a r/Breadtube thread about the video.
(Edited to fix a typo and correct the subscriber count for Kurzgesagt, as I mistakenly said they had 22 million when they have just under 20 million)
The big problem that I am seeing in this thread is that the video is trying to explain a specific perspective and people like you and @AgustusFerdinand are completely unwilling to attempt to understand that perspective, presumably because you don’t like the window dressing. If you look at Agustus’ facts they are correct but they miss the point. Unless I missed something this video never once accused Kurzgesagt of lying. The issue is with the premise upon which those facts lie.
I don't want to hop on the train, but my perspective:
I found the video detrimental to the point they are making. Maybe it's a generational thing - I don't like polemic videos, but there is so much polemic content out these days, it must be good for something.
This is absolutely a fair assessment. Honestly, it feels like it comes down to whether you feel the content's quality outweighs the bad presentation. For me, it does, but I can easily get why it wouldn't for others. "True crime" describes it excellently, too — I remember that descriptor being on the tip of my tongue when writing my comment, and I only didn't use it because I couldn't remember the exact term.
You're referring to my comment about "saving me ~22 minutes", I take it?
Let me put it that way: I talked about having written a similar post to AugustusFerdinand's before. Your experience writing this post is pretty much exactly mine: It's tiring, exhausting even, to watch something where your bullshit meter is off the charts, pay attention to all the details, lots of lateral reading, and then you formulate it all in as concise a post as you can. I'm proud of that post, if I dare say so myself, but it was a lot of work. The video I argued with arguably wasn't even worth the effort.
My time on this planet is limited. And AugustusFerdinand's post resonated with my past experience. I don't have to watch this video. Frankly, AF hasn't saved me 22 minutes, he saved me hours if I wanted to approach the OP video with any amount of scrutiny, which I no doubt would want to. Hours I'd rather spend on other things.
There's a saying in german: "Der Ton macht die Musik" - the tone creates the music. The semantic translation would be something like "it's not in what you say, but how you say it". I'm not particularly interested to listen to overdramatized, overstated accusations, unless they're backed up with extraordinary evidence. There's a way and a place for the kinds of criticisms this video presumably wants to make, sure. And I'm not opposed to nuanced, long form discussions of complicated topics. Maybe that's what this video should've been instead. Given the reach of kurzgesagt (and the lightning rod-ness that comes with it), my assumption is that such a video would/does exist, if kurzgesagt is indeed as shady as alleged.
It would perhaps have been better to suggest then that this frustrated me when put in combination with what I saw as poor arguments. I can entirely understand not wanting to spend hours on a video trying to get a solid understanding of it — shit, I can understand not wanting to watch a lengthy video at all, so on it's own, that doesn't really bother me. Besides, as I stated in my original post, this video definitely has an off-putting presentation, and in that context a tepid-at-best response makes even more sense.
So really, I should emphasize that I'm not upset at you or anyone else who might've done this at all. It's perfectly normal and understandable to take shortcuts when evaluating something's validity if you don't have the energy to do that yourself; most of us don't, and that's okay. There's only so much time and energy in a day. I just worry the shortcut was made poorly, and thus put decent content in a bad light.
This one's on me for not making this more clear in my original post. Sorry about that.
It's all good. I think my comment reads more standoffish and ...hostile?... than I actually felt. It's not like I'm offended or anything, just wanted to share why I felt it's not worth it to dive into this one. I have a learned disdain for hatchet jobs, hit pieces and associated youtube drama. As a general rule, I find they, well, are often the same as what this one's being criticized as. Ya know, outrage drives engagement. That's not to say they can't be worthwhile or important, but I much prefer a calmer, more rational, strongly evidenced approach. In that sense, I stand by my shortcut, though I'll ask /u/cfabbro to share what changed his mind about KG, maybe he's got a source I should have a gander at.
I have read your reply and while I do not agree with all of your points, I do agree with some and I thank you for taking the time to write it all out.
I won't reply further as I believe this thread has run it's course and it'll be a rehashing of the same.
