In this article I will explain (1) why almost all videos suck, (2) why I will usually only watch videos if you pay me to, (3) what the few exceptions are to all that, (4) and what a good video actually worth the bother of watching looks like (with examples!). Which may help you pick or even make better videos.
Of course many videos are fine but just don’t interest me; they don’t thereby “suck.” This includes videos that aren’t directly informational, which just don’t usually interest me even when good (like debates, chats, interviews, call ins, or hangouts). But my focus here is the “arguing a point” videos everyone insists should interest me that “don’t” suck, but actually do. Which is most videos recommended to me.
These hyperlinks will jump you to sections, but you should read it all first:
- Videos Usually Suck
- What I Charge to Bother
- Exceptions to the Rules
- Testing or Improving Your Judgment
- Three Examples of Stellar Videos
- Summary
Videos Usually Suck
I stopped watching videos people send me years ago. Not all of them. But most. I just don’t watch random videos anymore. Doesn’t matter where. TikTok. YouTube. Acme Top Quality Videos. Doesn’t matter. Because I discovered that 99% of the time it is a complete waste of my time, and often insufferable to boot. Contrary to popular lore, videos are a terrible medium for communication. They are massively inefficient, low information, poorly sourced (if sourced at all), unreliable or lazily argued (or both), and often just face-palmingly bad, or else so basic and 101 that they contain nothing (not a single thing) I didn’t already know and thus don’t need to waste hours having explained to me again.
Send me a peer-reviewed article instead. Those often also suck, but less. Because they are more usually well sourced, carefully argued, and information dense—and I can read them far, far faster than a video can explain them. I can also far, far more quickly scan them to see if they are worth any bother at all, or what the most important information in them is, whereas I have to waste hours figuring that out about videos. Even if it takes me ten minutes per video to realize I’m wasting my time, just six of those and I’ve wasted an hour of my life. And videos generally suck. So these wasted hours stack. I stopped stacking them years ago.
So keep in mind: sending me a video that you want to ask my opinion of or insist I “must” watch for some reason is usually going to be a waste of time. You are competing with hundreds of other people insisting I watch some random video. I can’t watch hundreds of even good videos, much less lousy ones. So why should I watch yours? You need to give me a reason. And it can’t be the same reason those hundreds of other people give. Yet, odds are, they all gave the same reasons you do. Videos can be useful for people who are new to stuff, or enjoy that form of edutainment, or who make watching videos a particular interest of theirs, or prefer that means of learning things. None of that describes me. I read faster, already know most basic stuff, and I have little time and too many requests.
Indeed, even a request that I read something has to be turned down almost all the time. You would need to give me a super amazingly compelling reason why your suggested reading is more important than the hundred other suggestions that came before you. Because I have time at best for only a couple. Likewise for any video. But videos I find are worse by a factor of a hundred. And that includes videos even about me or my work. 99% of those are a waste of my time. Badly argued, inefficiently communicated, or devoid of anything new. Any points they make have probably already been repeated or refuted somewhere on my blog or in my print publications. So even those require some super amazingly compelling reason why I need to watch any of them. Odds are, it just repeats what I’ve already said, or says what I’ve already refuted, or refutes something I never actually said. Either way, I can’t see any use in spending my time on it.
That is, unless you correctly provide an actually good reason to—or actually hire me to. So let’s do those in reverse order…
What I Charge to Bother
I’m usually uninterested unless you are going to hire me to take an interest. After all, if you don’t think it’s worth the money, why should I think it’s worth the time? That’s a pretty good way to call a bluff. If you can’t put a dollar value on how important my seeing or responding to the content of a video is, then it has no value, and you just admitted it.
For everyone else, I have settled on the following rates, for which I will watch the video, and research and critique it if you want:
- For videos that look insufferable in every way: $250 per hour (proratable at a minimum of $75). You are paying for my time and emotional labor.
- For tolerable videos that are either well organized and referenced or directly in one of my wheelhouses: $200 ($60). This covers the extra time I have to engage in researching the content.
- For tolerable videos that are both well organized and referenced and directly in one of my wheelhouses: $150 ($50). That’s my base rate even to just talk to me by video.
I sometimes offer discounts for regular clients or colleagues whose judgment I trust. They generally know who they are. But everyone else, especially first-timers, these are my rates.
Exceptions to the Rules
There are a few exceptions to all of the above:
- People whose recommendations to me have consistently turned out strong. So I know by reputation they won’t be recommending a video to me unless it really is worth my time. But if you haven’t built that rep with me, you can’t use this method of getting my attention. Which leaves exception two…
- Rather than vaguely say “you should watch this” or “it’s important” or some such rigmarole, actually summarize the thesis of the video, explain why it would interest me enough to burn so much time on it, and why I need to watch it rather than get the same information somewhere else more efficiently—and if there is a more efficient way of getting it, give me that, not the video. Plus…
- If it’s a video critical of my work, you also need to tell me what’s in it that I haven’t already refuted somewhere—and the timestamp to where that “something new” is. Because I definitely won’t think it’s worth my time, if you didn’t think it was worth your time to find out what I’ve already said on the points in question, or to timestamp what was actually relevant in the video.
Even short videos (e.g. ten minutes), and humorous ones, unless I know your rep (that your recommendations tend to be good), I still need to hear some specific and good reason why it’s worth my time before I’ll bother. And “it’s important” is not a reason. Because everyone says that. And by now I’ve learned… they are usually wrong. And if I don’t know you, I don’t know your judgment is any better than theirs; and I have no reason to burn time finding out, precisely because there are too many of you making that demand on my time. So the rules above are it.
Testing or Improving Your Judgment
All this doesn’t mean I don’t watch things. But I choose my own channels and videos to watch. For example, I’ve found there has been no such thing as a video not worth watching by Three Arrows, Shaun, Jenny Nicholson, or LegalEagle (just to name a few). Many channels are good but most of their content I already know or am not directly interested in, so I keep an eye on them, but don’t watch all they do (a stellar example is Phil Halper). And yes, this includes frivolous things that amuse me. Watching an expert TACPLAN from the Coral Sea Raiding Company on how the Norwegian army would have won the Battle of Hoth fascinates my old background in combat weapons and tactics (who knew?), but I’ve already vetted that channel and know they are efficient, well argued and sourced, and always deliver on their headline.
I also myself recommend videos, in my articles for example—but only when I have confirmed they are worth watching. So you can rely on my judgment on that (or just also not bother). But the same principles apply: I only recommend videos that are efficient, well sourced or easy to fact-check, carefully argued, information dense, and the best place to start on a point (as in, there isn’t something better that I know of that I could have directed you to instead). They might be 101, but I’ll have told you that, so you can decide whether you need watch it. And either way, you can often tell from the videos I recommend what makes a video worth our time—what it takes for a video not to suck.
