Great in-depth YT-channel for philosophy work explanations

[The Voice of Time]

http://www.youtube.com/user/gbisadler/feed

This guy does a lot of great work giving long in-depth videos about individual works, almost like lectures, but more personal in a way as they're created for a video audience. Instead of generalizing, I've found him to have a great deal of good jobs in explaining individual works, taking time to be thorough and not skip too much in the text to make his own points like I've seen done by others.

A good starting video is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWLSNnBX0mE at about one hour length. Here he tries to convey what Martin Heidegger intends to convey to us in his essay "On the Essence of Truth".

[Arising_uk]

I hope you first read the works a few times before you listen to others.

[The Voice of Time]

I hope you first read the works a few times before you listen to others.

I trust this guy, he's a professor. And no, I don't like reading originals. I might spend 30+ hours completing the essay (in effective reading time, not in total time) whereas the video is just 1 hour long.

As I said to him it bridges the gap between just reading articles and stories about the work and actually reading it. You get an in-between that allow for greater depth explanation, while at the same time does not take outrageous amounts of time and effort.

[Impenitent]

cliff notes philosophy doesn't work either...

-Imp

[Arising_uk]

Imp's pretty much said it in his inimitable style but I'll add some more words.

I trust this guy, he's a professor. And no, I don't like reading originals. I might spend 30+ hours completing the essay (in effective reading time, not in total time) whereas the video is just 1 hour long.

As I said to him it bridges the gap between just reading articles and stories about the work and actually reading it. You get an in-between that allow for greater depth explanation, while at the same time does not take outrageous amounts of time and effort.

Have you ever thought that some thoughts take time and effort to understand?

That what you have is not an understanding of the thought but only an understanding of what someone else has understood? Now this may work with some subjects(although I'm pushed to think of which ones) but is pretty much the antithesis of what philosophy is as a subject, as you are accepting by authority.

I accept that others thoughts and explanations are useful when reading the works of those we call philosophers but unless you read the actual works you'll not know if what they are saying would be true to you if you'd actually read the work. So read the work first then look to the translator notes and other commentators thoughts.

Of course if you are studying academic philosophy and just wish to get an pass then your approach can work but it's not philosophy.

[The Voice of Time]

Still not convinced it's worth it x) I'm not sure how valuable it is to try to squeeze extra orange juice from a reasonably emptied orange. It doesn't really matter what the writer meant, as it's the ideas extracted from the work by tons of people all over the world that really makes the difference.

I'm harvesting, I'm squeezing oranges, but I want maximum juice, and squeezing juice out of reasonably empty oranges is a waste of time and effort, not likely to pay off. After the grander idea is settled, there are still things you can learn, but they rapidly decline in value and become poor niches of knowledge.

[Arising_uk]

I watched some of the lecture and it seemed fine so I'm not arguing that one should ignore lectures but I seriously doubt that a lecturer would promote the idea of attending a lecture without reading the source material.

I don't share your idea that philosophical ideas can be exhausted as they are essentially an attempt by an author to explain how and why they think what they do and this is fresh every time regardless of how they've been interpreted by others. Although I do not doubt that hearing others thoughts about the issue can be beneficial as there are obviously smarter thinkers. Using your analogy, how would you know that what you are drinking is orange juice if you've not tasted the orange or squeezed what juice you can from it in the first place?

[The Voice of Time]

Using your analogy, how would you know that what you are drinking is orange juice if you've not tasted the orange or squeezed what juice you can from it in the first place?

Whaaat? Either you must have misread me completely or your sentence just isn't sensible... I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

I was talking about maximum gain per unit of effort invested, and my point was that YT videos was a far more efficient way of gaining a lot while tedious book-reading gives narrow boring useless knowledge that is not part of the real goodies that you want.