Hasn't this been an important point to illuminate lately, with Patagonia being "given away"? The benevolent billionaire myth is real and is worth paying attention to, for as long as a single person can wield enough money to sway public opinion and governmental efforts. In Patagonia's case, what has really changed?
A highly-popular channel spouting points authoritatively will always require a second glance. One that receives massive amounts of funding from the rich of the rich? Doubly so.
It's not about money, of course. If you sustain yourself by eating a pair of deer antlers every day, and I just happened to have a steady supply for deer antlers for a tad over four years, and I give it to you for exchange for whatever content you make, and that said content just happens to align with my beliefs and investments of the prized deer antler currency elsewhere... You see where I'm going with this?
Billionaires shouldn't exist.
The benevolent billionaire is a myth.
You should undoubtedly take a long hard look at what is being said, pushed, published, supported, etc. by anyone and especially someone with enough money to create coverage in their favor.
I'm not arguing against any of those points.
My argument is that this video purports that Kurzgesagt "cooks propaganda for billionaires" and fails to prove any of it.
Using different metrics doesn't prove Kurzgesagt reported data wrong.
Taking money from a billionaire while saying climate change is bad isn't propaganda just because the billionaire also thinks climate change is bad.
And that's the main point of the video, that X took money from Y and "I don't like Y or the fact that Y and Z use their money at all regardless of what X did with it."
This is the first line of the video's description, the maker of the video fails to prove such: Kurzgesagt is not just a popular science outreach channel. It's a major tool for propaganda of their billionaire sponsors.
The only way Kurzgesagt produces "propaganda" is if you disagree with the subject matter, regardless of who provided some funding. In the case of this youtuber, the subject matter they seem to disagree with is climate change, GMOs, vaccines, and nuclear energy.
"Prove" is a strong word easily abused when you don't have the documents portrayed any person spoken of as having these exact motivations. The whole point of investigative journalism is taking a few data points and drawing a line across them.
Granted, I'm not a fan of the video's approach – way too much vitriol and scaremongering (like calling a VP of a company its "lieutenant") – but it is still a piece of investigative journalism worth paying attention to.
Uh... Yes. Yes, it does exactly that.
Misrepresenting a point in statistics is how you can turn good into bad and vice versa. Saying "poverty has declined massively all over the globe" doesn't sound nearly as bad as "the actual poverty around the world is trending neutral at best".
"Well, the accepted metric is--" — Here's a thought experiment: I give you a buck fifty a day to survive on. No supplementary income. Maybe government subsidies. Or I give you $7.50 a day, same conditions. Which would you take?
Exactly.
So you see, the way we measure poverty matters. Feeding the narrative of "actually everything is fine" is no bueno when you have people in the US struggling to pay for necessities. Nevermind a country is deep poverty somewhere in Africa or Asia. Just because Kurzgesagt used a metric in general practice by a major organization operating on the subject matter doesn't mean the resulting message is 100% on point.
W--huh--wuh--huh??
I'd be immediately skeptical of anyone making points on popular topics if they receive sponsorship from anyone currently invested in said topics. The Hated One cites numerous occasions where videos on certain topics just happened to be sponsored by Gates' organizations. The is the essence of investigative journalism.
("Stability of the oil and gas industry" my left cheek.)
Besides, I think you get the wrong impression with regards to The Hated One and his attitude towards Bill Gates. Just because the latter happens to be the subject of the conversation doesn't make him the villain of the story – or, in your words, "I don't like Y". I think you're getting the general attitude of "I don't like this shit" confused for "I don't like this man", which I find an unfair point to ascribe against the video.
Promoting the point of a person or institution in power to placate, agitate, or disenfranchise the population is propaganda. In fact, this is pretty much a condensed version of the definition given on Wikipedia:
In this case, of course, Wikipedia points at governments as the primary perpetrators, but the fact that lobbying in politics is so commonplace these days suggests the state is hardly the boundry for this activity.
...you mean all funding, given that each of the given videos are specifically and solely described as "funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation" or some other Gates organization?
