As someone who was once a, "I've watched a lot of YouTube videos about physics", person, i think it's very interesting how confident people are in their understanding of what is essentially the edge of physics, something only seen in a masters or doctorate degree. Specifically the whole spacetime and qm thing.
There's so many videos on it that you begin to feel like you really understand it after half a dozen or so repeat the same words at you. But the thing you don't realize is that those are literally the only words they could possibly communicate, and that's an infinitesimal fraction of the nuance of the real thing. Plus, there's a selection bias in that the videos that make you feel good get more views, so you're more likely to stumble upon videos that make you _think_ you understand it that videos that actually do, partly because the only videos that could make you understand are a graduate degrees worth of 80-100 hour lecture courses that you're gonna have to take notes on.
It makes me wonder if this is true for literally every subject. I fancy myself are least politically versed in modern events but is my entire understanding based on an entertainment-first version of an actual education? How much do i walk around using jargon that i don't really understand to make points whose true depth I'm completely unaware of?
My favorite phenomenon of which you speak are the guys who haven’t thought about math since 11th grade or physics ever aside from seeing some Joe Rogan clips with Eric Weinstein but will pound their keyboards with fury that “STRING THEORY IS A BIG LIE!!!”
Well, unfortunately some otherwise great physics educators intentionally stoke that fire, portraying the current particle physics agenda as if its some conspiracy to waste funding rather than the consensus of thousands of the best minds in physics. Selling people a superficial sense of contrarian insight ends up being a very successful marketing tactic.
There's so many videos on it that you begin to feel like you really understand it after half a dozen or so repeat the same words at you. But the thing you don't realize is that those are literally the only words they could possibly communicate, and that's an infinitesimal fraction of the nuance of the real thing. Plus, there's a selection bias in that the videos that make you feel good get more views, so you're more likely to stumble upon videos that make you _think_ you understand it that videos that actually do, partly because the only videos that could make you understand are a graduate degrees worth of 80-100 hour lecture courses that you're gonna have to take notes on.
It makes me wonder if this is true for literally every subject. I fancy myself are least politically versed in modern events but is my entire understanding based on an entertainment-first version of an actual education? How much do i walk around using jargon that i don't really understand to make points whose true depth I'm completely unaware of?