I upvoted, but here are some comments I have. Looking at the titles of the first three videos, it wasn’t clear how they related to rationality.
How Does Bitcoin Work? Simple and Precise 5…
Why Your Life Is Harder When You Are Ugly | The… (didn’t notice the “Halo Effect” in the thumbnail at first)
Why You STRUGGLE to Finish on Time | The…
So perhaps people downvoted based on first impressions that it doesn’t seem that related to rationality?
I enjoyed the Bitcoin, halo effect, and planning fallacy videos, but I didn’t think that the video “If You Want to Find Truth You Need to Step Into Cringe” made a solid rational argument for the opening statement that “If you honestly seek truth, and if you decide to tell the truth, at some point, you will accept to appear cringe to the eyes of most people.” The only evidence given was that telling other people the truth that you are a weeaboo is cringe, but that “truth” (which is about you yourself) is quite disanalogous to truths about the external world. Since the channel is branded as “rational”, and you also include “Effective Altruism” in the channel description, I would like the videos to all have rigorous rational arguments. For this video, I would also have preferred a somewhat more serious overall tone in the script instead of leaning in so heavily into internet culture, so that the videos seem more respectable perhaps, but I don’t have a strong preference about this.
Regarding this YouTube comment of yours: “internet dynamics are probably relatable to a YT audience. Should I worry that using them as examples would make my videos cringe in the eyes of a sophisticated audience? Well, maybe but… I prefer to defy social rules rather than accept them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires, but I observed that when it works, the payoff is usually very high. Plus, it’s fun.” Make sure to take downside risk seriously! I don’t think any of your videos so far have been risky, and I don’t think talking about internet culture is risky, but it’s something to keep in mind. It would be good to avoid inadvertently damaging the reputation of rationality and/or effective altruism. Ben Todd’s “Why not to rush to translate effective altruism into other languages” says “any kind of broad based outreach is risky because it’s hard to reverse. Once your message is out there, it tends to stick around for years, so if you get the message wrong, you’ve harmed years of future efforts. We call this the risk of ‘lock in’.” I don’t agree with that much of Ben Todd’s post, but I think it’s important to be thoughtful about the messaging that you’re putting forth (not saying that you aren’t). Before making the videos, do you get the scripts reviewed by other people and ask for honest feedback? Ideally, you’d get feedback from rationalists and effective altruists as well as people who are neither. If not, I would recommend doing so, especially since these videos are targeted toward the general public.
It could also help to have official subtitles. YouTube makes it pretty easy to add subtitles—you just paste in your script and then it automatically aligns it to the right time.
I think the animations are really awesome, not only in art quality but also in elucidating the subject of the video visually. It might be nice to have some non-white characters too (besides nonhuman animals like doge lol) for some more diversity.
I upvoted, but here are some comments I have. Looking at the titles of the first three videos, it wasn’t clear how they related to rationality.
How Does Bitcoin Work? Simple and Precise 5…
Why Your Life Is Harder When You Are Ugly | The… (didn’t notice the “Halo Effect” in the thumbnail at first)
Why You STRUGGLE to Finish on Time | The…
So perhaps people downvoted based on first impressions that it doesn’t seem that related to rationality?
I enjoyed the Bitcoin, halo effect, and planning fallacy videos, but I didn’t think that the video “If You Want to Find Truth You Need to Step Into Cringe” made a solid rational argument for the opening statement that “If you honestly seek truth, and if you decide to tell the truth, at some point, you will accept to appear cringe to the eyes of most people.” The only evidence given was that telling other people the truth that you are a weeaboo is cringe, but that “truth” (which is about you yourself) is quite disanalogous to truths about the external world. Since the channel is branded as “rational”, and you also include “Effective Altruism” in the channel description, I would like the videos to all have rigorous rational arguments. For this video, I would also have preferred a somewhat more serious overall tone in the script instead of leaning in so heavily into internet culture, so that the videos seem more respectable perhaps, but I don’t have a strong preference about this.
Regarding this YouTube comment of yours: “internet dynamics are probably relatable to a YT audience. Should I worry that using them as examples would make my videos cringe in the eyes of a sophisticated audience? Well, maybe but… I prefer to defy social rules rather than accept them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires, but I observed that when it works, the payoff is usually very high. Plus, it’s fun.” Make sure to take downside risk seriously! I don’t think any of your videos so far have been risky, and I don’t think talking about internet culture is risky, but it’s something to keep in mind. It would be good to avoid inadvertently damaging the reputation of rationality and/or effective altruism. Ben Todd’s “Why not to rush to translate effective altruism into other languages” says “any kind of broad based outreach is risky because it’s hard to reverse. Once your message is out there, it tends to stick around for years, so if you get the message wrong, you’ve harmed years of future efforts. We call this the risk of ‘lock in’.” I don’t agree with that much of Ben Todd’s post, but I think it’s important to be thoughtful about the messaging that you’re putting forth (not saying that you aren’t). Before making the videos, do you get the scripts reviewed by other people and ask for honest feedback? Ideally, you’d get feedback from rationalists and effective altruists as well as people who are neither. If not, I would recommend doing so, especially since these videos are targeted toward the general public.
It could also help to have official subtitles. YouTube makes it pretty easy to add subtitles—you just paste in your script and then it automatically aligns it to the right time.
I think the animations are really awesome, not only in art quality but also in elucidating the subject of the video visually. It might be nice to have some non-white characters too (besides nonhuman animals like doge lol) for some more diversity.
Thanks for this feedback. I did the actionable thing I could do and changed the titles of the first two animated videos.