The man has provided sources for how these specific environmental and related projects have not yet been found sustainable and/or a better alternative than the proven methods currently employed worldwide. How did you come to the conclusion of "well he must hate these things then" based on that?
So no proof and yet states "Kurzgesagt propagandizes for billionaires" is okay?
Point wasn't misrepresented. The data was given per the accepted standard, there are likely other standards that would measure poverty differently than the cherry-picked one the video used. "Poverty is neutral if I change the way it's measured and exclude the countries that run counter to the narrative I'm trying to make" is misrepresenting data.
"Person will accept more money" isn't the gotcha you seem to think it is.
So Kurzgesagt should have used an unaccepted method to measure poverty because it better suits the author of this video? None of the sources provided, that I can access, provide any data to back up the opinion that the poverty line should be higher other than "rich people are richer" which, while true, doesn't support the quoted increase.
As I've already stated, you should be skeptical of any claims from anyone. However, the video fails to actually attack the data, likely because there's no fault they can find, and instead attacks the source of the funds.
Today you found out that anything can be "propaganda" if you define it wide enough. I'm not going to get into a semantics argument on the literal definition of a word when we both know that the video is pushing propaganda to mean deception/lies.
So we're going forward with the assumption that there were no ads on the videos, not a single dollar of patreon supporter money, merchandise, or ad revenue was spent in the making of it and ignoring the fact that no where is there any evidence they were: specifically and solely described as "funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation"
If you can find where that statement exists outside this video, I welcome it.
Based on watching the video and linking his little quips together and looking at his subreddit. Carbon capture is probably a dead end, but he also has little bits decrying nuclear, vaccines, GMOs (in favor of organic of all things).
He really should stick to privacy videos, because a video that is summed up as "I don't like where they're getting their money, but can't actually disprove anything said" doesn't work very well. And please, lets not give titles like "investigative journalist" that mean something to a youtuber that lacks everything that it stands for and just has a conspiracy theorist axe to grind.
Is speculation based on evidence forbidden now? Half of journalism is "We don't have the exact details, but here's what we understand given the data points present".
Or, wait: you don't like the conclusion, so anything short of a paper slip saying "I did it, Love, Bill Gates" would not satisfy your incredibly high criteria? Is that what I'm seeing here?
I get a sense that this gotcha-fest is going to go on from here.
"Accepted" doesn't mean "of high quality", which is a point you'd glanced over in my response. You thought it's a "gotcha" moment when I gave you two valid metrics for poverty around the world. If buck fifty a day is "poverty", then what is seven fifty a day? "Livable"? Or maybe – just maybe – "barely survivable", which is why presenting this "unaccepted" metric was important.
(I'd even raised that same concern and addressed it preemptively in my response, because you were stubborn enough to stand by an appeal to authority even when presented with an alternative.)
The minimum wage in the US is $7.25 per hour.
And no, China did not make enough difference to suggest the entire thing is somehow moot. You can see it with your own two eyes, given that it's a graph. The point stands: poverty has not gone down if you take human standards to count.
Oh hey, a "gotcha".
No, it should've been more honest about which metric they used, why, and what are the important points to consider about it – because it benefits the audience of a popular science and philosophy channel.
And maybe – just maybe – give a brief mention to the alternatives which could put a dent in their point, because intellectual honesty is an important factor in evaluation one's data.
Or are the views all that matter? Because getting more eyes on incomplete, unscrutinized data is how you trick people into believing horseshit.
I say we ask more of someone who gets eyes and ears. I've seen Tom Scott publish at least two separate videos where he scrutinizes his own research, because that's what intellectual honesty is. Why should Kurzgesagt get a pass? Because visuals and getting a half-baked idea across is more important?
Because it wasn't aiming to.
A five-persons production team gets a large sponsorship deal from a megarich dude's funds, skyrockets to a 20-some-member poduction house, and then just happens to come up with the same points that Bill Gates has invested money in? And you don't find it the least bit suspicious?
It doesn't do that either.
What it does is highlight the connection between Bill Gates, his sponsorships, and an influx of points that prop up his investments across multiple industries.