I won’t link to any examples of lousy videos because I don’t want to up their clicks, create followbacks, or help their algorithm. But common failures are repetitiveness (saying the same things over and over again, both within videos and across videos), pontificating (stream of consciousness opinionating without citable facts or articulable arguments), and bloviating (wasting inordinate time to make a point that could have been settled in five seconds). After that comes unreliability—their arguments are poor or muddled, and/or their facts are too often dubious, poor, false, misstated, or out of context, and I don’t feel like they did the best research, or (worse) any actual research. If I can get it all better somewhere else, faster and better, and it doesn’t take work to figure out if I’ve been misinformed or disinformed, or to logically diagram their arguments, the videos suck. Period. Likewise all AI slop. But that’s its own bunghole—I recommend this video by Mathamaniac, which is a good example of a high-(i)nformation video that doesn’t suck even though its (p)roduction values aren’t high: because high p with low i sucks; while low p, high i doesn’t.
I’m going to discuss three examples of videos worth watching, if they are on topics that interest me. But what they all otherwise have in common are:
- They cite their sources. And things they say not specifically sourced are clearly enough stated to be easily checked by a competent viewer. So either way, they make it easy for you to fact-check everything they say.
- They are efficient. No repetition, bloviating, pontificating. No wasted words. No wheelspinning or slowrolling. Every five seconds are necessary and add to an accumulated understanding of the thesis and why it is correct.
- They are unique and information dense. They present one of the best and tightest analyses of the thesis you’ll find. And you learn a lot of things; it’s not one long video that teaches you just one or two things.
- They are not misinforming, disinforming, or running game. No apologetics, fallacies, or gaslighting. They teach rather than manipulate. They are competent and reliable. Even if you have criticisms or their case is imperfect, they still give you the best case to start or engage with.
- They defend key generalizations with particulars, rather than argue only within the realm of the abstract. So I can tell they are contacting reality and understand what they are seeing. And they haven’t left something out that is devastating to their case. You can thus tell they actually Did Their Own Research, so I feel like I am actually saving time by watching that video, rather than losing it.
With that said, here are…
Three Examples of Stellar Videos
These are three videos I saw recently that made me say, literally out loud, “That was a damn good video!”
This is a fantastic example of a “stealth” critical thinking tutorial, similar to the examples I surveyed from Shaun once before (see Shaun Skills: How to Learn from Exemplary Cases). It is actually just a de-misinformation video on a specific subject (economics and the relation of facts to policy). But how Sharpe presents and debunks the claims made at the opening exemplifies how you should approach all armchair pontificating about economic facts and policy, or indeed any facts or policy. Sharpe opens with no fanfare or wheelspinning, or long droning introductions; he launches immediately on point. He starts with a chart, and doesn’t just say people say dumb things about it, he shows us (1) multiple (2) real world examples of authority-claiming wonks saying those things; he lets us listen to their own words. And they are things you commonly hear and by propagation of mythology might actually believe. He is not manufacturing a problem. He has started with multiple and particular contacts with reality.
Sharpe then tells you the outline of the video so you know what’s going to be covered and in what order, and even provides (thank you!) an indexed linklist in the description of every point the video will make and where. And he gets right to it. He steel-mans the people saying dumb things; he explains what they get wrong and right and the nuances involved; and then breaks down every single thing you need to know to not think those same dumb things. And his explanations are information dense, carefully argued, and efficiently presented. I can see how to check his work, and I can see why he is right and they are wrong, and I learn not just the overall thesis, but a ton of other facts besides, from learning the dumb things being said and why (the mistakes they are making), all the way to learning the correct information that dismantles their errors and leaves us with a more accurate understanding of the underlying facts (in the chart the video led with), so that we have a wiser and more informed idea of what policy recommendations should follow—and why they are not what the dumb guys overconfidently insisted should follow. Indeed, we learn why their suggestions would make everything worse.
This is how you become correctly educated—literally woke, as in, awake to reality—and not trapped in popular delusions or erroneous beliefs and prejudices. The process Sharpe undergoes here is the process you need to undertake on every topic in life, even if you rely on the benefit of others doing the work for you, like Sharpe. Once you get a sense that they are a reliable source for this kind of information, you can more quickly inform yourself without having spent hours doing what he did to build this video, by simply watching this twenty-two minute video. I feel like everyone thinks every video they recommend to me is this kind of time-saving boon. But decades of experience has taught me it almost never is. This is the real deal. Pay attention to what sets it apart from 99% of all videos on the same subject. That’s what makes a video worth watching—and the other 99% of videos not worth watching.
And that’s the case even despite the fact that I already knew some of what’s in this video. Because even that is well covered here, and its relevance well explained, so I can appreciate that, even though it’s stuff I already know. For example, I was well-versed in Cost Disease, as almost all Libertarians are not (and the dumb people here are de facto Libertarians), since Libertarians tend not to study any actual economic science. But seeing the principle well applied and explained in this novel way makes the video better rather than worse. Because I didn’t know the explicit tech bro reasoning he exposed, or some of the other stuff he brings in to deconstruct it, and he presents a perspective I hadn’t thought as much about before. And he does this all in just twenty minutes or so.
Likewise, there are defects in the video, but none bad enough to make it a waste of time. For example, Sharpe focuses on the role of government-paid jobs (like teaching), but someone unversed in the subject might not realize “getting government out of it” would not affect this—Cost Disease will always make teaching expensive, even if it was entirely privatized. So privatization has no effect on that. Sharpe makes this point, but it’s buried under his more focused “role of government” discourse and you might miss it.
Similarly, Sharpe makes the point that one of the reasons certain products have decreased in price is that the labor to make them has been offshored, and not because of anything to do with government. But that point passes so quickly and he makes so many other important points, a viewer might again miss it. This matters because Sharpe does not challenge offshoring jobs as a policy; he has a different idea about how to move forward by assuming nothing will be done about that. Whether he is right or not, you might want to be aware that offshoring is a major cause here. Since it isn’t a point Sharpe digresses on, it’s a point you need to catch yourself. But not every video can solve and explain every problem, and Sharpe’s video does give you enough information to catch this, if you know how to spy what’s being skipped over or left out for time.
So these defects are not major.
