I don't know how I ended up knee-deep in keeping up with drama I didn't know existed until like a week ago but it has been fascinating to see how people don't realize propaganda isn't some static thing and that it can be (and is) in everything. Weird how we've reached these rigid inflexible mindsets and views that don't allow for even the slightest bend.
James Bond works for the State. Turns out, his antagonists figured out long ago that it's best to let the State protect them rather than going against it... Best buds.
It's the everyday people arround You who should act but they suck on a human and then intellectual level (so much, if You will ever know) It's not completly their fault because we are manipulated on many things and from many sides which incapate us but still, noone would care that much for any savior/hero or James Bond or in other words: would cheer but won't lift a finger.
Going from 0 to 1 is infinitely harder than going from 1 to 100. This is the crucial fact that a lot of these "self-made" mythmakers want to obscure "To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn $100 million into $110 million is inevitable." - Edgar Bronfman
And also that they didn't really create their wealth themselves, they just used it to coerce other people to do the work for them then ponctionning more wealth from their work.
@@SigFigNewton Not sure what strong upside capitalism has. I mean, when you're not at the top of the pyramid. Most of the stated benefits like efficiency or innovation are just not actually true. You could argue that industrialism is the awful thing with some strong upsides, but industrialism doesn't require capitalism and is also well past the point of the upside outweighing the cost considering the state of the climate. But things that are usually associated as benefits of capitalism like efficiency or innovation are more industrialism things (that came at the cost of a mad focus on productivity which has been bad both socially and ecologically), capitalism itself tend to stiffle innovation and be wildly innefficient (just look at railroad or energy companies that were public and opened to free market).
@@Laezar1 This is why i always leaned towards socialism which is equally as bad but with one major benefit: "poor" people dont have to work 5 jobs to survive. Outcome is the same, rich get richer and poor stay poor, but at least there is that pretended care for everyone. If you arent dumb under socialism, you dont have to break your back to support a family. You wont be that well off but at least the state pretends it cares so you can keep paying taxes. Innovation and efficiency probably develop faster under capitalism but thats because the rich and powerful literally hold peoples lives in their bank accounts so the poor people dont really have a chance but to work hard. Both systems are self destructive because people are greedy fucks. All systems will be self destructive until people stop being greedy fucks. I understand that its mostly greed that got us where we are in technology etc., but the greed should be for all of humanity, not just a few close ones. Its like these people have never seen a grand strategy game.
While some people will call this sort of thing "RU-vid drama", it's important to look at science communicators and the underlying message they're attempting to convey. Well done, chaps. :)
The video is missing the point of itself. It's completely fine to make an opinionated RU-vid video and even for that video to be sponsored (as long as that's made clear) and it's also fine to critique the message of that opinionated RU-vid video. This is exactly how healthy discourse works and should work.
@@MrCaiobrz i don't think the intent of this video was to soil kurzgesagt's effort. in fact, i think it acts more like a supplement for viewers. the narrators talk about how they respect kurzgesagt's work, and also about how it's basically a mainstream media company now and that we could take a bit of caution when viewing their content.
@@ferretappreciator Don't forget to mention that while this billionnaire does the bare minimum, bankers kick people out of their homes for defaulting mortgage loans
Thats something we as brazillians share with you guys for sure! Stuff that would be slurs in the united states are ways we call known friends in a jokingly way.
@@CoqueiroLendario One of the most perpetually offended people I've ever had the misfortune of talking to online is Brazilian. We are not so different, you and I.
@AzureWolf oh look! It’s almost like many well known stereotypes descend from irrational groupthink and outdated ideas like social Darwinism! It’s almost like there’s a bit of dissonance when we say Italians are lazy and emphasize leisure because that’s just what Southern Europeans are like and we say we’re not racist. Essentialism is not a great idea!
@@CoqueiroLendario A ofensa br muitas vezes não esta na vitima primaria mas na secundaria, aqui na bahia chamar amigo de viado é ofensivo não pro amigo mas pro lgbt pq o "amigo" sempre vai dizer coisas "Eu não... hahaha". E isso vai depender muito da orientação politica da pessoa, muita gente de esquerda rejeita a ferro e fogo meme e piadas que atacam minorias de todo tipo. Ja a direita é o oposto, já que a piada nunca é com o branco cis hetero pai de família pessoa de bem... que secretamente que dar golpe nos outros.
6:52 this is such a subtle and poignant idea. There are countless creators working at a high skill level now because of global interconnectedness, so it's inevitable that new propaganda simply has to find the skilled creators that fit their exact viewpoints, then throw money at them to promote that idea.
RU-vid influencers are a godsend to big corporations. In the past, companies had to solve the problem of reaching people on the ground by appealing to their fears/desires/etc. while distancing themselves at the same time. Influencers solve that distancing problem by appearing to be ‘regular people’ that you might meet on the street. It’s been a massive windfall for propagandists and people are only starting to realize how insidious the influencer machine is on the marketing front.
At least it's more nuanced now. Back when it was just TV it was "you're allowed to work here because we like your opinions" and "and you don't get to work here because you say stuff that is not helpful to us".
@@daniel4647 And for every content creator like Kurzgesagt, how many on yt fail or struggle to make ends meet with the merciless platform capitalism? The inability to denounce the war crimes of Israel without masking titles and thumbnails is an example of this.
Great video! Coming from a disabled perspective is interesting since you come to realize that you aren't usually part of billionaire futures. Pretending disabled people are sacrifices for the future dehumanizes us and completely ignores our role in society. We're not serving ourselves up for experimental and important research for some abstract "greater good". It doesn't matter if we're "useful" to capitalism, our families, friends and acquaintances who find value in us want to keep us alive, happy and healthy. Most of us wouldn't be alive if people hadn't thought disabled folks have intrinsic value and were worth giving a life, because value is ultimately defined by people.
100%. I sure wouldn't be selected as one of the "fittest". We have to wonder what kind of society those precious future humans will have ended up with if we, humans who actually exist in reality right now, are out here making inhuman sacrifices for their supposed sake. (Why is later good greater good? Why is overall quantity of humans a number worth optimizing? Why is it so easy for me to imagine a tridecillion humans living in exploitation and degradation? But... number go up? The quantity doesn't make me feel better about it! Maybe I should try being more optimistic!) A human life has value, but who gets to assign that value? If the value of a human life is assigned by the human themselves, then for that value to be positive, they have to be afforded the opportunities to explore possibility and define it for themselves-and you can't predict that, can't measure it-it's not 1 life = 1 value point. But if the value of a human life is assigned by some outside authority, then it doesn't matter what the quality of those lives is, only the quantity. I can think of a few yucky words to describe that way of doing things-there are a few different ways you can dress up atrocity. It's not even good utilitarianism. Society iterates on society. "Do a little evil now for a shining future tomorrow" is like Pokémon bad guy level thinking. You can't just bootstrap a new world out of nothing, society is made of people, and people remember things. People are shaped by the evils they suffer and unhealed wounds are passed right on down the line. We already have a lot to answer (to ourselves) for. If we don't care for the people who exist with us right now, we have nothing to look forward to. The irony of valuing humans of the far future so near-sightedly that you forget the human part.
if you know with 100% certainty that if you have intercourse with your partner you will produce a child that will be all his life in the most horrible pain and suffering would you decide to have intimacy and bring this child to the world?
