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Expertise in the Age of YouTube

behavioralscientist.org

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Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#11

Post by sedeki »

nefitty wrote: post #6

I'm interested to know how other developers on HN prefer to learn. I really like just running into a problem and Googling my way to a solution. I read snippets of docs, blog articles, SO answers, etc. and then try to piece together an understanding. I have a hard time incorporating videos into my ad hoc learning. What is your preferred method of learning new tools, techniques, etc?

I am prone to buying a book about the subject. Problem is I already have too many books and honestly I don’t read them all. I didn’t read much technical literature before Uni, and didn’t know where to find information about technical subjects growing up (even as I was of the geeky type).

My main problem is what to focus on. Not how to learn it. I guess reading a blog post instead of paying Amazon would be good for me. :)

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#12

Post by Wordball »

benterris wrote: post #7

What "absurdly demanding online game" is the author referring to in the first paragraph ? He mentions Overwatch later in the article but in another context so I'm not sure that's the one he meant.

Probably Fortnite, though all the players surely haven't "internalized its mechanical nuances to Ph.D. level"

Mexico Population: ~128 million

Fortnite Peak monthly players: 78.3 million

LoL peak montly players: 111 million

Fortnite total accounts: 250 million

you can say whatever you want if it's a blog article

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#13

Post by angleofrepose »

ravenstine wrote: post #10
jnellis wrote: post #4

As a finish carpenter for a number of years and having to deal with fixing homeowners attempts at doing their own remodel efforts based on them watching youtube videos, I've come to general law regarding expertise or 'how to' videos. There's an inverse relationship between quality of video and accuracy of information (or maybe just usefulness of information.) The majority of good polished videos have the least accura…

I find that's true of most information. The higher the craftsmanship of the video, the worse the actual information being presented. Lectures, for instance, that are just a professor talking with his PowerPoint slides are almost always better than videos that put on a production with fancy graphics, jump cuts, and narration. Look at the news. The news with more spectacle tends to be of lower quality on average. Or an…

The more I think about it and reflect on my (computer science) education I think more and more the lectures are awful. It is only the ease/ubiquity of creating them that has kept them around.

Fancy graphics is by no means an indicator of good information, but neither are lectures.

It blows my mind that I can be taught programming concepts, say data structures, on a PDF. That is insanity, it is a total divorce from the idea of computer science to begin with, to hide data and information in a non-executable environment. Someone has the quote that "pdfs are where data goes to die". Give me the data structure, let me ask questions of it, hold it in my hands and inspect it at the pace of my own thoughts. This is not what material provided in "lecture" through "slide decks" provide.

The information density of lectures is also low, why are we anchored to the low bandwidth channel of voice (I could say the same about text writing or a textbook)? Give me the information, let me have it, then let's talk about it in organized discussion.

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#14

Post by CM30 »

I think it's especially interesting to look at how quickly people master a brand new field too, since it seems the timespan between a new hobby getting started and people making professional quality works in said area has gone down significantly too.

For instance, my go to example are video game mods and ROM hacks. In the olden days, these communities grew quite slowly, and it took a fair amount of time for people to get to understand the workings of a new game's engine and how it could be built upon.

And you can see this if you look at Super Mario 64. In it early days, mods were really basic, and even the fanciest ones looked super primitive by today's standards:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgLc0rPRs3U

It then took years to go from stuff like that to more advanced original game mods like Super Mario 64 Star Road, and even longer before ASM coding became something many people understood and used for custom enemies, bosses, gimmicks, etc (like in Kaze Emanuar's current works).

Now contrast to Super Mario Odyssey. It took just months for mods to get made for that game, and under a year for fancy looking ones like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss7unbD4yHg

And even that's a slower example. Since then, we've gone from seeing modding scenes take years to develop, to seeing them a week or two after release, to in some cases seeing mods getting made BEFORE the game officially hit store shelves altogether.

Seriously, Smash Bros Ultimate got mods before the game was available to buy, all based on leaked copies posted online.

Outside of games, same thing happens in web development too. New framework pops up, professional looking sites/apps/whatever get made in the first week. It's gotten to the point that those jokes about looking for 'rockstar ninjas in [new programming language here]' may not be jokes anymore.

But yeah, the quality baseline goes up significantly quicker now.