For years, I have watched every video on Three Arrows’ main channel. No YouTuber I know produces better, more informed anti-fascist content. And the host (Dan Arrows) is German, so he has a perspective on this that a lot of Americans don’t. All his videos are efficient, information dense, well sourced or easily checked, and carefully argued. I always learn things. And his coverage of each topic is often the best you’ll find. His most recent video (as of this publication) is actually more on contemporary German economic policy than fascism as such. But it has a tie-in, since he takes a bad video by a popular science channel (Kurzgesagt, meaning “in brief,” or as they say, “in a nutshell”) about pension policy and class warfare and explains all the mistakes it made, and replaces their errors with correct information, because all this does feed into anti-immigrant and right-wing ideologies—and hence, fascist narratives.
Arrows does not talk about that directly here, but focuses solely on the toxic mythology being bought into and repeated by the Kurzgesagt video. As usual, here Arrows is efficient, sourced, full of information, and well argued, all in barely half an hour. The subject does relate to every major nation, so it’s not just an isolated weird problem in Germany—the same issue gets reframed in the US around welfare and social security solvency, but it’s all the same problems, with all the same mistaken ideas about it that feed toxic tropes and thence bad policy. And this video is essential viewing on its subject (wealth, the state, economic survival, and intergenerational conflict). But it also represents an essential kind of critical thinking:
Arrows spots how things are stated as facts that are actually a misframing of reality, creating a mythology, by leaving out facts and perspectives that change how we see everything being discussed—in a way that benefits wealthy elites at the expense of literally everyone else. Kurzgesagt is selling a mythology the elite want sold, and they want it sold precisely because it distracts from the real issues underlying it all that would be to their disadvantage for ordinary people to realize. Arrows thinks Kurzgesagt is not doing this on purpose, but (like a lot of Americans, from MAGA voters to mainstream DNC leadership) is a useful idiot: they have bought the tropes and framing the elite have sold them and don’t realize that has happened to them. A lot of us—statistically, probably even you—have been duped into believing things like this, which prevent you recognizing your own interests or the threat posed by capitalist exploiters and resource-hoarding, or blaming the wrong causes and targets, thus neutralizing your ability to solve the problem by convincing you to waste time on things that never will.
So the greatest value of this video by Arrows is not just what it does (which does hit every metric of a good video all on its own) but also the method it shows you by example, of recognizing how a lot of things you think are obvious are actually bullshit you were tricked into believing by a power elite who know how to frame you into thinking one way and not realizing things you should be thinking about instead. If you can see how Arrows does this in this video, you can adapt the same method to deconstruct countless other mythologies you are continually tricked into assuming are fact—whether you were tricked directly by the power-elite’s overt and covert media machinery, or by some chain of useful idiots they tricked before you.
Jackdaw is a new channel, but so far looks stellar. It was in fact her video that inspired this article. Because I was algorithmed into seeing this inaugural “full length” video—by which we mean, just twenty minutes or so, an extraordinary brevity for the density of its information content—and realized it was a perfect example of the kind of video I mean when I say, “This, finally, is a video that doesn’t suck.” I was no doubt pipelined to it because I have written a lot on its subject (e.g. my series A Barely Thinking Ape Hoses Cultural Anthropology and Comes Up with the Manospheric Hooker Theory of History and If Even Hobbits Could Build Advanced Civilizations, So Could Women: How Being Bad at Reasoning Sustains Antifeminist Mythologies).
So I was curious to see her take, and whether it adds to or corroborates mine, or sucked too much to recommend to anyone. It could even have been so bad that I blogged about it, explaining why we need to stop making easily debunked videos like this against manosphere mythology because that just entrenches people in that ideology, convincing them and their targets of conversion that their critics are all full of shit and therefore they are right (I will be discussing later this week here a science article that did that, so it’s on my mind). But I was bowled over by how exactly the opposite of that this video is.
Jackdaw’s twenty minutes on “cavewomen” (she’s aware that’s not meant literally) is a masterclass in video quality and efficiency. Her facts are sourced and spot on, her arguments are very well constructed—she even thinks of exceptions or criticisms and prebunks them—and her efficiency and density of communication is extraordinary. Not a second of this video is wasted. It’s a ton of relevant information from start to finish, and very well explained, anyone can follow her points and get why her thesis is correct. And it does the most important thing of all: instead of just armchair debunking manosphere mythology, she surveys the relevant science and why it dismantles that mythology, including correcting countless misperceptions about how primitive humans lived and worked.
I also appreciate her starting a trend of promoting organic video as a thing, with her “100% organic” label meaning, I assume, no AI involved, all the art, animation, voice, script, and research was created by humans. I’d like to see this become a universal and popular trend. I don’t know her background (other than that she started out on TikTok, as she mentions in her inaugural YouTube ep, and “isn’t” an anthropologist, as confessed in its descrip), but (speaking as a PhD myself, who has conversed with a lot of anthropologists, and read a lot of anthropology—I even took both physical and cultural in college) her command of physical and cultural anthropology is at graduate degree level. And this video does, as I hoped, corroborate my arguments on the same topic, and adds more data and information I didn’t know, making my case even stronger (I’m going to add this video now in Ape Part 1).
What this all teaches me about her is that she is a very reliable thinker: she knows how to research a subject correctly, smartly anticipate objections (likely from her years of internet debating experience with antifeminists), and organize and present information in a way that is hard to honestly challenge or misunderstand. That is a quality video creator. Her work (including now a second video on The Other Species of Human, also solid) very much reminds me of my experience with Dan Arrows (speciality: fascism and economic and political theory) and Phil Halper (specialty: cosmology and fundamental science), and what it looks like I will be finding more of from Sharpe (specialty: economic policy and critical thinking). But the proof will always be in the pudding: if her remaining content holds as good as Cavewomen, she’ll be a top recommend from me from now on.
Summary
If you can zero in on videos as good as these (on the metrics I am talking about), in subjects I have an ongoing interest in, I might start watching what you recommend without even having to pay me. Getting me to do an article on a video might still require hiring me (I usually already have blogs in the pipe and thus can’t take on something new unless it’s earning more income). But I am usually into finding really good videos in the areas of my interest that teach me something new, accomplish something important, and would be worth recommending to anyone on their respective topics. They need to be information dense, well sourced, carefully argued, and efficient; anything over forty minutes is dubious; over an hour, probably too inefficient to bother. Again, not always, but exceptions only prove the rule. For example, hitting all five requirements of a stellar video include even a two hour interview video, the Carrier-Jones debate breakdown by Wondering Sapiens, and a two hour lecture video on the Hiroshima-Nagasaki decision by Shaun. Despite their unusual length they are masterpieces in their respective genres, with good, detailed, efficient, sourced content available nowhere else in one place. It is rare to nail that value with such a duration. But they do it.