@@a.39886 This is an horrible reduction of what being disabled mean. This approach also lead to people wanting to make disability disappear with genetics and all but in fact this will probably never happen as many disabled aren't born like this, so what you're effectively creating is a world that left disabled behind.
Your favourite channel on climate change is a channel that says "lers keep doing the same shit we're doing"? No wonder, it's just easier to lay down and do nothing than to actually admit the problems that exist and solve them.
While "Kurzgesagt bad and takes money from billionaires" is a good hook, I feel like it has skewed the discussion in an unhelpful way. A lot of people I shared your 2 videos with were focused on the funding part (with questions like "how do we decide who should be allowed to get funded and by whom?") instead of the problems of Kurz' view on the subjects at hand, and Kurz took advantage of this disconnect, of not seeing the forest for the trees
Kurzgesagt isn't *consciously* pushing some kind of narrative. To everyone but the centrists, when they push to educate and argue for what they believe is good in any political landscape, they're not viewing themselves as pushing a certain narrative using deceiving propaganda, they view themselves as simply telling the truth. The only truth that exists in politics is your own because, in truth, there is no objectivity in politics. This is the core of the centrists' worldview where they identify a problem and apply what works regardless of any moral principles like everyone on the right or left does.
imo that video isn't about "ohh these influencers should not receive any money from billionaires" but it's more about they should be more transparent with us, simply saying "This funding won't change us" isn't enough but we also need to know what that funding entails.
@@FlymanMS "they are not govt officials they don't owe you or this guy shit" what skewed, defensive point of view, comment. Are they trying to "forward" the science behind things to the public? Do they have a certain level responsibility?
This brings up multiple important topics, and I'm glad you cover it in depth. Reaching the German audience probably isn't on the top of your list. (Especially considering that Kurzgesagt has long been an international name at this point, and that another big part of the German audience decently understands English.) But if you're interested in getting German subtitles, I'd gladly help out.
I missed this the first time I saw it but it fucking annoyed me when I finally noticed. They added up the revenue from 2015-2022, a whole 8 years. It may seem like 10% from investments from billionaires seems like nothing, until you realize that 10% of 8 years means they got paid more than an entire fucking year's worth of income in this deal. Piggybacking the early days of ad revenue into the whole thing is super disingenuous. GIve us the numbers you had in JUST 2021 or 2022. Bet you that picture won't look as pretty.
true had the video been made a mere 1 or 2 years ago the percentage would be 12-15% and so on, let alone the cascade effect the funding had to future revenue.
It might not be that cut and dry, cause their revenue has also been increasing over 8 years, but yeah they should have showed a graph or something instead of wrapping it all up together.
A lot of youtube channel teams start as groups of enthusiasts, who work on the content after their main work, where they make money for living. Dedicated ones may do it not just for 0.8 years, but for several years. So for people with great idea they believe in - it's not a game changer to have an early sponsorship. It just a pleasant addition, to what they are already willing to do.
Prioritizing the safety of who "can" do the most good is fallacious. It's who "will" do good that matters for someone really fixed on that philosophy. A small takeaway from this for individuals might be this: Prioritize your relationships with those who seem more authentic, well-to-do, and thoughtful. Always criticize those who have the capacity to do good. Consider if the ways individuals and collectives spend resources are actually justified, and actually talk with people about it. Examine what real motives are driving action and explore ideas and practices on how to make things better and how to hold people and systems accountable.
"Always criticize those who have the capacity to do good." I disagree with this. People are inherently free and that means they're not just free to do what *I* want but, even more importantly, that also means they are free to do what I *don't want* as long as they don't infringe on anyone else's right to do what *they want.*
And what if what someone wants to do ensures that you have less and less ability and freedom to do what you want to do? And what if their own freedom to do what they want to do expands despite yours decreasing, to the point where even if you want to be able to do something, you could not and cannot? Rights are lovely things to talk about, but they are only statements about what the State cannot prevent you from doing. They say nothing about if the State has afforded you any capacity to do anything at all, and considering we are all the maintainers and lifeblood of the State, the fact that our *capacities* are diminishing under an institution that depends on us to exist reveals a backwards situation. So no, it's not about freedom being bad, or that people shouldn't be free to do what you or I do not want them to do. It's that we cannot stop at just this expectation of them simply not being allowed to infringe on others *rights* to do what we please, we need to ensure that whatever they want to do, it does not take away from others *capacities* to do what they want to do. And, if it turns out that ones Capacity to do something comes at the expense of someone being unable to do something else, then we will have a serious moral dilemma here about the question of a worth of one person against the next, and the justification of priority -- And the answer cannot simply be first-come-first-take, because the entire moral of this story I have been painting to you, is Rights are only words next to real world capacities. If our capacity diminishes to nothing as an expense of a small portion of people gaining all capacity in the world, and if our health and wellbeing even suffers because of this, we have a problem. @@8is
@@paimon1250 You're conflating abilities and rights. A right says nothing about whether or not you have the ability to do something, only that if you have the ability, it is your right to be able to do that something or not. You might *feel* it's unfair if you want to buy a specific house and there is someone else who can afford to place a higher bid than you. So you might think it would be more fair if it was a coin toss between you and the other guy so each would have an equal chance of getting to buy the house. But remember, that's not what the owner of the house wants, and more importantly, it is *his* house and as such he has the right to do what he wants with it in accordance with the right to private property. Imagine a world where everything you owned, created and worked for aren't truly yours and can be arbitrated by a force you haven't consented to; that's the definition of unfairness and goes against your rights.
@@8isyou know that rights arent real, right? We made them up. Well, not all of us -- a select few of us with money, power, and privilege. Rights are nothing but pretty words made up by haves to trick the have nots into ignoring reality. *Edit: typo
@@8is You have basically summed up capitalism and it is tied to the problem at hand. This mentality of "as long as I'm not affected" is exactly how we got to this point in the first place. It's fine though, it's just human nature.
Hi, coming from someone who deals with companies, do not trust kurzgesagt revenue numbers. Calculating revenues is extremely complex, and if you cook them one way or another you can come up with anything you want, even if you don't want to fake them. For this precise reason, accounting and audits exist, and there are several rules to make sure the financial data provided by companies is accurate. If no balance sheet was released, or audit was made, that really doesn't mean anything.
Interesting. Is there a resource you know of that goes more in depth on how revenue can be manipulated/distorted? Not experienced in financial auditing myself
@@pinkmann8399 I expect he's referring to how basically all financials issued by publicly listed companies have to adhere to IFRS or US GAAP (think metric vs imperial but for accounting). When financials are standardised like this, it becomes easier to compare one company against another. I haven't looked at Kurzgesagt's financials yet but I presume they probably present their financials very differently which thus requires quite a bit more data transformation and guesswork to "convert" their figures to IFRS equivalent numbers.