When a study of "sugar is good, fat is bad, eat more sugar and less fat" is funded by the sugar industry, that shows a conflict of interests. As far as I'm concerned, we're seeing something eerily similar here.
Hello, smugness, my old friend.
Don't pick my position for me.
Feel free to. My point wasn't that the channel'd received no funding outside of the Gates foundation: my point was that it just so happened the points aligning with Gates' investments were made under the banner of said foundation.
Ah, the "amateur photography is not really photography" argument. Not a fan.
Let's keep calling it that, because it's okay to do something poorly. Bellingcat and The Hated One are in the same boat, they're just rowing very differently.
WOAH there Harvey Bullock
I'm gonna stop there, 'cause this is getting ridiculous. You may consider it a victory for yourself, the common sense, countermisinformation, or whichever cause you'd prefer to win this for.
The thing is: I agree with you: the video isn't well-made. It could itself be much more careful with its arguments or its sources. I just don't think your case is as bulletproof as you and the Exemplaries you receive suggest. I didn't enjoy being sniped for points, either.
Was fun. Let's not do that again.
Thank you for saving be ~22 minutes, lol. I've seen this kind of video before; in fact I've written roughly your post on an entirely different topic before.
It seems to me, once you've reached a certain size of audience, people will start complaining no matter how many crosses your 'i's and dots your 't's have. At that point, the question isn't whether you get this kind of criticism, but how well-founded it is, whether it's experts criticizing you, and how much it is.
Maybe it's because this is tildes, but these takedown videos seem to be targeted at the people who are doing it mostly right - Veritasium, or Kurzgesagt. There are, from what I can gather, way worse examples out there with similar reach, but I guess those never crop up on the radar of skeptics such as the author of this video.
And one of these days, we're going to have to have a beer and a conversation about renewables and nuclear power, but not today. Then again, might be a braindead take by the video author you're referring to. But it's not like you need nuclear for a carbon-free grid, is my point.
Thank you for taking the time to watch the video and write this grand video for those of us who ofte tl;dw.
I cannot properly define or deconstruct it, but I find there's something off about Kurzgesagt. It has a similar intuitive feel as utopian cults. At least it's a lot better than the afterskool series. But I suspect this producer has had the same intuitive experience, and kudos to him, taken some time to create a response. It appears he may have missed the mark in many places, but again, kudos to his efforts.
Thinking about it further now, it may be that what I have seen in Kurzegesagt content is their attitude, common among technically inclined, that we can "fix" the world's problems without a fundamental and messy re-think about what it means to be a human on the planet at this point. Also, that we can transform from that re-thinking without feeling some real pain. And further, that there is something wrong with feeling pain.
I can't point to data, but I suspect that many wealthy folks, among the ones who arrived at their wealth through significant effort*, are doing their best to escape feeling pain. That is, they are feeling the pain, but wish to avoid cognizance and presence of the feeling, and so pursue wealth and influence with all the gusto that addicts pursue dope. Another conversation.
*this is not to suggest that many if not most (if not all) of the extremely wealthy didn't begin life with significant advantages including a lot of wealth. This is the ones who spent a lot of effort on getting wealthier, and in some cases, like Trump, didn't end up that much wealthier in the end but still spent a lot of effort and are still really damn wealthy
I'm completely with you. I feel as if Kurzgesagt's videos run counter to the (perhaps more realistic) doom-and-gloom takes on several of the subjects they cover and that can be perceived, as you have, as a utopian outlook that is maybe not entirely in touch with reality or require one to have an optimistic outlook on the subjects. I for one don't actually believe we'll make the necessary changes to solve many of the problems without great suffering.
Kurzegesagt have mentioned many a fancy project to help resolve some major problem, but I recall they're usually tempered with a message of "this isn't the only solution and never could be." Their channel runs counter to the sky-is-falling content that many others run, but so long as it is truthful I see no problem with them having an overall positive outlook channel on subjects that trouble us all. I don't see issue with talking about the things people are trying to solve the problems instead of the usual discussion about all the problems with no discussion of what is being done about it. It's not for everyone, but neither are the-end-is-nighers.