And remember, even great videos, by all these metrics, that are too basic for me, or too speculative, or too tangential to my interests, won’t warrant displacing my time spent on something better or more productive. They don’t suck. They just don’t interest me. But whether of no interest or actually sucking, there are that 1% of videos that beat all these hurdles. It just requires time and discernment to find them (look at Three Arrows, Oli Sharpe, Phil Halper, Shaun, Jackdaw). And again, this holds even for videos about me or my work—99% of those are redundant or useless. And the only way to assure one of them is in the other 1% is to actually tell me what is in it that I haven’t already said or refuted somewhere, and where that is in the video (the actual timestamp). Everything else about me and my work, even when really good, I still can’t make time for unless I’m paid to.
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Thanks for pointing me Go Meta with Oli. The price costs chart video is golden,
I think you’re right that in 99% of cases, videos on Youtube or Tiktok as a source of intellectual content are trash and often just propagandistic.
I’ve seen far too many good people indoctrinated (at least partially if not fully) by nonsense they’ve watched online and I think the video format lends itself to pandering to people’s heuristics and prejudices very well. It’s how Jordan Peterson got famous after all. Unfortunately, people are also very influenced by images and rhetoric rather than logic.
But people like Peterson and Konstantin Krisin aside, I see the same issues with many left wing youtubers. A lot of the Remain/Rejoin the EU channels from the UK, while I think they’re right that rejoining would be a good idea, and that leaving was wrong, also tend to be very biased and I think they overplay leaving the EU as a cause of social ills in the UK (a lot of them were present before the UK left the EU), and ignore fair arguments that it might be more important to fix other things, or are downright hostile to people who suggest that it might be better to spend political capital elsewhere.
They also tend to make the UK look as if it’s much worse off than the rest of Europe, when it is on some measures, but not on everything, other Western European countries have plenty of issues. I.e Germany is having quite a lot of issues with the growth of fascism in the East and they also foolishly closed down their nuclear power stations (as stupid a decision as Brexit imo). France also has plenty of issues as a country, including utterly idiotic things like the Burkha ban, the French centre-right are basically where the British far right are on Islamophobic bigotry, you have cases where mayors have tried to win votes from insisting pork be in all school canteen menus.
In terms of good videos, I like Dr Mike, there is another good channel called “Art of Law” which is by a British barrister, “Alan Robertshaw” who explains legal concepts very well ,links to sources. He’s a bit too keen on the worst of animal rights for my liking, but that doesn’t interfere with his commentary on the law. He does good analyses of judicial decisions where there has been a lot of media sensationalism and explains the reasoning. He often dismantles both left sensationalism and right sensationalism.
Absolutely. I have the same issues with the majority of breadtube (not all, but most). As noted, I just didn’t want to name any to avoid aiding their algorithm.
Um, so is the UK.
Note this is normal. In the US, fascism is always a looming problem, and states have divergent issues. Yet they are all better off in the union, and the union is internationally more powerful with them in it. Just the open border trade and travel system alone gives the US enormous advantages over most other countries. I’m reminded of Vasily in Hunt for Red October, “we can go state to state, no papers—do they let you do that!?” That sounds like a trivial thing on paper. But its causal advantages are huge.
Oh I agree the UK definitely is, sorry with that sentence I didn’t want to imply the UK isn’t having the issue, indeed, the UK has the honour of having one hard right reactionary party (the contemporary Tories) and two fascist parties (Reform and Restore).
Most of those parties on the list never took off, I think the difference pre-2010s/2020s in British politics is that generally the far right basically operated as a faction of the Conservatives (i.e Enoch Powell of the Rivers of Blood speech and Thatcher had a minister, Alan Clarke, who was an open Hitler admirer)
What I was trying to say is that a lot of ex-Remain voters do seem to think that the UK is particularly awful in this respect, when I agree with you, I think it’s a problem in many societies. A lot of Remain voters, think that they can get away from this problem by moving abroad and elsewhere the problem is either as bad or worse, that’s the situation in most EU countries for sure.
It appears that in any reasonably large society you will have about 25-30% (in Poland and the US it’s a bit higher than that) who are pretty much fascists, if you look at their views on minorities, the right to strike, freedom of religion, etc.
As for the EU, I think it’s overall a good thing and the UK probably should aim to rejoin in the long term. As well as the advantages you mention, EU citizens can actually apply for government jobs in other EU states, apart from the foreign office, interior ministry and defence, provided they have a high level in the local language. The EU science network is pretty good too.
I think that one of the issues is whether it’s expanding beyond its ability to absorb new members. The cultural barriers are definitely there and each new member means you have to spend more political capital to get things done. Most people would think of themselves as being from their own country first and Europeans second. I think education is very very important and unfortunately people don’t really have a clue about the culture or history of other EU member states and governments have a lot of responsibility for this situation.
It’s also true for sure that it isn’t a union of equals, yet. Germany and France definitely have a much bigger say in what happens (as did the UK when it was a member, ironically the UK was the biggest pusher of the single market) However, the way to solve it, is to solve the issues, not give up on the project. I think for it to work better, there does need to be more democratisation and the EU parliament’s powers should be increased.
It is a fallacy to ignore all the important cases on a list and complain about the unimportant ones.
I worried you would fall for that fallacy. And lo. You did.
Recent far-right voter swings in the UK are not a phantom. Which orgs the voters belong to is not the same as the orgs they listen to or the ideas they hold. UK has a fascist problem. And it’s growing. Just like everywhere else.
The Great Replacement theory you then defend at the end is ridiculous. The UK like the US actually faces the opposite problem: our populations are aging out and declining. If it wasn’t for immigrants (“absorbing new members”) you’d be fucking screwed. And so would we.
Most narratives about “there are too many of them” are actually fiction—mythology, not science. For the US I show this with respect to the GOP policy platform. Immigrants aren’t the problem. They are the distraction invented by the wealthy elite to get you to stop noticing how they are hoarding resources and cutting your wages and increasing your hours and causing rises in the price of everything. Growing income disparity, wage stagnation, and the growth of oligarchy and plutocracy are causing all the problems you’ve been tricked into blaming on immigrants. There are so many studies and analyses proving this by now, you can surely Do Your Own Research to discover it. I shouldn’t have to be telling you.
I don’t know why you’re saying I believe in the Great replacement theory, I think it’s ludicrous. Maybe I’m doing a very bad job of explaining myself, which is perfectly possible,
“Most of those parties on the list never took off, I think the difference pre-2010s/2020s in British politics is that generally the far right basically operated as a faction of the Conservatives (i.e Enoch Powell of the Rivers of Blood speech and Thatcher had a minister, Alan Clarke, who was an open Hitler admirer)”
What I meant by this is that the far right have had a big influence in British politics, but generally not from those organisations you’ve mentioned. They never got seats in parliament (though they did have a big street presence in terms of thuggery and they won seats in local councils etc).