Agree. I'm not a numbers person at all, but I work as a designer/animator and oddly the higher ups in companies I've worked on trust me... A LOT. So they have given me the task of putting their numbers and data in "pretty" presentations for the board meetings, and by following their instructions on how to present the data, you can tottally bend the perception of those numbers without changing them.
well the effective altruism argument of “the rich have to be saved/protected because they have the money to do good” breaks down when they don’t do any good with it. also why cant we do good with their money ?
You cannot do good with their money, because it is their money. Can I do good with your money Caipi2070? Leave other people’s money and make your own and then do good with it.
@@shadowgamer4306 Except their money was only earned off the backs of underpaid workers, when said CEOs and billionaires barely contributed anything other than an investment that's a drop in the bucket compared to their total wealth.
@@shadowgamer4306if a guy spent his life stealing most the money he has from everyone, would it really be his money? No it wouldn’t, billionaires aren’t self made, they make their money from robbing nations, scamming workers, and making more money from tax bailouts than they pay in taxes.
@@shadowgamer4306look at me. the billionares are NOT on your side. you can bootlick all you want but ultimately they will not help you. it is their money yes, but why can we NOT make them help people? who gave them the money in the first place? why is it “their” money and not for the community?
A palter is basically what I liked to do as a child. My mom wuld ask me if I "took a bath" and I would just said "Yeah, I did." because my mom did not ask if I "took a bath _today"_ so I would intentionally not mention that I only took a bath yesterday. Why, do you ask? Well, why would I? She never asked if it was today or not so why bother mentioning the time? Nowadays, I know paltering is basically terrible and people who do it are sh*t human beings.
I didn't watch the Kurz video, but I read the text based version they published. It didn't really rebut the point that they are politically unsound and still managed to try and guilt trip me into buying more things I simply don't need.
i also seen MoistCr1TiKaL react to these topic, and not surprisingly those big streamer all run defense for the billionaire. They all downplay the fact the research is cherry picked like it's a normal thing, and than conclude there isn't a strong evidence for billionaire influence on the video.
@@noirto2 Stopped watching MoistCr1tikal after I realized that he was basically mainstream edgy and always agreed with whatever the majority said. I see he has worsened since then.
@@unocualqu1era That's a very confrontational and dishonest way of saying that he's a normal guy with normal opinions. Not everyone has to be out there. It's fine if you don't like him now, though.
@@Celene1312 I don't know, it seems like most people say he lacks critical thinking because he doesn't have the same opinions on them on issues. And that feels disingenuous to me.
I feel like a lot of effective altruism really only takes into accout potential good without taking into account potential and real evils. For example a billionaire could do the most good, but them simply existing causes a lot of bad, such as how they pollute a lot more than the average person, or how they influence democracies in a bad way
@@wiredvibe1678The richer you are the more you pollute because being wasteful becomes easier,you can afford to waste more food,more energy,more space,more water than you need because you have money.Moreover,most if not all billionares have one primary objective: making more money, so they will invest in the most profitable markets, which will always be the most polluting,at least until the world's natural resources don't run out,but in that case it will be too late.There is no such thing as a good or bad billionare,they downright shouldn't exist.Remember,the more money you have the more power you have,the more power you have the more damage your wrong doings do to the world around you.
@Alberto Guerra idk man, I don't subscribe to your subscribe to your cult and I doubt I can talk some sense into you. Personally I feel blessed that I am lucky enough to experience life in this era of technology and knowledge. If I was born in the past I would have likley been a slave or brutalized in some other way be it by other humans or just nature. Give me some examples of human organization that will produce all the modern comforts I we enjoy, and lift billions out of poverty, and constantly and continually improve our lives... without producing income inequality? Can you do that? Or are your suggestions rehashings of tired ideas that have resulted in brutal and horrific outcomes for millions in the past?
@@wiredvibe1678 I'm not saying the past was better, in fact this system is far superior than what we used in the past,what i'm saying is that the system for what it is now is not perfect and has flaws that have to be solved to guarantee our well being on this planet. We are not in the 50s anymore, the system has to adapt to the changes that it has made to the world (oil is going to run out at some point,and we need to be ready).One fundamental problem of the free market is that there is a tendency to amass wealth in the hands of few people (it is inevitabile,the more money a company has the more it can make and it has more chances of not going bankrupt),and this is a problem,because not only this impoverishes the rest of the population, but it gives a lot of (economical) power to few people, which really isnt very different from what they did in the middle ages (not a good prospect for our future if you ask me).Of course changes have to be gradual,we cant just do communism like they did in Russia,but we can start by taxing the rich,doing some welfare and reorganizing our cities to make them less car-dependant and more energy efficient (this for example will be lobbied against by every car manifacturing company,but it is essential if we want to transition to renewables,it is impossibile for every human on earth to drive electric cars)
@@wiredvibe1678 To be fair, your response to this point is a bit disingenuous. Sure, capitalism has gotten us a lot of cool and fancy things, but the point is that systems SHOULD change with time and continually improve, not stagnate into this whole "free market" thing for the rest of time - because then inequality does get worse. This is kind of like if you were in the medieval ages. "Personally I feel blessed that I am lucky enough to experience life in this era of technology and knowledge. If I was born in the past I would have likely been part of a tribe without religion and basic agricultural tools, currency, where everyone's just hitting each other with rocks and being in tribes." "Give me some examples of human organization that will produce all the bread and huts we enjoy, and lift billions out of survival in the wild, and constantly and continually improve our lives... without producing kings that can order everyone around and where their children remain in power just because they're born from the king? Or are your suggestions rehashings of tired ideas that have resulted in brutal and horrific outcomes for millions in the past? and so on and so on. We (or most of us) are no longer living in a monarchy, why do we still need to live in this flawed system?
He was accused of coming off as abrasive and pugilistic but to me it just reads as urgent. He intentionally waited until nearly the end of the video until mentioning their Gates backing and yet in their reply in the comments that's basically all they talked about lmao Not only did he leave that issue till the end, he literally says why he did that and that his video was specifically designed to make people focus the problems with their video on its own merit before talking about the likely reasons why there are those problems
@Wemple’s Temple Because these "green growth" ideas don't stand up to any rigorous intellectual scrutiny, at least not if your goals are to provide as sustainable and comfortable a life to as many people as possible. They can't do anything honest in this realm because it would completely upend what they're ideologically and financially motivated to do.
Kurz commented on bad empinada's video and then deleted it and ran off. Talk about targeting small creators, kurz doesnt have any respect for anyone on youtube.
People that make valid criticisms are rarely addressed by people "in" with the present order of things. I appreciate that you keep laying it on them despite that, keep it up.
Your message addressed to yourself in the past hitted me like a truck. Thank you for producing such a wonderful and necessary content. All the best from Brazil!