Yeah. I only made it a few minutes in.
What's your takeaways from this video? Trustworthy? Untrustworthy?
It is a very bias video, but it's a good contravideo to Kurzgesagt's content. A video like this is more digestible compared to the nearly two hour long video another Youtube channel did, though not as detailed I imagine. I can't fathom going through a two hour long video (at double speed, mind you, so only an hour long) in one sitting. The bite size content attention economy has me in its grasp.
Even though I don't necessarily like the video, it's something that is needed. If someone created a Coffeezilla channel but for Sciencetube, I think it could be successful, but likely challenging.
This is an excellent video essay looking into some of the dubious sources and funding in Kurzgesagt videos.
I don’t follow Kurzgesagt too closely, but their videos do pop up from time to time, and I usually enjoy them. They definitely portray themselves as giving a face to scientific consensus. As this video shows, it isn’t necessarily an actual scientific consensus.
I wrote a lengthy reply in another comment, but wanted to point out this quote as the video does nothing of the sort. In fact the video failed to do anything even close to disputing the data. He's just got a hard-on, as his other videos and social media show, for conspiracy theories and decrying anything that involves funding from rich people.
Honestly, the whole video is basically about whether to trust ourworldindata.org. Aside from being run by economists (which might explain the focus on the concept of "investment" which is questionable but reasonable for discussion of global, social issues) I see no problem with their funding or expertise. It's a non-profit mostly run by researchers from Oxford.
Unless you have a problem with billionaires giving money to charities in general (I would argue it is a problem but not because of the billionaires but the system that allows billionaires to exist), I genuinely wonder what the fuss is about. Should they just keep the money? Should the government seize it (I say, yes, through taxation, but that's a different conversation)? The claim that Bill fucking Gates is just in it for the money (rather than trying to invest in projects he genuinely believes in) is ludicrous. Dude literally could buy everything that pops in his mind and buy it, live that way till he dies and support a few dozen generations of offspring. He's not trying to become a trillionaire with some malaria vaccine play.
Now, again, I do think there's a problem with so much money and thus influence being horded by a small group of individuals. I find some specific solutions they try to push ridiculous and I believe there might be problems with a guy like Bill Gates getting stubborn (not evil, stubborn) and using his power to block WHO guidelines or ignore research that tells him he's wrong. But I'd like to see the cold hard facts proving that Gates' charity, specifically, is a net-negative to society.
The main reason I bother to have an opinion on this is that the channel has some red-flags that push it dangerously close to "us vs them" conspiracy shit (sinister background music, like 50 videos on government surveillance, the channel name being "The Hated One" – which sounds like an "if everyone around you is an asshole..." kind of situation). While I believe it's healthy to be skeptical about propaganda, in recent years this backfired and the lack of trust in literally everything is becoming a destructive force. I am starting to actively decide to trust sources I can not 100% verify because the alternative is trusting no one which I believe is, ironically, a state more vulnerable to misinformation.
Most importantly, you can disagree and criticize specific, individual aspects of Kurzgesagt without making it about a conspiracy to sell vaccines and artificial meat or something. Does carbon capture work? I doubt it. But that doesn't mean it's a sinister plot.
To be upfront I have not watched this video yet, but if you're interested in understanding why Bill Gates' philanthopy could be considered bad, I recommend a book called The New Prophets of Capital. It's pretty short, and Gates is one of the four "prophets" it discusses. Obviously I agree that Gates could do a lot worse with his money, but he could also do a lot better - I think Mackenzie Scott is the current best model for how to no-strings-attached give away billions that you shouldn't have.
I won't be able to do the argument justice in a comment, but the basic idea is that Gates uses his money to promote market philosophies in the areas he works, like healthcare and education. For example if he wants to extend the reach of vaccines in Africa, the problem he identifies is that poor countries just don't have enough money to incentivize pharmaceutical companies to produce what they need, so we just need to stimulate demand until these countries are able to pay a fair market price for the vaccines they need. This promotes the concept of healthcare as a commodity.