I meant to say that I agree with you that the far right have a presence in British politics and have had for longer than people recognise, just that the biggest far right groups have tended to operate within the Tory party, until recently when UKIP and then Reform were formed. Indeed, there have been far right ministers (i.e Suella Braverman, Jacob Rhees Mogg, Alan Clarke, Enoch Powell), the difference is that the far right tended to vote Tory, whereas now they’ve split off and gone for Reform.
Great Replacement Theory underlies statements like “I think that one of the issues is whether it’s expanding beyond its ability to absorb new members.” That’s “too many nonwhite people replacing us, we can’t take any more, stop letting them in!” Likewise the idea that we are even letting too many in; we need to let them in to prevent the collapse of our economies, because we aren’t making enough babies (because children are too expensive). Only Great Replacementers balk at this reality, because replacing our decline in children with “foreigners” threatens to “dilute” white culture. The opposite is the case. Culture diffuses according to time not biology. So letting “nonwhite” people bolster our needed ranks does not threaten “culture,” and the color never matters to anything and thus is a silly thing to feel threatened about. Why care what color our descendants will be?
As for the weaker argument fallacy, sending a list of examples of fascist movements some of which are old does not warrant rejecting the list, because its pertinence derives from the ones that aren’t old, not the ones that are.
“I think that one of the issues is whether it’s expanding beyond its ability to absorb new member”
Oh I I responded to this below, but I’ll respond here too to clarify for anyone reading the thread. I meant admitting new states to the union and causing a political imbalance. I see why you might have read that as an anti-immigration stance, maybe the use of the word “absorb” and “members” wasn’t clear.
I guess I made the mistake of writing this post in 38 degrees, and didn’t reread what I had written before posting it.
As to your point about the list of fascist groups in the UK, yes, I wasn’t dismissing that the UK has a far right problem, it does. It’s more that the “mainstream” far right has operated within the Tory party (if only for electoral reasons, in FPTP it wasn’t easy for parties like the BNP, the NF, or any of the others to get elected).
So in other words, we’ve had reactionary far right politicians in the UK, but they tended to be elected as members of the Tory party and Reform is kind of a split off of the far right of the Tories (Farage was a big fan of Thatcher and Enoch Powell).
The Reform-Tory split is kind of similar to what is happening in Germany, where often ex far right CDU voters have gone to AFD (which was started by ex CDU politicians).
However, it is true that the NF in particular had a big presence on the street and the EDL has a big street presence too. That’s a very fair point.
“Recent far-right voter swings in the UK are not a phantom. Which orgs the voters belong to is not the same as the orgs they listen to or the ideas they hold. UK has a fascist problem. And it’s growing. Just like everywhere else.”
Yes, this is a fair point, I think there are people who listened to the EDL etc while not voting for them. I don’t deny the far right surge recently is big (and the far right as you say was bigger than implied).
I will say again my point when I mentioned Germany wasn’t that the UK didn’t have this problem, it’s more than many Remain voters in the UK think the UK is particularly worse on this, when it’s a global trend.
“I think that one of the issues is whether it’s expanding beyond its ability to absorb new members. The cultural barriers are definitely there and each new member means you have to spend more political capital to get things done. Most people would think of themselves as being from their own country first and Europeans second. I think education is very very important and unfortunately people don’t really have a clue about the culture or history of other EU member states and governments have a lot of responsibility for this situation.”
Oh here I say why you said what you did. I was referring to the fact that one issue with pursuing EU integration further is that so far, most Germans think of themselves as German first, European second, or French first and European second, or Spanish first and European second and that is a barrier for having a more functional EU.
There are pan-EU parties pushing for a Federal EU that have run, Volt is an example, but it’s never done very well, people still very much back national parties in elections.
“I think that one of the issues is whether it’s expanding beyond its ability to absorb new members. The cultural barriers are definitely there and each new member means you have to spend more political capital to get things done.”
Here I was talking about admitting new states. As for migration, I´m generally pretty liberal on the issue, I don’t think we have enough free movement treaties, I think it’s foolish that we don’t have free movement with Korea, Japan and Australia, or Taiwan for that matter, or Hong Kong. I’ve also questioned whether migration controls do more damage than good generally (I come down thinking there should be some, but I think they should be fairer than what we have now and more liberal).
I generally think cultural exchange is a pretty good thing and I think the EU has helped promote it, within Europe at least. The Erasmus programme has done some good there, however my point about education was it isn’t nearly enough. Too many EU citizens don’t know enough about their fellow citizens’ countries.
What I meant more here, was absorbing new states as members and it’s true that having lots of different political cultures and tendencies in the EU can make things difficult (I realise now I expressed myself badly when I said cultural barriers, I should have said political cultures). It already causes quite a lot of delays in terms of making necessary reforms and getting changes done. I think the EU is already struggling with this somewhat as it is and adding new members too quickly might cause real issues, in the way that it might mean you have to spend more political capital to make changes. The US has this issue as well.
For me that’s a separate issue from migration, I think it’s like how it would be hard to get a political union to work with the US and Canada and it’s quite tricky to maintain the existing unions (Spain is a union for example, the same with the UK).
It may well be that some of these differences decrease in the future if you have a generation of political leaders who are more federal-minded.
For me, I think that the EU needs to consolidate what it has above all and some of it’s already very good. We have the biggest free migration, free trade zone in the world and despite room for improvement, arguably the first successful attempt to get international law to work well with enforcement measures (i.e how Orban was punished).. What I think it needs to do is make its institutions a lot stronger and more accountable..
As for the Great Replacement theory, I think it’s nonsense, I don’t think France or Britain is going to be “swamped”. Countries like Ukraine and Moldova have plenty of skilled, well educated people and I think that there is a lot of hysteria about migration from Muslim majority countries.
Eventually, I do want to get to a stage where we don’t have borders, where all countries have similar incomes (or at least where the difference in GDP per capita makes no difference to your standard of living) and where we have a kind of world government.
Indeed, border policy is a different issue. The only way to open borders in the true sense is to lift all boats to the same level or near enough. So the order of policy should not be “open the borders” but “fix the divergent economies until comparable, then open the borders.” Hence, for example, in the US we should be developing policy to increase the economic success of Mexico and subdue causes of refugee crises in Central America before suggesting we have free borders with them as we do within the states. We also need to fix ourselves—the reason Canada doesn’t have an open border with us is that we are economically depressed and poorly governed and thus too fucked up to just let in willy nilly. We are Mexico to Canada. The US is a third world country to most of the first world.
Well, I think there definitely are ways in which the US is worse, it has a worse religious extremism issue than the vast majority of other First world countries, it’s also worse on welfare policies generally.