This video does one of the things well that really put me off from The Hated One's video. It mentions that Kurzegesagt is a large, privately owned company that is subject to a lot of mainstream whims of content. It also mentions that this is not inherently good or bad while The Hated One's video is clearly trying to stir up controversy. It maintains the fact that in the end, Kurzegesagt has human creators, and humans are imperfect so there will be many situations where they will lie (whether directly or by omission) in order to make sure they can pass on their opinions. Any political video (or even argument video in general) should be taken with skepticism but that doesn't mean that Kurzegesagt, like this video stated, doesn't do some good things even in their more problematic videos. Great and very well-researched and thought out video!
They"re only really controversial because those with the power to do effectively at a large scale either have their heads in the sand, are in bed with the main perpetrators of climate change, or are the perpetrators themselves, and would rather deflect it to the everyday man, offload it to the future generation, or outright deny it.
Their solution won’t work though. If billionaires were the solution to climate change then climate change wouldn’t be an issue right now. We have more billionaires than ever before, but emissions continue to rise with the number of billionaires. They, and the system that created them, are what is causing climate change. Also, way to ignore the other 95% of the video. Other solutions ares only “controversial” because they’ll make billionaires less rich.
Lol wtf, I'm argentinian and hearing "Rosamonte Suave" from you felt so weird. Thanks for this video... It's eye-opening and really needed. Hope it gets the views it deserves.
Nicely made response t3 ,always felt like somethings missing from kurz response, and kurz deflecting the billionaire funding point felt a bit iffy when ppl were talking about the implications of the funding not the amount Ps: loved the new word paltering, would come in handy in the future :D
thank you for doing the work to show out to an English audience. i love your videos, so thoughtful, sincere, low key funny, and very very clearly explained. thanks!
I'm only 14 minutes into this video. I've been a kurzegesagt fan for many years. I found this channel "Think this through" when you guys made that first Kurzegesagt criticism video. From what I can see in the first 14 minutes, I largely agree. It felt like Kurze was giving a huge non-answer. They're pretty, colorful, edutainment without much critical thought. Personally, I found out about Our World in Data, perhaps 2 years ago. Maybe the most worrisome thing about OWID is that it's an example of a very rich & powerful guy choosing how lots of people see society. Essentially, if we control what or which data is measured, then we control what people observe, and if we control what they observe, then we control their whole reality. It's a worrisome topic, and I don't know if it's something we can even get around. Don't all systems of thought have this problem? I don't know. It's a philosophical issue. Is there a good or even best system that guides itself in a completely open & transparent manner? I don't know if that hits every problem, but at least it's a good starting point.
There is nothing wrong about what Our World in Data does. At the worst, they provide data that just shows how the status quo is improving our lives in certain ways. And perhaps this is useful to billiares to justify their existence, but to counter that, perhaps this is simply the *truth* and that that is useful to the billionaire the same way it's useful to you and me.
@@8is It is good that I didn't say there is anything wrong with OWID. I said it's worrisome how OWID works because managing what counts as data and interpreting it is a big responsibility. How do we independently check or verify this massive amount of data and interpretation? I am not saying it's wrong. I'm saying OWID needs multiple third-party verification, many layers of peer-review, an intersection of these two, or more in order for it to be a well-trusted source of knowledge. It would be nice if it were all the truth, and what's more, a flavor of truth that lacks bias or any other kind of conscious, unconscious, or semi-conscious manipulation. Like I said, though, I think this is a philosophical problem with all structures of knowledge. It is perhaps an inescapable law. I must learn to be content with less-than-perfect structures of knowledge. Perhaps Gates is an overall good guy: I hope so.
@@Paraselene_Tao It is good that I didn't say that you said that there is anything wrong with OWID. Our World in Data has and continuous to be under scrutiny, that's how the scientific process works and how we expand the very limiting knowledge and understanding of the world. In the end, it's simply up to you to listen to enough information, criticisms, defences, etc. to make up your own mind about the validity of all sources. Most people simply believe what they want to since it is all too easy to paint whatever picture you want onto this world, but we should still strive to do better anyways.
@@tommyvercetti9434 Damn, I've been meaning to play that series. I've seen a lot of bits of that series. I might have to watch/listen to a playthrough soon. I wish I could carve out the leisure time to play these important games. I considered waking up at 4 so I could spend 2 hours before my regular morning routine. I already listen to lectures, podcasts, and books while I work throughout the day. I just want a bit of that time I had as a teenager to play some games and savor the experience of interacting with a whole, imaginary world and its story & narrative. Thanks.
I think what makes the Kurzgesagt videos very powerful propaganda is if you're not very careful, it's very easy to miss the premises upon which the whole argument is built on. Which is "growth is good". It is true that growth is required for the current system to continue, but there is no requirement that the current system continues for people to be happy (and you can easily argue the current system isn't really making people happy either).
I imagine you think little of GDP, but what about other measures of growth? How about nighttime illumination? That’s a measure of growth used by economists, but it very clearly directly measures a type of utility improvement.
@@cephalosjr.1835 I'm not him, but if I would be tasked to see how much better a country is doing I'd ask the citizens directly: Do you perceive your life has gotten better the last year? 5 years? 10 years? Add those together, and you got what I consider the sort of measure that actually matters.
@@cephalosjr.1835 If growth didn't impact people's well-being, it's ultimately irrelevant and just another statistic. Of course, I'm seeing this purely in a humanitarian aspect. Like Kant said, humans are an end in themselves, not a means.
Regarding longtermism: it is an interesting fact that the Nazis did actually make that argument about the war effort. Families of fallen soldiers got a letter with an illustration of a tree explaining that while individual leaves may wither away, the stem will survive and prosper because of it
To paraphrase BritMonkey: "If your solution to climate change is to uproot the global economy (i.e. do away with capitalism), then you're not serious about climate change. You're just a pessimist."
@@dropyourself By that logic, civilization is inherently unsustainable, and we're better off winding the clock back 12,000 years. Back to our days as hunter-gatherers. And good luck getting anyone to support you on that.
@@bismuth7398 "Degrowth = Hunter-gatherer" You know you can at least come up with an original idea right? You don't have to use such a cliché and self evidently false critique that fails to understand even the basics of our position.
To paraphrase literally any non-capitalist economist since the 19th century: "Capitalism is inherently unsustainable. It relies on principles of infinite growth that simply can't exist in the real, finite world, and will never fully solve any issue because even a crisis is just an opportunity to make more money." Think about planned obsolescence, for example. That can only exist in a system that prioritises capital gains above anything else because it's incredibly wasteful, inconvenient, and has no actual benefits and has a very simple solution. How is a system that allows for that kind of thing ever going to fix other issues related to sustainability and longevity.
@@dropyourself My issue with degrowth is that people are going to do what they want, and the concept of degrowth runs counter to one of the fundamentals of human nature: greed. Short of an authoritarian state, you can't get rid of greed. And even then, that just funnels greed to the top. And all of that is without mentioning how degrowth ignores the lingering issue of population growth. Because you can't stop people from having babies, either.
