Comments by "Christian Baune" (@programaths) on "Veritasium" channel.

So, I am. I proctored uneducated people who scored very well. One guy flunked the math part, because they didn't knew what √³ meant (and it cant be explained during the test). At the end of the test he tought he was low IQ because he couldn't complete the first series. When asked the other parts, he said that those were quite obvious. You just had to look and the correct answer was easy. As we discussed, I understood he thought it was just a test of speed with different visuals. I had candidates who were engineers and raced the first section, then were stumped past the few trial items. So, scores seemed quite detached from education beside for the first series. And it happens that the first series is not that important. It was added for completeness allowing a bit more of variability. The training effect is limited to your actual potential. People who get a boost from training are people who gained confidence. On top of that, training can be impeeding. One famous example is the diagonal trick for RAPM. Except it can fail and some items test for that! Top IQ is biological. As an example, symbol chasing required good eye-hand coordination and this is regulated biologically by the amount of myelin you have. That amount is more or less fixed. It's also why fMRI could be used in the future instead of IQ tests!! Now, your IQ can be lessened if you don't do sport, don't eat properly, are very anxious, are tired... But education does only a little. Biology > Context > Education.
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Here is another one. In many countries, including the USA and Belgium, the communication about the COVID-19 vaccine was about immunity. We heard public relations say, "The vaccine provides immunity against COVID." And that's totally correct. The issue is outside the terms employed; it's using medical jargon to communicate with people outside the field. For specialists, "provide immunity" means preparing the immune system to fight back against the actual virus. For the layman, it means being invincible to the virus. So, people got vaccinated, some were sick. And because people can't understand "Immunize" properly (Not because they are idiots, but because the same word has a layman's definition and a clinical one), they think they are being lied to. It's one of the best ways to create distrust. But what should have been done then ? The solution was to explain how vaccines work. We even have available motion pictures ("Il était une fois la vie"). It takes 15 minutes to explain how vaccination works for the average Joe.
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For flattr purpose.
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I hope that people won't take the following shortcut : "I shouldn't focus on what is going wrong but on what was right". We mostly learn from errors. Positive feedback is the way to go but it does include remedial feedback. (Eg. You did that wrong because ... and you can do better by ...)
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Everything like that should be taken with caution. Science is not the answer to everything; Only the best we can do now. So, things do not become true because they are scientifically validated. They become valid. Veritasium A small request : Could you do a video explaining what's truth and validity and why truth is uncommon ? There's too much misconception about those two. As a side note : could be interesting to put this in perspective with medieval age believes. They did science too! Explaining what's a model and his purposes would be nice too. Thank you for your free videos. They are interesting like your meta ones.
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13:30 is a good reason to put airplane mode. Basically: don't be an asshole. You want people working for you to do it in the best conditions.
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2:50 The 37 cabal seems to be walking a lot, because they are tire less.
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No, models are VALID, until they are not suitable anymore because there is a much better model with a much better predictive capability. Or "being right" doesn't mean what I think it does.
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Paper straw are bade, it's nucleation power!
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I always said that luck if a major factor and that's because I started with huge handicaps. I spent 18 years in various institutions, which means that I had almost nothing and even buying school supplies was a challenge. Factor in that for people we were the bottom of the bin, pure trash! I even got papers marked zero in the process because my writings was "way above what I should be able to produce". I was rejected for evening school for about the same reason (and ended up going into a full bachelor degree). On the other side, I am born gifted and won prizes just for showing up. People often ask me how hard I work and how I can know all those stuff...well, it's a gift. I wanted to be a teacher, I did wait for years to get the right opportunity. That is, training that is available after work. Only in 2018 it started to appear here. So, now I can move on. My current job is developer, when I am asked estimates, my reply is simple: undefined. I am not paid to do what was already done. I am paid to do what other people can't. As a result, I mostly don't even know what I am going to do. Just what the end product will achieve. And luck is a big part! On one project I had to do, it went from months to about 3 days. I looked around and found a tool doing exactly what was needed if tweaked properly. I even fixed a bug in it! In another project, I had to save a consultant. It took me half a day, days were planned. Lucks too! On top of that, I did nothing to have intelligence. No hard work or whatsoever. And this creates problems when I work with others as my time is more valuable...in a literal way. If I take 5 minutes to explain something, I can loose an hour worth of work of the same person. And everyone is entitled to ask 5 minutes of my time because "If you take 5 minutes for me, I'll spare one hour". Except they are not alone asking "only 5 minutes". And then comes the issue of "This week I saw the team did a quarter of the work, what did happen ?". The answer is pure butchery: "I helped everyone, so I had much less time to complete tasks". It's totally unfair, unjust and sound pretentious. That's because it's unusual and your mind find it easier to think I am an asshole :-D I also burned out since I was able to take any job, so one of my boss asked if I could do Y and my reply was "in no so long, yes". So, I ended up programming, doing support, managing servers, fixing devices, managing tablet fleet. That was too much and when I said my boss "I can't manage all of it anymore because I am overloaded", he thought I was having a tantrum! After all, I am able to do it all! The only job I did not do was "selling", because I have a tendency to be blunt. I have also worked in that "back seat", mainly doing long time jobs and being a resource to "unblock" people in the team. That never last long as I am asked to "push thing through because we are late". As a result, I work in a team of one. I am even switching career for peace of mind and because it is my dream job. Luck plays a big role. What you can decide, though, is to let an opportunity pass; There you have real control. Make the best of what you were given and remind yourself that if you get lucky, you have to make use of it.
