YouTube quality is restricted to excellent documentaries like this BBC treatment,
Dangerous Knowledge which originally aired in 2007
I’ve given up on YouTube. It has become a cesspool of racism, hater abuse and pointless tirades by the certifiably mad. After trying the site for eight months I left it completely disillusioned with the low caliber of what is being uploaded there.
It seems you have your choice between adorable pet videos, neo-Nazi racial hatred and stupidity, or the rants of the insane who think they must destroy the world to save it. It would be comical if it weren’t such a ridiculous waste of time.
The truth is accessing YouTube is so toxic it should only be possible to do so after you’ve signed a disclaimer and agreed not to hold YT responsible for any brain damage which you might suffer while you’re there.
At least sixty percent of the “serious” videos on the site consist of childish ad hominem attacks, misguided “logic” from the chronically analytically impaired. I have felt a great sense of exhilaration after finally realizing that the whole thing is a sad waste of time and leaving it.
It is interesting that it so easy to loose perspective when you are actively engaged in an activity. You only realize you’ve just been wasting time after you’ve unfortunately wasted lots and lots of it. I think I was using it as an excuse NOT to work hard enough and NOT to do enough research.
I need to get a grip on my writing schedule again. I’m in the middle of a complex writing assignment…And the combination of the grueling demands of that and my frivolous time wasting on YouTube, I’ve almost completely allowed other parts of my life to fall apart.
I’m reconnecting with the real world and trying to convince friends, family and work acquaintances that the rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated.
My Present Research Foci include:
1. AI, self-reference and Godel’s Incompleteness theorem. It’s for my project…And it’s quite complicated…
2. As a outgrowth of that, I need to also understand possible applications to artificial intelligence. The recent research into this has made some very intriguing advanced.
Totally understandable…
I don’t participate in that community..I initially was going to but then I was repulsed by all the Drama, which seems to be all YouTube is about lately. I use it mainly for music videos and art things.
Comment by aesthetixxx — September 3, 2008 @ 9:30 pm
Ms Sirius: You know, of course I have witnessed the same thing about youtube. But even the *good* videos made by individuals are disappointing because even if polite and well-meaning, they are disorganized, with hemming and hawing, and a great deal of irrelevancy and small talk. Small talk as compared to big ideas and argument. Written prose is a far more efficient way to carry out serious discussion and inquiry. Probably good to have a video or two occasionally to see who you are interacting with, but otherwise.
What exactly is your mysterious “project”? Can you say more? I am very interested in philosophy of mathematics, and thus, inter alia, Goedel’s Theorem. Mainly just because pushing on basic questions in philosophy in general leads to philosophy of mathematics (I like James Brown’s comment in the preface of his book on philosophy of mathematics “Anyone seriously interested in philosophy must be interested in the nature of mathematics… as for those who persist in thinking otherwise — let them burn in hell”. (Brown himself is a fervent atheist). Also, time is a very interesting subject, although I think not so much its treatment in general relativity as you were mentioning earlier. The relation between time in physics generally (temporal symmetry) and common sense time is a good showcase for the issues of scientism and the relation betweenn Wilfrid Sellars’s manifest and scientific images. So this has been a major concern of mine. Particularly the way the arrow of time is allegedly reconstructed with the use of entropy. Which reminds me: your first video about “science” seems to me to not fit so well with your heavy endorsement of Owen Flanagan much later on. To me, Flanagan is a have-your-cake-and-eat-it scientismist. I think his “really hard problem” isn’t really addressing the deep issues in philosophy of mind at all–unlike Chalmers, from whom of course the conceit was lifted and then downplayed. But pace Chalmers, he himself I don’t think is really “taking consciousness seriously” either. Well, enough ranting. Hopefully this might open some space for discussion.
Have you read Goedel’s Gibbs Lecture and what are your comments on his famous disjunction?
Comment by benson bear — November 18, 2008 @ 6:51 am