Man, it's somewhat a shame that the hated one video got more popular, as it overshadows yours. And your videos are infinitely better imo. Hope this comment pleases the almighty algorithm and recommends your video to more people.
It was really disappointing for me seeing that most of the controversy was related to The Hated One's video because that one was much more confrontational and polarizing rather than trying to get real conversation. When each side villainizes the other, debate becomes meaningless (one of the best examples is US poltical debates) and rather than trying to sway those in the middle with calm arguments tries to simply pull those already on their side even further.
@@batcrow6224 I agree. TheHatedOne's video just seemed to be more unpleasant to watch for me because it felt more like "kurzgesagt is very big evil because they get monies from bil gats" to the point that it was kind of hard to actually tell what they're specifically arguing about or why that's bad. This video is the opposite of that. It's calm, slow, and clearer, which allows me to actually figure out why Bill Gates funding Kurzgesagt is controversial. I think the reason why many people are defending Kurzgesagt without much discussion is because TheHatedOne's video was just hard to watch because it just felt like random points loosely tied together, especially if you are a fan of Kurzgesagt (like me).
As a german, I can speak for the whole of my country when I say that everone hates the Deutsche Bahn. Decades of a strong car industry that invites politicians to dinner have lead to the railway network being broken saved
In the US we have "freeways" and for the most part they are free to use. We used to have nationwide railroads in the past but now we have a trash system except maybe in the Northern US(New York-Boston-Philadelphia). How is it in Germany
@@basedgamerguy818Usable in theory, it gets you nearly everywhere. The problem is that it's so unreliable, that you can't use it if you have to be somewhere in time
After seeing their “Climate Change Hope” video I realised they’re full of it. One example of misleading statements in that video is when they say “solar is up in the UK while coal is down”. They made it sound like solar is replacing coal - but what they don’t say is that all that coal is being replaced by burning oil and the increase in solar is a tiny amount compare to the UK’s overall energy use. And there’s no way at all they didn’t know that when making the video, because when you’re actually looking at the statistics it’s obvious.
When I hear that solar is up and coal is down, it's not hard to understand that that means solar is up and coal is down in growth. I don't see your problem
“All over the world where there is capitalist, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, buy to writers, to bribe, buy and fake, “public opinion” for the benefits of the bourgeoisie”-Lenin
Ironically in the system Lenin created there was more "freedom" to fake public opinion than in any capitalist one. They turned the fakery, lies and propaganda to the levels even the most powerful capitalists could only dream of achieving
"nah you guys can't bribe others and create an oligarchy, only we can create an oligarchy and we'll totally transition to true democracy it'll just take 3̶0̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶5̶0̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ ̶7̶0̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶s̶ nevermind our shit union collapsed!"
@@silverhawkscape2677 You don't need to support anyone to support one part of something they did or said Even evil people aren't (completely) incompetent
I feel like effective altruism is somewhat misrepresented in the video. You seem to equate it to hardcore utilitarianism, but that is not quite correct. Effective altruism is not a system of ethics, it's more like a method for doing good in the world. And what constitutes "good" is up to the individual who wants to apply this method. One could use utilitarianism, longtermism, deontology or a combination. So effective altruism is basically a relatively new term for rigorously assessing evidence to compare interventions, specifically in an altruistic context. Like Open Philanthropy that you mention - they are an effective altruism organization, but radical utilitarianism or longtermism causes do not make up a majority share of their portfolio. They try to balance different philosophical approaches. Also when you talk about applying the effective altruism approach, you almost exclusively mention "earning to give" which is only a small part of it (recommended for those who can't or don't want other options). In effective altruism circles the main focus is usually on potentially high-impact career paths like politics, non-profits or science. The movement also advocates political action, lifestyle changes and community building. Another thing that kind of bothers me is that when people discuss utilitarianism/consequentialism they often rely on hypothetical trolley problem thought experiments where the only variable is lives saved. People say something like "So this approach would imply that we need to prioritize saving only 'high-potential' people and sacrifice the poor/disabled." But this is an oversimplified representation. In the real world, actions have countless unintended consequences beyond just death counts. For instance, if we killed one healthy person to save three terminally ill patients, the impact would not just be the lives saved. It could also increase societal fear, distrust, and paranoia about involuntarily being "chopped for organs." So if we want to fairly represent the consequentialist approach, we should understand that it would include expecting this mess of incalculable consequences. Therefore, a rational consequentialist would also rely on historically successful moral rules that make probabilistic sense, not just on death toll calculations. Consequentialism properly understood accounts for complex and often unforeseeable repercussions of actions. It does not prescribe relying solely on an impersonal utilitarian calculus, which fails to capture the messy complexity of real-world ethical choice.
I was hoping for someone to respond to Longtermism. Valuing the future the same as the present while also pretending like we can know whether an action will be good or bad for the future while also caring about the sum of Human happiness rather than the average is just too extreme of an ideology, and it is obvious that it can lead to atrocities when followed through.
It was an eye-opener to me. As I watched that part of the video I realized I believed in this narrative without ever actively thinking about it, I've never even heard of effective altruism. But now, when I see it for what it is, I'm horrified. And even more scary is the fact that I believed it unconsciously. What other harmful beliefs I might have, just because I grew up in culture soaked in it. I definitely need to dig deeper at this.
This is quite possibly the most well phrased yet least reasoned comment I've ever seen. Between legitimately advocating for a high time preference & not understanding outliers still heavily impact averages its amazing how convincingly you managed to phrase it. I mean seriously, consider a career as a politician or science communicator because it's genuinely impressive just how carefully this comment phrases just outright horribly thought through principles.
@@felixjohnson3874 I understand that my stances aren't universally agreed, but I would really like to hear where you see a lack of reasoning in them: Stance 1. Happiness matters for each Human being, so it shouldn't be summed. A still flawed, but far less catastrophic approach would be to look at the average happiness of all Humans who start to exist. Stance 2. Humanity cannot predict whether an action or ideology will minimally lower or drastically raise Humanity's risk of extinction within the next 500 years, let alone long-term. For example, longtermism itself may cause a wave of self-sacrifice, austerity, and depression, which could cause a collapse of the economy and the sciences, leaving us too far behind to redirect an asteroid in the 29th century. We cannot know whether this is more likely or less likely than the desired effect of preventing Human extinction. Stance 3. It is psychologically impossible for Humans to value the far future to the same extent as the present. This is important because if a policy or ideology tries to go against Human intuition while demanding too much, the likeliest effect is destabilization and regress, which even according to longtermism itself would leave Humanity vulnerable to extinction events.
Me for the most part: This is incredible. I was waiting for a continuation of your previous video about this issue that does not happen only with Kurzkesagt and really gives light to many stuff like ethics in such cases. You have surpassed yourself with this one. Me at the end after kimochi yamete: 💀 Being serious now, it was an excellent video.
