I was going through my old liked videos. There I saw a video by CGP grey talking about how technology could have create a “Digital Aristotle”, a tool which will help students to learn on their own pace and at whatever depth they wish to.
According to me, The best tool could be the YouTube algorithm. With the giant stream of videos that flood the platform every second, most of them are slop which doesn’t try to challenge the viewer in any way intellectually. But after carefully cultivating a algorithm using indicators such as the Like Button or Subscribe button, I can indicate the algorithm that I want to watch stuff similar to this content. Also using Dislike button or Do not recommend the channel to pushback videos or channels that you don’t want to watch.
I wish they could add a profile or a feed system that would allow for different feeds for specialized uses. What are your thought about this or is there any other better alternatives?
There are inherent limits to the idea.
Videos are almost never the best medium for advanced learning. That’s why universities aren’t just collections of DVDs. Books remain the best method for the dense transfer of ideas, and are unlikely ever to be surpassed.
YouTube algorithms don’t analyse content, only user behaviour. Someone who likes an in-depth discussion of Anti-Oedipus might also like a Japanese music video. YouTube does not care why, only that they engaged. YouTube also actively fights niche feed curation. Liking A, B, and C, will get you A, B, and C, but also G (because it’s kind of like C, even though a human would know they’re different) 8 (because it’s vaguely similar to B) and whatever the current versions of pewdiepie, the Paul brothers, mr. beast, etc. are (because if they can get you to watch their BS, they can sell more ads for more money) regardless of how disimilar they might be to anything else you watch.
For me, the YouTube algorithm is the worst thing about YouTube. I consistently shows crap that is either very low quality or uninteresting. I use YouTube all the time, but just use my subscriptions or search. The front page is junk.
It’s shows me right wing grifters all the time when I never engage with politics on youtube.
If I had to choose, I’d pick the computer as a whole. But learning on your own pace and at whatever depth you wish to is already possible. It’s the variety of different tools and learning sources that make it possible. A single “digital aristotle” would miss the whole point. The only “benefit” would be to have it all in one place and some people try to make that problem bigger than it actually is. If anything, the dependency on a single tool would create a problem to use others.
When I saw it back then I thought he was mostly right, now, not so much.
That would only work for a small subset of highly motivated individuals, on a single topic for as long as they are interested on that topic.
Most people need to ask questions and clarifications, and quite often someone else’s question what makes you realise that something wasn’t what you thought and that sparks new questions.
Read this as “digital arsehole” and the answer is Reddit
See this is why I’m sticking with analogue
YouTube has been great for science content, but the algorithm is mediocre at best for me. It still pushes crap I have never shown an interest in, and keeps popping up the same ones I already marked as “not interested.”
LLMs can be good if it is a narrowly-defined subject, but it’s hard to tell when it’s running off the rails. Perhaps if it were possible to create an authoritative training data set, but that’s not on any VC funded company’s agenda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
Flip the classroom: Each student watches the lecture at home at their own pace (with individual pause and rewind). Assignment are done as during interactive classroom sessions, not as homework