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[Iduno]

My professor is terrible and our presentations are suffering in front of a guest because we have no concrete directives.

Wear a suit and act confidently. Smug confidence is worth much more than actually knowing what you're talking about.

I wish I was joking.

[pikachu17]

On youtube, I just got a notifier for a channel I am not subscribed to, and I am not sure I've ever been on that channel before.

[pisskop]

YouTube occasionally tries to sneak in some extra influence.

its been proven that YouTube isn't impartial, and that Google's giant moneyboner comes from getting you to do what it suggests

[Rolan7]

On youtube, I just got a notifier for a channel I am not subscribed to, and I am not sure I've ever been on that channel before.

Weird.  I've never got such a notification (because I don't ring the bell), I only ever get notifications for comment replies.

not that I partake in Youtube discourse

[smjjames]

A famous haematologist from Madrid is ditching medicine to join a neo-Francoist party. I shit you not

Do they need to ditch medicine to join that or something?

[Naturegirl1999]

On youtube, I just got a notifier for a channel I am not subscribed to, and I am not sure I've ever been on that channel before.

Weird.  I've never got such a notification (because I don't ring the bell), I only ever get notifications for comment replies.

not that I partake in Youtube discourse

If you go to science videos the conversations can actually be educational

[Reelya]

Yes, but those science sheeple believe the world is round and billions of years old. Wake up, sheeple.

[ChairmanPoo]

A famous haematologist from Madrid is ditching medicine to join a neo-Francoist party. I shit you not

Do they need to ditch medicine to join that or something?

Well you can't be a MP and practice at the same time, realistically. Though, given the degree of absentism of some MPs,  he could potentially pull it off I guess.

The thing is that he's the kind of guy that, should he desire it, could probably make a living by giving talks for the pharmaceutical industry. Yet he does this instead...

[Kagus]

Well, important to do something you believe in, or whatever...

[Mephisto]

In /r/HailCorporate news, T-Mobile Tuesday is a thing that happens every Tuesday. As a customer, you get a few things every week - free fast food, gas coupons, a giveaway for whatever.

Today's extra freebie is a selection of pumpkin templates. Nearly all of which contained the T-Mobile logo. Just in case you want to advertise via mangled pumpkin who your favorite current phone carrier is.

[Trekkin]

(-snip-)
If you go to science videos the conversations can actually be educational

To put it bluntly, there are huge pitfalls associated with learning about science via Youtube comments.

For one thing, the vast majority of science videos are meant for a popular audience, so they prioritize comprehensibility over accuracy. That's fine when those simplifications are a prelude to a more complex lesson later, but not everyone ever makes that leap, so a lot of those commenters are just throwing nicely discretized but ultimately inaccurate factoids at each other.

That leads into the larger problem, though: signal-to-noise ratio. For every actual, credentialed expert on Youtube taking the time to communicate correctly, there's a small horde of people with a giant chip on their shoulder and something to prove about the scientific expertise they don't have, and the comments section is a great place for them to get into fights with similarly underequipped laypeople. Occasionally they might parrot something approaching correct information, but it's far easier to sound scientific (to laypeople) than to be so, and folks interested in the former over the latter generally just want a platform from which to sound smarter than the next guy. You can do that most easily by just throwing vaguely related-sounding words at people until they shut up.

Entertaining, maybe, but if you want to learn as many true things and as few false things as possible, don't learn from Youtube.

[pikachu17]

(-snip-)
If you go to science videos the conversations can actually be educational

To put it bluntly, there are huge pitfalls associated with learning about science via Youtube comments.

For one thing, the vast majority of science videos are meant for a popular audience, so they prioritize comprehensibility over accuracy. That's fine when those simplifications are a prelude to a more complex lesson later, but not everyone ever makes that leap, so a lot of those commenters are just throwing nicely discretized but ultimately inaccurate factoids at each other.