Here's my semi-informed opinion on utiliterianism. I know a bit about AI research, and there is a subfield where an agent gets an observation of the current world state and needs to take an action in order to maximize some utility function. This can be similarly applied to ethics, with the assumption that we have an agreed upon utility function (which we don't really, but we can somewhat simulate something like that, especially individually), and that the world follows some probeballistic rules that take you from one state to another. The second assumption has been argued against in this video, but I would say that it is satisfied because the world itself follows this assumption and that means that every subsystem in the world must follow this assumption as well. The problem of trying new things (such as democracy in the 1700s) is a known and well researched problem known as Exploration vs Exploitation (trying democracy vs not risking it and sticking to the well understood autocratic system). This can be factored as well into the decision making. The actual problem is that trying to compute anything ethical accurately under those conditions is very difficult when we even lack a proper utility function. TLDR: While utiliterianism (and maybe effective altruism) does "solve" ethics and morallity using a scientific basis in a sense, it is rather impractical to use and requires an agreement and proper definition of what we want (a utility function). Edit: fixed a spelling mistake
@forbidden-cyrillic-handle The way to solve your example using utiliterianism would be to select a utility function, in other words, what we want. Let's define it as the estimated sum of the amount of happiness experienced over your future lifetime. Now, going to a party might provide some immediate happiness, but you might suffer some unhappiness down the road from not having studied. Studying is the opposite, lacking immediate happiness and making up for it later in your life. Actually, measuring happiness is also difficult, but a naive approach could just measure the amount of dopamine and other happiness related neurotransmitters and apply some formula to calculate the "happiness" at any given moment. The way I described it makes it sound impractical because it is. Actual uses of utiliterianism make a lot of simplifications that might bias the decision any given way and make the result inaccurate. I am not a philosopher, so I don't know how they actually simplify it. But there's almost certainly a lot of disagreement over it.
@forbidden-cyrillic-handle Yes, the utility function usually tries to approximate the underlying utility function under which we operate, which is a lot tougher to compute (e.g., my example of measuring neurotransmitter levels). The utility function in ethics might also be some sort of combination of everyone's utility function in an agreed upon way (e.g., summation or multiplication), but here there is no correct way of doing this.
I think the Degrowth moviment has just some marketing problem, the name itself does not translate the full concept of this strategy at all, considering how capitalism works maybe the viable way is to fight it is by outsmarting it's own game so there's that. Also, third world countries like mine didnt even had the chance to grow out of poverty and inflation yet in this late capitalism world, so it sounds even worse in the wrong context since this responsability to rebalance the system falls under the big ones.
As someone in a natural science field, I dislike many of Kurzgesagt's videos that cover my field. I end up talking to people who consume them a bit like when I try to deradicalize someone who watched a few too many Joe Rogan episodes.
Kurzgesagt's audience isn't interested in the validity of their science or a criticism of their politics. Kurzgesagt's audience is interested in techno-optimism that makes them feel good about their lives and hopeful about the future. The actual scientificity of their content is strictly subordinate to the goal of making people feel better about our current state of being.
As someone who used to watch kurzgesagt I'd say this is a bit generalizing. I was mostly in for the fascinating science stuff. And actually they smuggled in the politics slowly at first with things that were reasonable like their views on ethics and talking about the climate crisis in ways that weren't revolutionary but at least acknowledged the issues so it wasn't too bad especially if you don't actually know where their funding come from (I actually thought they were just one or two people doing science videos and illustration, didn't realize it was a whole thing, didn't look into it either). But then they made things more and more blatant talking about how technology will save us and also doing some self help videos with honestly really bad pulling yourself up by your bootstraps vibes, that completely forget about things like disability or discrimination. Granted I don't watch their channel anymore so you could say I'm not their audience, but there totally is an alternate timeline where I'd be a bit less politically radical and wouldn't have been turned off by it and kept watching the propaganda because I'm into the cute cartoon birds getting horribly squished by a black hole. Their audience isn't people interested in technno optimism, they create an audience of people interested in techno optimism. That's worse.
@@Laezar1 Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I really liked their sciency videos, especially the ones about science and physics (that got me into astronomy in the first place) and the crazy idea videos like the earth turning into gold. But then they began doing the climate videos, which was alright but at some point started smelling a little fishy. At that point I began seeing critics talking in the comments with actual good points and some critical videos, which tutrned me off Kurzgesagt for a good while (and even more so as their content continued getting more and more fishy politic-y). So I'm not here for the politics stuff and I feel that all the criticism is honestly fair. The die-hard fans defend the new videos and attack the critics too much, maybe largely because of their amazing natural sciences era from back then. The more you look at it from the other side the weirder it gets. But their science stuff is genuinely good. It kind of feels like there's two Kurzgesagts now, the Kurzgesagt that introduced me to the world of science, space and physics and the Kurzgesagt that now trains me on how to question funding, propaganda and science.
For those who are into Science Fiction: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine provided a pretty good criticism of Longtermism in the episode: "Statistical Probabilities".
The "long-termism" ideology have reminded me about a thought experiment called "Pascal's Mugging". It goes like this: Blaise Pascal was a very religious person, but he was also a rational mathematician, and understood that a change of God actually existing is very small, so he came up with the rational mathematical justification for following the Bible: "If God exists, then not following His word will grand you an eternal suffering in Hell after death, and even the smallest probability of this greatly outweighs any amount of negative experience you could get for following the Bible during your relatively short finite lifetime" However, one day in the dark alley Pascal have encountered a shadowy figure who said him this: "I am God, and if you won't give me your wallet, I will send you to Hell after your death". Now, according to Pascal's own logic, he must give his wallet to this figure with no hesitation, because no matter how minuscule the chance of them actually being God is, the probability of eternal suffering in Hell still greatly outweighs the relatively small negative of giving up your wallet.
This is a prime showcase of the total death of epistemology and metaphysics in the last few hundred or so years of philosophy. This isn't a good counterexample to Pascal's wager. Pascal's wager acts not only as a "Do this in your acts" kind of justification, but also as an epistemological justification: "If God is true, you must accept that the world works in the way it would if God were true." Thus, no, the crackhead who claims he's God and demands your wallet is not going to even remotely be a threat; because in the theistic worldview, that guy is not God. There is a literal 0% chance that he is God. Pascal's only problem in his wager argument is that he didn't overexplain the intricacies. He wanted to make a simple and easy to understand argument, so that's all that gets popular; and everyone ignores what it entails, what it actually means, what kind of a justification it provides, etc.