I think the US constitution needs a major update, and it hasn’t had one since the 60s. The presidency should be directly elected by AV, the Senate should be abolished too imo, though this is a pipe dream atm.
That said, European countries shouldn’t be too boastful, nutters have been doing pretty well in the EU, i.e they control Italy and are quite likely to control France soon, probably they will be in coalition in Spain with the “centre-right PP”. Poland is tightly contested between pro-EU liberals and the far right, and has the awkward situation of having a far right president and a kind of Macron-style prime minister. I think a Reform government is sadly not out of the question in the UK, or a Reform-Tory coalition at the very least and it will suck.
Indeed, Italy has recently stripped gay couples of adoption rights and the UK has ended up restricting trans rights and mainstream politicians are either actively pushing the anti-trans narrative, or just refusing to condemn virulently transphobic people like Rowling.
I think we do have a racism problem in the EU (and UK). Anti-Arab racism is horrific and is super-common in France, Spain and Italy. There is also a lot of ignorance and a refusal to recognise that we either did anything wrong in Africa, or are doing anything wrong now, or have any responsibility for the plight of people coming over. In Eastern Europe, to a large degree the kind of racism there is ignorance, and lack of familiarity with people from other cultures (and a type of nationalism which equates nationality with ethnicity), in Western Europe, I think it’s that + the colonial legacy.
I think freedom of speech is in a pretty precarious state in much of the EU too. You have the whole burkha ban, burkini nonsense in France and there are lots of attempts to prosecute critics of Israel or Zionism as encourageing antisemitism in both France and Germany. In the UK too Cenk Uyghur got banned from entering recently for alleged antisemitism.
I do think it would do people good to see what things are like in other countries, I think it’s one thing that it would be good for more people to experience (obviously not everyone can easily do it because of obligations etc).
The free speech situation in much of Europe was never good. They didn’t have the culture we did in that regard, one of our few actual advantages as Americans.
True, I think America has got this right, though it’s quite recent in the US too, the First Amendment really got the current interpretation under the Warren Court, which is the most liberal Supreme Court the US has ever had.
I think r.e Europe, what you say is generally true. I think actually in some ways Spain is one of the better ones. It has laws I disagree with, i.e flag burning is banned (unlike the US), and if you incite violence against the Royal family, you get a worse penalty than if you do it against regular citizens (I think both should be illegal but the penalties should be equal) but ideological freedom is specifically guaranteed in the constitution and respected in practice. One good thing in Spain too is that academic freedom is constitutionally protected in both public and private universities, I think unfortunately there might be an exemption for theology departments, but if you’re a history professor and they find out you are an atheist, they can’t get rid of you (mind you, nowadays the Catholic church in Spain probably don’t care as long as you’re willing to work for them).
Another thing tbf, is that in Spain and some other countries, unlike the US, it’s illegal to fire people because of their political beliefs (as long as you’re not encourageing violence etc). And I think that’s how it should be, I think it’s insane how much control private employers have over people’s lives in the US.
Yep. We have the modern free speech and free religion rights we have thanks to leftists, journalists and some courageous Christians.
Fascism is spreading everywhere. That’s not a reason to give them what they want, like Brexit.
I think Brexit was a very foolish decision and while not everyone who supported Brexit was a fascist, it definitely benefitted the far right, I have that very clear in my head.
I do think Farage is a far right politician like the Le Pens and AFD. My point wasn’t that the UK doesn’t have this problem, my point was many people in the UK incorrectly assume it’s a UK only problem, particularly people who voted Remain.
I have heard people saying they wish to leave the country because of the rise of Farage and I think they don’t realise how similar the situation is elsewhere.
Really? I’ve never once encountered even the dullest breadtuber who would actually say that. They may imply that from focus of coverage, but, obviously, Trump was rising at that time, so I doubt they would think fascism was exclusive to the UK context.
And, yes, the Brexit issue is complex, but a lot of that complexity slips away in the noise. The reason it went through is fascism. Pure and simple. There are lefties who are EU-skeptical enough to want out, for reasons I find incredibly silly as a leftie myself, but they weren’t the ones driving the bulk of that conversation.
And, yes, obviously it’s not just Farage, but you’re making a mistake there too. This is a diathesis-stress issue. Men like Trump and Farage stumble onto a circumstance, fuel ready for the flame… but the resulting fire is indeed on them, precisely because it wasn’t burning until they started it. And these fascists don’t just start the fire, they feed it. Without fascist grifters riding the wave and extending fascist politics, a lot of that rage would die down into a more quiescent state, ready to be reactivated only some time later. There is an incredible artificiality to fascist politics that we can never forget.
So, yes, the conditions were ripe in many places for a fascist uprising (and now for a leftist one, thank goodness), but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the specific stressor and what that says about the underlying condition. The fact that Brexit and isolationism has been working is relevant, and it’s not really due to isolationist tendencies, as indicated by every one of these movements becoming maximally interventionist when it suits them. It’s just racism, and religious chauvinism, and xenophobia. They are afraid of a multicultural world and they are stupid enough to think closing free markets will put that genie back into that bottle.
“Really? I’ve never once encountered even the dullest breadtuber who would actually say that. They may imply that from focus of coverage, but, obviously, Trump was rising at that time, so I doubt they would think fascism was exclusive to the UK context.”
It’s not a majority of Remain voters in all fairness, but you definitely see this in UK social media, not so much the breadtubers themselves as people who phone into people like James O’Brian’s show, or people writing comments in facebook. I think there is definitely a feeling that the grass is greener on the other side. A good example of someone with this kind of mentality is Michael Lambert, who isn’t a major youtuber, but a good illustration of this way of thinking. I think “Maximilien Robespierre” is another example of this, who ironically is happy to live in Italy under Meloni.
“And, yes, the Brexit issue is complex, but a lot of that complexity slips away in the noise. The reason it went through is fascism. Pure and simple. There are lefties who are EU-skeptical enough to want out, for reasons I find incredibly silly as a leftie myself, but they weren’t the ones driving the bulk of that conversation.”
I’d say the majority of Brexit voters were conservatives or reactionaries and the Ashcroft polling seems to confirm this. It was definitely mostly a right wing thing. I would say the EU didn’t do itself any great favours before the vote. The “Lexit” vote wasn’t insignificant, it wasn’t the biggest driver, but I think if it could have been reduced it might have been enough to prevent it.
