How to recognize clickbait in science

[RagingWarGod]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5miDUrYEXjA&t=643s


I know I posted this video in another thread but having only been able to watch 10 minutes of it (because it's that bad and really twists the science to reach their preferred conclusion), but the whole video is just random space effects and then mentioning how something is terrifying.

Like the above video the first ten minutes are mostly about the sensory delay in our brains and how our brains don't really render reality in real time but lag a bit behind and have to predict and smooth things to compensate. Yet this fact is dramatized into how there is this huge gap in the senses (because a bullet can fly 100 meters in that time and computers can do hundreds of calculations) and that everything you experience has already happened so you're not in the now and what you experience is just a prediction of your brain, that you brain lies and hides the truth. I dunno I tuned out after a bit because there was a clear narrative being sold here.

I couldn't stomach the rest of the video, never mind that the first part about our own fallibility of our senses kinda undermines the rest of the video. Like if our perception is that faulty then by extension everything we get from it cannot be trusted. That's like...101.

There was also some other video:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvJkWXG3mpE&t=1s

"Physics proves Synchronicity is real. New evidence from Quantum Mechanics and the Block Universe reveals that Randomness is a lie, Free Will is an illusion, and Fate is a rigid mathematical script. In this documentary, we dismantle the concept of "Coincidence" to expose the deterministic cage holding you. We track statistical anomalies—from Littlewood's Law to the Birthday Paradox—and investigate the Libet Experiment which proves your brain decides 7 seconds before you do.This video is a descent into the "Scientific Horror" of existence. We begin with the Mathematics of Destiny, using Benford's Law and Ramsey Theory to show how order is forced upon chaos. We explain the Pauli Effect and Jungian Psychology to demonstrate how the Observer corrupts reality via the Nocebo Effect.Moving deeper, we explore the Non-Local Network confirmed by the 2022 Nobel Prize, proving Entanglement destroys privacy. We analyze the Global Consciousness Project and Retrocausality, showing how the future rewrites the past. Finally, we confront the Simulation Hypothesis and Eternal Return, asking: If the Superdeterminism of the universe is true, are you the Player, or just the Code?"

I just ended up googling a bunch of this instead and found that a lot of it is wildly overblown. Especially the "mathematics of destiny" part, or the fact that he's getting Libet's experiment wrong (your brain does not decide 7 seconds before you do), Ramsey theory is more about asking how big does something have to be to be considered ordered, Benford's law doesn't suggest destiny but instead an order to human generated data sets that feels like design. The Pauli effect is not a real scientific theory and Jung isn't science since much of his ideas weren't falsifiable. Retrocausality is just hypothetical and not actually happening. And he's still getting Nietzsche's eternal return wrong (it's a thought experiment that poses the question of if you were made to relieve your life as it happened exactly, would you do it).

I guess I'm wondering other ways to recognize clickbait in science, I also went back and just saw there was no sources for the links and stuff. Though I guess the bigger giveaway was the thumbnails too.

 

[hpsgrad]

This is a basic media literacy question rather than one specifically about science. There are shed loads of basic media literacy and mis/dis-information recognition guides out there.

Also, go find yourself a copy of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark l
by Carl Sagan, and read it.

 

[RagingWarGod]

Also, go find yourself a copy of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark l
by Carl Sagan, and read it.

I actually did read that one a while ago, but that was more about spiritual wooey stuff rather than what I'm talking about. Like the videos I linked this is more about using science to make some rather...reaching logical leaps. Like going from relativity to asserting that we are each alone in our own time lines.

 

[hpsgrad]

I actually did read that one a while ago, but that was more about spiritual wooey stuff rather than what I'm talking about. Like the videos I linked this is more about using science to make some rather...reaching logical leaps. Like going from relativity to asserting that we are each alone in our own time lines.

I disagree about your take on Sagan. He was talking about general tools for avoiding credulously accepting claims from people pushing bullshit. If you think that’s only for ‘spiritual wooey stuff’ then I think you should re-evaluate the material.

in any event, recognizing clickbait videos is basic media literacy. For example, a title like ‘Time Doesn’t Exist’ is making (to use Sagan’s phrase) an extraordinary claim. It goes against our entire experience and received science. If time didn’t exist, for example, how does GPS work? They need to present extraordinary evidence, and a YouTube video cannot possibly present such evidence, since devices that display and coordinate time manifestly exist.

Our bullshit detector means we don’t have to move past the title of the video to discard it as junk.

 

[zeotherm]

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This doesn't need to be in two places. You've been pointed to Sagan and mentioned Popper as fantastic resources for dealing with such questions which are A+++ replies/writers.