Although I watched a lot of their science material, I find your videos on them extremely necessary, not just because of kurz but because of every other insidious political messaging that dresses up as a simple result of logical fact. I'm not a professional by any means, but if you ever need (brazillian) Portuguese subtitles, I'm at your service
@@satie7 Assim eles meio que omitiram que a doação do Bill Gates que foi só "3%" foi quando eles eram muito pequenos e não tinham dinheiro ainda, é tipo você tinha uns 10 mil na conta eu te dou um milhão quando aí você consegue crescer com esse dinheiro finge que você conseguiu uns 10 milhões com o primeiro milhão que te dei, ai você ao invés de usar os dados de quando eu te dei o dinheiro você usa dados atuais então esse meu um milhão virá para apenas 10% de doação. O outro problema que eles seguem de um pensamento que muitos bilionários tem atualmente que é melhor fazer um futuro melhor do que melhorar o presente*, e meio que ensina que é só você acreditar positivamente que as coisas vão ficar melhores, e outro pequeno problema que investem em falar mais de carros elétricos do que transportes públicos pois são financiados por bilionários que tem empresas de carro. *Assim ao invés de você ajudar sua comunidade toda semana é muito mais vantajoso investir em ter um emprego melhor que assim poderá doar mais dinheiro para essas instituições no futuro, e isso em teoria parece bom mas na realidade muita gente só tem o agora pra ser salva então é um pensamento que você sacrifica algumas pessoas para que talvez no futuro venha salvar mais vidas
The difference between reasonable and conspiratorial criticism is that the former is more focused on structural/conceptual flaws and biases while the latter is more focused on „evil intentions“ without the necessary self-reflection, which is problematic because the people they attribute those intentions are far away and you can’t really look into their mind. For this reason I trust your criticism of Kurzgesagt more then I would of someone like Alex jones. In other words, good Video. (:
"I trust your criticism of Kurzgesagt more then I would of someone like Alex jones" That's the nicest thing anyone has ever said. What a compliment. I trust them more than both David Icke and Wesley Snipes.
No way really? Kurtzgesagt is biased like literally our ENTIRE society in some way, shape or form??? Their word should not be taken as 100% truth like literally anything??? All jokes aside, I think that you do bring up some good points, however like everything, they are biased and at least somewhat in it for the money and supporting their side of the story. I do like how you bring this into light, as it is not talked about much and seems like an interesting topic. Everyone has their right to advertise their ideas and Kurtzgesagt is no different.
I really appreciate this channel and your coverage of this. The Hated One's video had some good points, but it was presented in such an emotional way that much of the criticism became easy to dismiss. So much of it felt like it was implying something far more sinister than the reality that you describe. And unfortunately, I think that the resulting discourse was poisoned by that. So you guys coming in and actually laying things out with the facts and giving full breakdowns without spooky music or unsaid implications is really great.
Slightly related but god I hate how so many of those types of videos have some sort of music that "tells" you what you should feel. It's why no-nonsense channels like this one are a godsend.
it is so refreshing and hope-inspiring, as a (north-)eastern european, to hear (central-)eastern european voices speaking about these things in this way. with the current political attitudes on this end of the eu it's easy to feel isolated in having leftist beliefs, but finding this channel reminded me that there are like-minded people even among the overwhelming amount of conservative sentiment. fantastic video, i really appreciate what you guys are doing ❤
@@RACOONAFIED i dont think there's a set definition for eastern europe that everyone agrees on, not one that i'm aware of at least ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the baltic states for example are referred to as both northern europe and eastern europe depending on who you ask; similar logic with warsaw pact member states that werent occupied by soviet russia - central europe to some, eastern to others. for me it comes down to self identification :^) i dont want to lump everyone to the east of germany into this one category cause i know people around here that don't identify with the eastern european label, yknow? so i add a distinction like that :^) not a dumb question at all, eastern europe is an ambiguous term
also another point with the gates 3%, funk was 7 and they said they discontinued it last year so like, lumping 8 years together is purposefully inintuitive, for all we know that 3% could account for an entire years deal giving them as much as 4 years funk revanue in a single year. obviously that's not the case but with how they laid out the data, that is a perfectly valid interpretation, and even then it doesn't combat the concern of these foundations having influence, 40% coming from companies is not a figure to scoff at, if they had to rely on public funding they'd have to downsize to survive and it's hard to say if as many people would support them if the quality reduced making it possible that they'd go bankrupt. it's like someone who takes a raid sponsor, you understand the struggle, but are you gonna trust their curation anymore? absolutely not.
😢 I liked them. Why is every video essay channel I used to watch turning out to be bad? It's either plagiarism or propaganda. 😢 I just want to learn but how can I learn the information is not accurate. 2:07 Oh thank God I'm so happy you said that because I was just I clicked on your video so fast because I'm like please not another one not another one 😩. I mean people could argue that learning off of RU-vid and go open a book, but I mean like you could literally put anything in a book too. Most of the history books we use in school left out crucial information, watered down information or just straight up false information so can't trust that either. As a black person, I actually had to learn about real American history as an adult cuz in school they left a lot of crucial important details out
I had a red flag feeling with Kurzgesagt when they mentioned that the only thing that pushes economy is having young people from other countries. They tend to simplify so much to only one option that it was wierd. Maybe having young people with real opportunities is better than people in need of survival.
This is the real issue with propaganda: It takes you an Hour to explain why it is Propaganda, aswell as the creation of the video itself. Putting out a politcally biased piece on the other hand will take less time to produce and consume.
Kant's view of lying always annoyed me. Why yes, the man you want to brutally murder IS hiding in my house. Wouldn't want to be immoral and lie about that now would I?
For me it was their video about nuclear weapons which got me to step back and take another look. Their take that "the weapons themselves are the problem" and it's easy, just get rid of them, were so simplistic and moronic. They completely ignore the features of human nature which drove us to invent such weapons and completely ignore the very practical reasons to maintain a stockpile. Nuclear weapons are the only reason the current Ukraine war hasn't blown up into WW3. Until we address the reason nuclear weapons were ever invented demanding that they be gotten rid of is worse than useless.
Honestly, if the world would just shift more towards nuclear energy and push for hybrid vehicles across the board where applicable (regulations on SUVs and trucks would be a good start since they arent even legally defined as cars), we'd be in a much better place in terms of our carbon footprint.
Nuclear is a part of the solution but isn't viable in the short term. Also hybrid vehicles are just as bad as gas ones and won't come close to the solution. We need better public transit and, preferably but not necessarily, to ban cars completely.
Nuclear all the way. It's the most practical energy source so far. Maybe in the future, renewable energy like wind and solar might come up to that level, but right now, nuclear is most favorable.
Where do you draw the line between advocation and propaganda. Is your support of degrowth not propaganda because of an inherent difference in how you make it, or just because you think it's correct.
"I'm not saying you don't believe what you're saying... I'm saying if you believed anything else, you wouldn't be sitting where you are." -Noam Chomsky to an interviewer
Hi! I literally found your channel today and... well. I wanted to say thank you for a few things. Thank you for reminding me that I'm the sort of person that can calculate 21*37=777 in around 10 seconds with the conclusion of your first Kurzgesagt video, for example. But more seriously, thank you for reminding me to be mindful of the content I consume; my science enthusiast side had prevented me from realizing just how far from my ideologies Kurzgesagt is, and thank you for helping me rethink on a few outbursts that this side of me lead to recently. Thank you for introducing me to degrowth and re-introducing me (better) to solarpunk. And, probably the biggest one for me personally, thank you for truly showing me what the ravages of rare metal mining mean; simply hearing that 2000 tons of water are required for one ton of lithium was eye-opening, as was the image of silver mine. It's something that I had heard a lot of arguments about, but I had no idea it was this bad, and this will probably change a lot of my perspectives moving onward.
the problem with kurtzgesagt is how they talk about "learning", though, in reality their content rarely teaches anything, it more so answers absurd questions with data. To actually learn something one must sit down and read, solve, write, between other stuff. Is this criticism of mine properly founded? Only partially. But calling themselves an educational channel is not fair towards their viewers.
