Iâm a big fan of OpenPhil/âGiveWell popularizing longtermist-relevant facts via sponsoring popular YouTube channels like Kurzgesagt (21M subscribers). That said, I just watched two of their videos and found a mistake in one[1] and took issue with the script-writing in the other one (not sure how best to give feedbackâdo I need to become a Patreon supporter or something?):
9:40 âIf we really are early, we have an incredible opportunity to mold *thousands* or *even millions* of planets according to our visions and dreams.ââWhy understate this? Kurzgesagt already made a video imagining humanity colonizing the Milky Way Galaxy to create a future of âa tredecillion potential livesâ (10^42 people), so why not say âhundreds of billions of planetsâ (the number of planets in the Milky Way), âor even more if we colonize other galaxies before other loud/âgrabby aliens reach them firstâ? This also seems inaccurate because the chance that we colonize between 1,000-9,999,999 planets (or even 1,000-9,999,999 planets) is less than the probability that we colonize >10 million (or even >1 billion) planets.
As an aside, the reason I watched these two videos just now was because I was inspired to look them up after watching the depressing new Veritasium video Do People Understand the Scale of the Universe? in which he shows a bunch of college students from a university with 66th percentile average SAT scores who do not know basic facts about the universe.
[1] The mistake I found was in the most recent video You Are The Center of The Universe (Literally) was that it said (9:10) that the diameter of the observable universe is 465,000 Milky Way galaxies side-by-side, but thatâs actually the radius of the observable universe, not the diameter.
Iâm a big fan of OpenPhil/âGiveWell popularizing longtermist-relevant facts via sponsoring popular YouTube channels like Kurzgesagt (21M subscribers). That said, I just watched two of their videos and found a mistake in one[1] and took issue with the script-writing in the other one (not sure how best to give feedbackâdo I need to become a Patreon supporter or something?):
Why Aliens Might Already Be On Their Way To Us
My comment:
As an aside, the reason I watched these two videos just now was because I was inspired to look them up after watching the depressing new Veritasium video Do People Understand the Scale of the Universe? in which he shows a bunch of college students from a university with 66th percentile average SAT scores who do not know basic facts about the universe.
[1] The mistake I found was in the most recent video You Are The Center of The Universe (Literally) was that it said (9:10) that the diameter of the observable universe is 465,000 Milky Way galaxies side-by-side, but thatâs actually the radius of the observable universe, not the diameter.
Found it! https://ââwww.youtube.com/ââuser/ââKurzgesagt > click on âand 7 more linksâ in the little bio > click on âView email addressâ > do the CAPTCHA (Iâve also DMâd it to you)