That leads into the larger problem, though: signal-to-noise ratio. For every actual, credentialed expert on Youtube taking the time to communicate correctly, there's a small horde of people with a giant chip on their shoulder and something to prove about the scientific expertise they don't have, and the comments section is a great place for them to get into fights with similarly underequipped laypeople. Occasionally they might parrot something approaching correct information, but it's far easier to sound scientific (to laypeople) than to be so, and folks interested in the former over the latter generally just want a platform from which to sound smarter than the next guy. You can do that most easily by just throwing vaguely related-sounding words at people until they shut up.

Entertaining, maybe, but if you want to learn as many true things and as few false things as possible, don't learn from Youtube.

Where would be a better place to learn, in your view?

[Reelya]

My professor is terrible and our presentations are suffering in front of a guest because we have no concrete directives.

Wear a suit and act confidently. Smug confidence is worth much more than actually knowing what you're talking about.

I wish I was joking.

Heh, after I had my first office job and ended up back on unemployment I started going into the welfare office wearing buttoned shirts, and the difference in attitude of the staff there was amazing. I still had long hair and wore jeans and converse sneakers or doc martens, and pretty much everything else about my appearance was the same, but button shirt vs t-shirt apparently makes the difference between them treating you like shit vs calling you "sir" and being helpful. Pro-tip there. Since then I always wore a shirt to all the mandatory job placement things and got treated a lot better, no matter how slobby you are other times.

[Naturegirl1999]

(-snip-)
If you go to science videos the conversations can actually be educational

To put it bluntly, there are huge pitfalls associated with learning about science via Youtube comments.

For one thing, the vast majority of science videos are meant for a popular audience, so they prioritize comprehensibility over accuracy. That's fine when those simplifications are a prelude to a more complex lesson later, but not everyone ever makes that leap, so a lot of those commenters are just throwing nicely discretized but ultimately inaccurate factoids at each other.

That leads into the larger problem, though: signal-to-noise ratio. For every actual, credentialed expert on Youtube taking the time to communicate correctly, there's a small horde of people with a giant chip on their shoulder and something to prove about the scientific expertise they don't have, and the comments section is a great place for them to get into fights with similarly underequipped laypeople. Occasionally they might parrot something approaching correct information, but it's far easier to sound scientific (to laypeople) than to be so, and folks interested in the former over the latter generally just want a platform from which to sound smarter than the next guy. You can do that most easily by just throwing vaguely related-sounding words at people until they shut up.

Entertaining, maybe, but if you want to learn as many true things and as few false things as possible, don't learn from Youtube.

I learn by reading scientific papers as well. Comments are not my main source of research. There are times where I correct inaccurate information, I do research and try to make sure that what I say is correct, and when someone corrects me when I’m wrong, I thank them. I look for scientific papers as my main research. I don’t rely on comments.

[Trekkin]

(-snip-)
Where would be a better place to learn, in your view?

Well, while I know it's not always feasible, the best place to learn about a subject deeply and fully is still a university; you can certainly come away from college having learnt nothing, but if you put in the time, it is designed with considerable care to force you to learn enough to make you aware of what else you need to learn in order to know something, and of course there's significant motivation for the courses to be accurate and ample other resources for you to use. It's also sometimes possible to use local community colleges for this purpose in ways that have a smaller time commitment and much less cost than a full four-year degree.

Beyond that, if you want to learn at a hobby level, old college-level textbooks are fairly cheap and well worth it; I actually have some at my dry lab desk for reference. More than a few are (legally) free online, as well. They won't be up to date, but if you're just getting into a field of study you care more about the fundamentals anyway.

If you want something more current, find relatively high-impact-factor open-access journals and read their review articles. Those are free and, barring predatory journals, peer-reviewed, so they're fairly reliable as an overview.

Way beyond that, there are resources like KhanAcademy that are at least minimally curated so they're a little better than the rest of YouTube. They come with a huge warning label in that they're written for all ages and so may not be accurate to the level you want, but if you want a very shallow introduction for minimal time commitment, you could do worse.