Another argument is that his philanthropy is undemocratic - since he has more money than the GDP of many African countries, he's able to come in and implement whatever he wants whether or not people like it. One example given is AGRA, a program to improve the efficiency and success of African farmers (good), and one method they use is to try to end the traditional practice of farmers harvesting and communally sharing their own seeds, and instead get them to start buying more efficient seeds from Monsanto and friends every year. Here's an article I just found about this issue: https://grain.org/en/article/6035-the-real-seeds-producers-small-scale-farmers-save-use-share-and-enhance-the-seed-diversity-of-the-crops-that-feed-africa. Gates is on the corporate side of this conflict.
This comment probably sounds very one-sided and unfair, but I promise the book, while obviously agenda-driven, is more even-handed and cites plenty of sources to make these arguments.
That sounds reasonable, I actually remember reading about them pushing Monsanto in Africa, which seems rather disgusting.
I'm actually mostly playing devil's advocate, here, since I'm more and more convinced my (general default state of) cynicism on these matters is really constructive. In terms of Africa, we've had decades of doomsday scenarios, charities mostly aiming to fight symptoms rather than causes and a level of instability that (while certainly caused to a large part by western colonialism) seems to be at least to a large part internal. The "effective altruism" crowd sometimes does parody-worthy, Silicon-Valley-bro things but at least they attempt to fight causes rather than symptoms. Some of it not working or being hijacked by corporate interest is of course disappointing but I doubt all or even most of it is a conspiracy to push Monsanto's profits and whatnot. I'm not sure if I even disagree with improving Africa's economic power being a good focus (even if some pharma companies benefit from it), we can't just have a billion people depend on charity for centuries.
One day, maybe only in another life, I'd like to try out a decentralized system of digital trust. I've written about it before, but the core idea is that there's people/orgs("entities") who you explicitly trust. And those trust other entities. This forms a web, but is ultimately a bit simplistic. We can amplify this web: if your stated opinions on a set of topics strongly correlate with those of another person, then it's likely their opinions on topics you have not formed an opinion on yet might be relevant. Inversely if they tend to disagree with you. I'm imagining this as a giant filter through which to view the web. Of course, the usual caveats about filter bubbles apply, but it sure seems better to filter by trust rather than engagement, as social media platforms do it. Imagine reading mostly those product reviews online by people who pay attention to the same aspects as you. No bot farms giving out 5-star nondescript ratings to every paying company, only other users. No more conspiracy nuts on reddit, those just disappear into the background noise. Of course, all of it transparent to the user. You can peer behind the curtain, and see who the system thinks you should trust. And you could look at all the crap it weeds out.
The amount of bullshit floating around, and not knowing who to trust, is a scourge upon the current internet.
Maybe one day I'll get around to it.
Isn't a lot of algorithmic bubble-forming done via correlating content rather than raw likes/upvotes already? How would you get out of a bubble of conspiracy theories?
I'm generally fascinated by (read: desperately hoping for) ways to create appropriate trust in big systems. One way that helped me a bit with my own paranoia was accepting a scale of trust (say, between 0 and 100) rather than making it binary. I trust this publication 90%. I trust this one 5%. And so on. Never 0, never 100, though. Also to identify "first principles" people base their opinions on and seeing them in that light, which helps to both find common ground and accept arguments based on elemental truth we can never agree on. Not sure how to automate any of this, though.
Here's another video (1h50min) I recently came across, diving into the topic of "Kurzgesagt Climate Greenwashing".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCuy1DaQzWI
I'm not even halfway in and they bring up some other great topics for deep dives.
I had forgotten about 'McDonaldization', and it accurately describes much of our lives.
The Business Behind Kurzgesagt
Posted it here: https://tildes.net/~finance/14x8/the_business_behind_kurzgesagt
I thought it was a great video and a good response to the criticism in general. I don't really understand much of the controversy behind Kurzgesagt; they seem pretty clean overall as far as youtube goes.
It happened a while ago, but since I found it off of Think That Through's recent video, I figured I'd add here anyways that Kurzgesagt has responded to this, and in turn TheHatedOne has responded back. Take these for what you shall.