You're right. Edutainment is a bandaid on the extremely unhealthy relationship people have built to informational content by tying it up in competition with other sources of short-term gratification. It leads to people having insular knowledge based on fun-facts or fanciful analogies for things instead of actual, literal, big-yet-detailed-picture understanding. Trust me, I've been there.
What do you "learn" from kurtzgesagt? Can you apply anything from what youve learned? if the answer is no, then you have not learnt anything useful. @@Shaco.
This video is a little old, but as a massive youtube scince nerd who TOUGHT i was doing a good job of ballancing Philosophy classes with my science classes, this was a horifying wake up call. Thank you for this.
If this was a wake up call, then you'll have a lot of wake up calls before you. First when you realize how fear mongering makes people stupid shit cond when you realize how this is fear mongering.
If find it hard to argue that stifling economic growth *will not* have the effect of making us poorer (it directly follows that it will) even if the definition of degrowth simply chooses not to bother itself with that detail. Kurzgesagt may indeed be beholden to a particular political basket (and it’s a fair argument of yours that as a science channel they shouldn’t be), but they’ed have to bend over backwards on behalf of another political brand to pretend that degrowth didn’t somehow mean less overall prosperity.
This video is eye opening. I used to enjoy Kurzgesagt videos some time ago, but before today I couldn't put my finger on the weird feeling of that content just... promising something just out of arms reach. Telling magnificent stories of the future, that bear no relevance on life today. So much inspiration to keep viewers hoping, working, contributing... at this point, it's just eerie. They really went downhill right just before pandemic broke out (the most recent), as personally, I wouldn't find their videos as engaging anymore, given how during that troubling time collective problems really weighed down on my mind and, since I stopped then believing, that a society could course correct itself, it just wouldn't jam with usual upbeat and cheerful tone of those videos. If before my response to the fact, that Sun is going to blowing up in 5 million years was "oh no, what are we gonna do?", then today that response would be "so what, neither of us are capable of thinking past next 50 years"
TLDR: Kurzgesagt has a myopic view on political progress and it should be accounted for whenever watching their videos. They get the scientific claims they do make right, but the conclusions they make are often not justified especially when you account for external factors and it is concerning that billionaires seem to fund them ( and other similar projects ) to promote these messages, which when more context is added seem to benefit the billionaire at an expense to the common people, their natural science videos do not seem to have this issue. ** Also, this video shows how some of the fallacious reasoning used to make their conclusions could essentially justify fascism....**
thank you for that! I loved Kurzgesagt for long. until their video about addiction. and experiencing how they handled criticism about it. I knew after that, that something was off. I canceled my Patreon for them. and only watched a couple more videos from them. Thank you for explaining in detail, what I only could feel for so long.
@@sideeggunnecessary Short version is that the game was and is immensely popular. There are country championships held every year that are pretty competitive and gather attention. The real long version could be quite a long video dissecting memes and culture, clash of generations and rupture far bigger than generation gaps in western Europe (or at least so it seems to me). Now, I can say only from my observation and experience (as a Polish guy, I'll add) but there are a few sites or fanpages even on facebook that make variety of memes - some lighthearted so to say, other as a sort of commentary on current political affairs, mostly concerning Poland but if major enough then also world and throughout last year also a lot about cheering Ukraine and mocking russian state aparatus. And HOMM3 turned out be surprisingly potent in mocking politicians (politically here it's quite a... clownfiesta, because I lack better word to describe it without getting really vulgar) so occasionly some best memes started getting reposted elsewhere and non-HoMM3 focused pages and individuals also started making a meme or two in this style. And why Castle town screen? Well, that's how actually how our conservative governement of a overwhelmingly catholic country views what Poland is, was or should be. I wish I were exaggerating greatly, but it's only a bit if at all. One question is if being freaking Castle xD is even desirable and other is if it is any true and surprise surprise - it is not, because the country is littered with ugly banner and neons that serve as a cover for socioeconomic structure and combative+full of complexes mentality that many experience and some even (and still) cultivate. The other town you can see a lot, especially with coming of winter, is Necropolis, with particular focus on Shroud of Darkness building (I think that how it was called in English) to reflect the smog issues and generally massive air pollution and perhaps even to allude to how healthy our nation is (like the citizens of Necropolis no less xd). Accidental lecture in memes.
No, no, I promise you, trickle down economics works! We just aren’t giving enough money to billionaires! Trust me dude! (This comment is 40% funded by billionaires)
Great vid. Worked really with the Recent Some More News video "Are the Rich Ok?" where they dive into longtermism more. Honestly, a million USD would be enough to set my little family up so well that we could be more of a positive force in our local community. Actually funding people so they can have stable lives might lead them to changing the system with all that worry and stress taken away though.
If we had a system that actually funded people so they can have stable lives we would have no need to change it. We need to change it becouse it dosn't do that. The system is the condition and cause of it
That reminds me of trotskys sideproject of creating revolutionary morals. Guess its our task to continue his legacy then... It also reminded me of a personal story. The other day I was watching the puss in boots and came to the end of the movie. The sidemoral of the story was not to be an arrogant asshole. But the main thing was "be happy with what you have". Something a capitalist would wholeheartly agree with televising to a bunch of naive kids... I mean valuing small things or even your entire live is of course nice at all but in the end they destroyed the wish because they had what they wanted after they already had what they wanted. "Just look hard enough!" Does that remind you off sth? Conservatism and capitalists wanting you to shut up about systemic problems cause it's like your own fault youre not happy. Personal responsiblity! I watched the cretids while imaginary porky started at me in my own imagination. It really let's you think about how our thinking is formed under the superstructure of a bourgois society, be it inhumane calculations or morals for kids.
Right... but being happy with what you have can also be an anti capitalist mesasge: Don't be a mindless consumer, look at what you have, it is enough to enjoy life. That is LITERALLY the most anti capitalist message ever. It is only pro capitalist to you because you are biased as fuck, so you misconstrue anything to fit your narrative.
I know this is only meant to be talking about a handful of Kurzgesagt's videos, but that population-based effective altruism part from about 32:16 onwards was honestly so _chilling_ that it casts them in a very unsettling light generally. It's like everything they say is meant to distract you from your own needs & difficulties, caused in part by their sponsors, and even their natural science videos can fall under this purpose by proxy.
Bahahaha, I mean I hardly speak german in my daily life, but I do think you met the bar for german humor with the bahn joke, especially once you started explaining it. Maybe that was the joke, I dunno
As someone who knows about the German school system the whole “dropped out of Highschool and went to school for dropouts” story is a joke. I don’t even think it’s a translation error I just think he tried to make his story sound more grandiose