“And, yes, obviously it’s not just Farage, but you’re making a mistake there too. This is a diathesis-stress issue. Men like Trump and Farage stumble onto a circumstance, fuel ready for the flame… but the resulting fire is indeed on them, precisely because it wasn’t burning until they started it. And these fascists don’t just start the fire, they feed it. Without fascist grifters riding the wave and extending fascist politics, a lot of that rage would die down into a more quiescent state, ready to be reactivated only some time later. There is an incredible artificiality to fascist politics that we can never forget”
Oh I agree with that, I think that’s very clear, you could apply that to the Le Pens in France or Meloni in Italy. I definitely think the fascists are responsible for it, I must have explained myself very badly, I think Farage, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson have done a lot of damage in the Anglosphere particularly.
“the fact that Brexit and isolationism has been working is relevant, and it’s not really due to isolationist tendencies, as indicated by every one of these movements becoming maximally interventionist when it suits them. It’s just racism, and religious chauvinism, and xenophobia. They are afraid of a multicultural world and they are stupid enough to think closing free markets will put that genie back into that bottle.”
Oh no doubt, none of these people are really isolationists. I would love to see a UK government that actually did intervene less, I think the UK is massively deluded (the politicians mostly, but some of the public too) about being a great power.
Oh, I don’t think you explained yourself badly, and to be fair I would need to actually see the content you are discussing because it is wholly possible they framed the issue badly in a way that your criticism applies to.
My point is just that Brexit needs to be viewed as a localized fascist phenomenon, in line with Euroskepticism which is of course omnipresent among fascists (back during Brexit I was talking to American Nazis who just parroted all the nonsense). The challenge Britain has is that it is relatively conservative and so, while its fascist tendencies can seem softer in some regards because they are more institutional, it also means that the fascist tendencies go deeper. That having been said, the fact that the Tories never are tolerably racist for the far-right and the far-right need to make an endless carousel of new parties with repeated electoral viability challenges is a good sign.
I suspect that what may be going on (and I think you alluded to this in the other thread) is that British culture views the ugliest fascism as gauche and low-class.
“My point is just that Brexit needs to be viewed as a localized fascist phenomenon, in line with Euroskepticism which is of course omnipresent among fascists (back during Brexit I was talking to American Nazis who just parroted all the nonsense). “
I actually would say I’m not so different from you on this, it’s definitely mostly a right wing project and the vast majority of the far right backed it and a lot of the more “moderate” Brexit supporters, or “libertarian” ones, like Daniel Hannan have basically revealed they’re fascist adjacent at best. Brexit was a deeply reactionary project at its heart, which is why Lexit (Left wing Brexit) was mistaken.
I think a lot of left wing Brexiters also were paleoleftists, people like George Galloway and Kate Hoey are quite good examples of this, i.e they’re leftists who look back rather than forwards and are quite conservative (well a bit reactionary on cultural issues in Hoey and Galloway’s case).
It may well be that right wing Euroskepticism is another one of Enoch Powell’s poisonous legacies, as he was the only major Tory to be against joining and actually who campaigned to leave in the first referendum in 75.
“The challenge Britain has is that it is relatively conservative and so, while its fascist tendencies can seem softer in some regards because they are more institutional, it also means that the fascist tendencies go deeper.”
I think this is a curious comment (in a good way). I think it’s definitely true that there is an instutitionalised far right in the UK, so I’d agree to a large extent. One thing about the Tories, is that they have always been a big tent party, it was true in the 19th century where you had more moderate, sensible people like Benjamin Disraeli and you had out and out reactionaries. In a sense, because the party’s aim is to keep the social structures etc intact (and the Good Old Boys in charge), the difference is how you do it, i.e do you make concessions, or do you really hammer down on the people who want change.
I guess too there is the debate as to whether you see reactionaries and fascists as the same thing or not. I think the modern far right has elements of both ideologies (the hyper-nationalism, plus the populist elements, the cult of the leader from the Italian and German fascists in the 30s, I think from the 19th and early 20th century reactionaries you have the idea of turning the clock back to some imagined past, at least a pretence of liking traditional institutions like the monarchy).
I think your comment about institutionalisation applies to a lot of Europe generally. Certainly in Germany, lots of fascists were hiding in the CDU until pretty recently, when some split to form AFD. Plenty of people who should have been prosecuted in Nuremberg weren’t and even chaired NATO (Speidel and Heusinger) to give a couple of examples.
In France too, the vast majority of Pétainistes didn’t get punished post WW2 and many were involved in the coup that ended up putting De Gaulle in Power. Certainly, the far right has always had a big presence in the French army and the police.
Spain is a very interesting case, because of how the transition worked. The mainstream right wing party, the PP, basically was created by Franquistas who accepted the Democratic Transition in the 70s, and was created by quite a senior Franco-era minister, “Manuel Fraga”. However, the have generally been against things like the “Historical Memory” law, i.e that makes it easier for the relatives of people shot in the civil war to find their loved ones remains (they did vote to condemn the coup in 2002). It’s also worth noting that until the present government, nobody, nominally left or right, dared move Franco’s body from the “Valle de los caídos” monument. Of course, that was never enough for the real nutters and they formed Vox in the 2010s.
I agree with your evaluation of videos.
It is irritating to point out to a Creationist that his argument is flawed, only to be met with a link to a long, rambling video that is poorly made and tells me nothing new.
Another example this morning was my dryer telling me the filter was clogged and asking me to scan a link for directions. Fine, since I don’t usually use this dryer and didn’t know where the filter was, I scanned the link. I was met with a 10-minute video, the first 45 seconds of which were meaningless chitchat, informing me that this was the last video he was making in 2024 and that he wanted it to be meaningful. Finally, after I waded through that, he showed me where to find the filter I needed to clean. All of that could have been accomplished with a simple webpage and a picture of where the filter is. If there were more details for those who needed more, a verbal description or perhaps a helpful video link would have been appropriate. The video I saw went on for another 8 minutes, with no clear indication of what he would talk about. I shut the video off after I got the information I needed.
Yea YouTube self-made help videos are the worst about that. You have to wait through several minutes of idle chit chat like you’re talking to a neighbor over the fence or something. And they spend a bit of time trying to get the camera setup correctly and all of that. And then they will often mention in passing about a very important step without properly explaining or demonstrating that, so you come away with a not so complete understanding of the solution or fix.
Yep. Often a thing.
Mind you, that’s not always bad, for people who want to watch chatty videos, precisely for their chattiness. But those aren’t cases I’m discussing (as noted at the top).
That’s a good example of a pervasive problem with video culture. I concur.
How much do you charge to watch your own debate videos? I don’t have too much in savings, but I suppose I could sell the car and take extra shifts at Burger Fling? 🙂
Seriously, $150 an hour. But the only reason to would be if you wanted me to write or say something about that debate video, so you’d have to specify what specifically you want done, other than just watch something.
There actually are examples of this, as recently Wondering Sapiens had me watch and parse one of my debates, producing an extremely useful and efficient video on its headline subject. I’ve done similar things on other channels. Though theirs is the best example yet.