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Also, while working on "useless problems", you may need to create new fields which happen to be useful later on!
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There is an error in the video, we don't really vote in Belgium. It's closer to a consultation. Belgium vote is more like expressing a desire. The people in power can decide what to do with the votes and even decide to invalidate the result by forming no government for months/years and forcing back a government of their choosing. It's a bit weird, but it gives at least the impression that people have a say. 7.64 on the democracy scale. (1= democracy, 0=dictatorship)
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The salt lamp thumbnail felt very odd when I saw it. The reason was that it gave the "spoiler", then the curiosity kicked in. At the same time, I know those videos aren't about the final answer, in fact, the final answer is mostly irrelevant and that is always in the back of my head. There is also the "I got myself lost again on the internet" (Scilabus) which uses questions, dumb questions. Then you watch and see that the question is either far from being dumb or that it is a really good segway to much more interesting facts.
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Coming next "Why are 96,000,000 ..." :-D (Didn't click that for weeks since I already saw similar content) Good creativity with the flip chart. Entertaining by itself.
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@leftyeh6495 What is the name of the test?
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@PanglossDr You can do the test without becoming a member. It's a cheap alternative. Now, the drawback is that you only get an IQ figure and percentile. With an FSIQ test, you get more about your cognitive profile and some dys can be detected by the psychologist. So, it's a bit more than just intelligence. Some people (me), do both. Mensa test, because it's cheap, then FSIQ. And it's nothing like online tests. In online IQ test, everyone does 155 SD 15^^
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@ChristianHuygens1 Exact, you can't really train for a Mensa test. All you can train is your confidence and getting used to taking tests. There is a biological factor affecting processing speed and also your working memory. Those speaking about "shortcuts" you can learn speak about test using RPM like items. And the shortcuts are only learnable for one specific subset of items which are not numerous in WAIS for instance. The "shortcut" is to look at diagonals: ❤🎉😂 🎉😂❤ 😂❤? But here is an example: 👈🏿👆👉🏻 👆🏻👉🏿👇 👉🏿👇🏻? a) 👈 b) 👆 c) 👇 d) 👉🏿 Some people would pick wrong because of training.
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@ale895 WAIS test your ability to communicate. You can get half a standard deviation with extensive training when you remove anxiety and stress factors, So that's about 4 points. Also, you are more prone to improve the closer you are to the mean. That's because 1IQ point hasn't the same worth everywhere. Care to explain your answer?
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@jarlnieminen4307 How does «Strike all p followed by a q» does test either logic and retention? pqpbddppdqbdpqqqddqpbdqqm. Block design, symbol chasing, verbal fluency & analogy, story reordering... I think everyone should have to take an IQ test at some point.
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Good, it wasn't biased for these 3 candidates. The two first were a "minority" and the last one was part of two minorities. The first one brought an immediate practical solution, the second a theory which could help understand our universe bette and the third something related to water (which is a concern and also can be seen as "ecolo"). Obviously, the last one scored many points on the ecolo/socialist scale. Though, the second one was chosen for her particularly involved subject. It's so bad that I find it good to be wrong! What a time to be alive! (The normal stuff would be to not be awe for the normal stuff)
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17:34 From Star Trek, the episode where they do some drilling and are killing a species made of cilium. That's how they describe humans. Probably why Derek smile during that line.
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