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#15

Post by jjeaff »

CM30 wrote: post #14

I think it's especially interesting to look at how quickly people master a brand new field too, since it seems the timespan between a new hobby getting started and people making professional quality works in said area has gone down significantly too. For instance, my go to example are video game mods and ROM hacks. In the olden days, these communities grew quite slowly, and it took a fair amount of time for people to…

But those examples seem to be the result of more frameworks and tooling and boilerplate code that is already available that people can just build upon rather than delve into the inner workings and figure stuff out - rather than people learning to become experts much faster.

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#16

Post by porknubbins »

omosubi wrote: post #8
nefitty wrote: post #6

I'm interested to know how other developers on HN prefer to learn. I really like just running into a problem and Googling my way to a solution. I read snippets of docs, blog articles, SO answers, etc. and then try to piece together an understanding. I have a hard time incorporating videos into my ad hoc learning. What is your preferred method of learning new tools, techniques, etc?

I'm the same way. I find that choosing a project that inspires me takes me much further than just saying "I want to learn X, let me follow a tutorial". On a related note, I just read nassim taleb's anti fragile which has a section arguing that most progress comes from people tinkering with things to get something they can sell or to solve some problem they have rather than academics trying to understand things from b…

Tutorials on youtube are generally terrible for learning because they don’t show you any of the design decisions, mistakes, thought process etc. As if what stood between you and programming Tetris in Rust was not knowing the order of keystrokes. Udemy has (a few) authors with much better motivated examples I find.

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#17

Post by namelosw »

jnellis wrote: post #4

As a finish carpenter for a number of years and having to deal with fixing homeowners attempts at doing their own remodel efforts based on them watching youtube videos, I've come to general law regarding expertise or 'how to' videos. There's an inverse relationship between quality of video and accuracy of information (or maybe just usefulness of information.) The majority of good polished videos have the least accura…

'Polished' might be an result of large population of audience.

If we take an example from programming:

A fundamental Python or JavaScript course would have massive audiences. As a result, some of the video author would made money from their videos and then keep polishing the videos.

In contrast, a in depth video guide on how to prove theorems in Coq would be very lucky if they have 10 audience...

Not like the Olympic games or video games, where professionals' performance are pleasant to behold. The problem of 'How to' video is it encourages shallow information because the real professionals' work are either too arcane or too boring for the audience.

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#18

Post by glandium »

ravenstine wrote: post #10
jnellis wrote: post #4

As a finish carpenter for a number of years and having to deal with fixing homeowners attempts at doing their own remodel efforts based on them watching youtube videos, I've come to general law regarding expertise or 'how to' videos. There's an inverse relationship between quality of video and accuracy of information (or maybe just usefulness of information.) The majority of good polished videos have the least accura…

I find that's true of most information. The higher the craftsmanship of the video, the worse the actual information being presented. Lectures, for instance, that are just a professor talking with his PowerPoint slides are almost always better than videos that put on a production with fancy graphics, jump cuts, and narration. Look at the news. The news with more spectacle tends to be of lower quality on average. Or an…

Counter example: 3Blue1Brown.

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#19

Post by weaksauce »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #3

I have been starting the process of learning hand woodworking by watching the likes of Paul Sellers. It is amazing how much knowledge there is available on YouTube about craftsmanship. Combining YouTube with niche web forums multiplies the learning power. I'm already able to dimension boards with nothing but a hand plane, a combination square, a depth gauge, and winding sticks. I'm just at the start of my journey but…

paul sellers is great! such a gem. check out wood work web, johnathan katz moses, pask makes, izzy swan and jackmanworks... as well as some of the older videos from William Ng. they are all quality!

Re: Expertise in the Age of YouTube

#20

Post by hos234 »

CM30 wrote: post #14

I think it's especially interesting to look at how quickly people master a brand new field too, since it seems the timespan between a new hobby getting started and people making professional quality works in said area has gone down significantly too. For instance, my go to example are video game mods and ROM hacks. In the olden days, these communities grew quite slowly, and it took a fair amount of time for people to…

This kind of stuff usually is a sign that there is group involved.

Sometimes directly or indirectly (public repos/forums) working with each other. Even amateur groups produce stuff much more quickly these days. You can see it play out in college dorms when an enthusiastic group gets together.

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