I will watch your three examples of stellar videos, but only if you pay me to.
That would be bad advice to be giving yourself.
The entire point of my article is that videos like that should be watched without being paid to.
And there is an important reason why, as explained.
I was just making a funny (-:
Haha, joke, but seriously, there’s a difference between an individual saying their own general policy and an individual themselves making a recommendation. My general anti-video policy is not because video quality is inherently always awful; it’s because I’ve had so many people send me garbage that took a long time to fisk that I’ve had to adopt a blanket policy. But if someone is showing themselves to be a reasonable person and they treat my time with respect and explain why a particular video is really good and useful, I’ll adjust that general policy.
So I’ve managed to curate my video feed to the point that they are overwhelmingly good and reliable, but yes, people will tend to send you slop when they are defending slop arguments.
Here’s my problem with a video: It is inherently slow and difficult to communicate with. If someone sends me a video and I want to respond to them and fisk the problems, I need to search the transcript (which may be inaccurate), listen to the audio, make sure that it’s in appropriate context, and then use either timestamps or Ctrl-C from the transcript. If someone sends me an article, I can read it, and then start quoting from the article immediately, and we don’t have to worry about issues like tone of voice, body language, etc. that could then further alter the interpretation.
So I also routinely ask folks to send me articles rather than videos for the same reason. I can quickly read an article and do a sniff test. In particular, if the article actually undermines their argument rather than supporting it, I can find that out in less than a minute and then show them the relevant quotes, and then explain to them why this means their position is not just wrong but incompetent. But for a video, you may need to spend minutes or even hours getting the entire context of the argument.
Exactly. That’s why text is almost always better. Especially text subject to at least some standards of control (like peer review is at least supposed to generate).
Another point along these lines is that a video may be a good way to get an introduction to what someone thinks about something, but it would be folly to assume that was the steel man of their case, and so it isn’t useful at all if you want to vet or critique their case.
Even I don’t assume an interview or timed debate by William Lane Craig, a well-documented disingenuous liar, fairly represents his reasons for some assertion. Colloquial wording is less precise, timed conditions limit what he can remember to mention, and so on. We always have to end up going to print for that. So why waste any time on the redundant middle step?
Sometimes I treat a video of Craig as representative enough, but only when the usual reasons it could be a straw man don’t apply or are improbable, or I know it doesn’t deviate relevantly from what he has written, so I can steel man whatever there is. But that gets back to choosing videos carefully.
Now, of course, pointing out to the person who got suckered by the video that they didn’t notice the objections can be a useful pedagogical exercise… but then they can complain about being strawmanned, and then one has to jump to the steelman anyways.
And indeed, best to start with a print case where someone can respond to every single obvious objection, so that way the conversation can actually get to the interesting stuff most rapidly. (And when the print case fails at that, that too is illustrative).
I am surprised Oli in his video doesn’t ever mention underlying ecological factors, such as decrease of EROI of fossil fuels, which are a common denominator of all practically all sectors of modern economy. Policy isn’t the only factor affecting the economy.
Otherwise, thanks for recommendations! I am really enjoying the Three Arrows channel so far. Looking forward to getting more recommendations from you.
The drop in fossil EROI is outside his explanatory window, so it cannot be causal to anything he is discussing.
Moreover, EROI is not productivity. In the period he is explaining, more, not less, fossil energy became available, which is why the economic growth has been largely steady. That cannot explain the chart he is explaining, as the divergence happened at the same time as that, so it can’t have caused it.
Drops in EROI only become a “problem” when it eats up the economy, i.e., you have to stop making and doing stuff to divert that energy to extraction, processing, and distribution. That has never happened yet. Our economy keeps growing; it has not shrunk, least of all due to lost EROI. So it won’t be relevant to his analysis.
But for my take on EROI in general (which may be out of date now as the EROI of renewables has increased since I published it, but I don’t think enough to reverse its conclusions): The Shocking Reasons Why We Should Go Nuclear (and tangentially: We Do Need to Do Something about Global Warming).
Ecological factors would be one of the forces affecting the economy, the interplay of which results in whatever tendencies we might observe. The fact that EROI alone doesn’t explain the chart doesn’t make it irrelevant. I’d argue his explanation is incomplete without considering ecological factors — they are the backbone of our society. I was especially triggered by his extrapolation of the chart — his prediction contradicts not only the known laws of ecology, but also doesn’t even follow from the chart itself, as some of the sectors of economy denoted by the blue lines have been already showing signs of reductions in efficiency.
Speaking about nuclear, if it was economically feasible, Earth would have been covered with nuclear stations long ago. Didn’t happen, won’t happen — EROI of nuclear energy is laughably low.
Ecology affects all sectors. The video is about why certain sectors have diverged and what “should be done” in result of that singular fact; not “all the problems arising across the entire economy.” In science, you isolate a variable and control for the rest, so you can talk about the one thing you are talking about. That’s what he did. You seem not to understand how causal science works. That impression is reinforced by the fact that you seem not to understand the video, which is about cost disease and offshoring, not “reductions in efficiency.”
And that impression is further reinforced when you said…
That isn’t the reason. Making up stories from the armchair without checking the actual history of why things are the way they are signals someone who isn’t taking any of this seriously.
Well, I am not (yet) a scientist by any means, so you are fair to point that out. I am basically just triggered because in his extrapolation he mentioned something along the lines about AI exponentially driving productivity upwards. So I thought it was odd that he included that in his analysis and didn’t mention the most obvious factor which would drive the costs further up instead. Besides that, I think the video is very well made.
According to this paper EROI of nukes is 5-15. Even that estimate is too high in my armchair opinion. Every single nuclear station in the US runs on government subsidies. The ones that do not go out business very quickly. If that’s not the reason why, then I have no idea. Nuclear energy is always amazing on paper, but is far less stellar when it comes to real world impletentation. I guess we are only “20 years away from nuclear fusion”, aren’t we? 😉
He literally prefaced that with “even if we assume the most technoptimist predictions about what AI is going to be able to do soon, which I don’t”. So he isn’t talking about the future realities of AI, but bracketing AI as not changing his conclusions in the rest of the video “even if” the absurdist fantasies of AI are true. So maybe you need to work on your reading comprehension skills as well.
On Nuclear EROI, your linked paper never calculates an EROI for nuclear, it just lifts a result from an obsolete study a decade before, which has since been refuted (in the very article my article discusses). So you’ll need to try harder. But this time read my article on it, and comment on that article, not here. The EROI of nuclear is not a subject here. So discussions of it should occur there. But make sure you are informed (actually read my article and its sources) before commenting there.