Like if you've downloaded movies on a torrent site like PirateBay, you'll see that you get the same movies, both in full HD quality, to anywhere from 1-13 gigabytes. How is it possible that you can have this big variance in size? The variance comes from a lot of useless information that follows with the video files and that needlessly multiplies the video file size. You can get 5 videos of very good quality or just one video of extreme quality... however, the entertainment value is far greater in the first 5 videos, even just two of them would far exceed (if all have average entertainment value, as of course the movie itself is not the subject) the entertainment value of slightly greater video quality and they would save a lot of download time (from 5-6 hours to hour for instance), and sometimes that slightly greater video quality is not even true... because some files may simply not be useful for the "presentation" part of the video and are just garbage that comes with the original video file and is used for who knows what.

[Arising_uk]

Whaaat? Either you must have misread me completely or your sentence just isn't sensible... I have no idea what it's supposed to mean.

Its simple enough, the orange is the original work, what you hear from the lecturer is what he's squeezed out, how do you know that like supermarket orange juice he's not added to or diluted the result if you've not tasted what actual squeezed orange juice tastes like?

I was talking about maximum gain per unit of effort invested, and my point was that YT videos was a far more efficient way of gaining a lot while tedious book-reading gives narrow boring useless knowledge that is not part of the real goodies that you want.

Its the other way around, you miss the context by not reading the whole thing, its your approach that gives the narrow view and a view that's not actually even yours. I'll grant that, if you find reading difficult and boring, then they are a useful way of reading books by others about a subject but without having a video by the author or reading what they've actually said then all you are getting is what someone else says, not what the author said.

Like if you've downloaded movies on a torrent site like PirateBay, you'll see that you get the same movies, both in full HD quality, to anywhere from 1-13 gigabytes. How is it possible that you can have this big variance in size? The variance comes from a lot of useless information that follows with the video files and that needlessly multiplies the video file size. You can get 5 videos of very good quality or just one video of extreme quality... however, the entertainment value is far greater in the first 5 videos, even just two of them would far exceed (if all have average entertainment value, as of course the movie itself is not the subject) the entertainment value of slightly greater video quality and they would save a lot of download time (from 5-6 hours to hour for instance), and sometimes that slightly greater video quality is not even true... because some files may simply not be useful for the "presentation" part of the video and are just garbage that comes with the original video file and is used for who knows what.

Not a good analogy as in either case the actual content is not affected. Would you prefer to watch shorter films where another editor has chopped out all the bits they found boring? If so then you might as well just watch the preview and be done with it but do you think you could then say you'd seen the film?

[Bill Wiltrack]

.




The dynamic of the world has changed...and it will continue even MORE DRAMATIC change.



NO ONE HAS THE TIME TO READ BOOKS ANYMORE. No one want's to even spend more than a few minutes watching a video online.


Information is FLYING at us.




No one has the time to be in-depth. We barely have time to skim articles.


Images & words are quickly becoming the blur of white-noise.



Good luck with that.







.............................................................






Your world is burning. No time to analyze the flames...run. JUST RUN.






.

[The Voice of Time]

Its simple enough, the orange is the original work, what you hear from the lecturer is what he's squeezed out, how do you know that like supermarket orange juice he's not added to or diluted the result if you've not tasted what actual squeezed orange juice tastes like?

In this case I am squeezing my own oranges so the that analogy doesn't apply. It's not about the author, it's not the author which is interesting, it's the ideas the author is able to convey to the world, a big and fundamental difference for me.

Its the other way around, you miss the context by not reading the whole thing, its your approach that gives the narrow view and a view that's not actually even yours.

Reading the original would not make my view more mine. It's how I receive what I get that decides that, and most of us here I think are quite our own masters and are not told what to think but chew on it and make up our own minds about it.

I'll grant that, if you find reading difficult and boring

Not in general, that was wrong of you against me, I did not say that in general, I was talking about philosophical books having a lot of stuff in it that is not interesting. It depends upon what you find interesting yourself, but for instance I'm not very interested in Heidegger, but not disinterested enough to not care what ideas he might present. Reading one of his works I would get a lot of garbage I didn't want to read, however, with a YouTube movie, I have the opportunity to get all of the essential pieces in one compact format with criticism and commentary added into it. That's what makes this professor who does these videos so genius for us consumers.

then they are a useful way of reading books by others about a subject but without having a video by the author or reading what they've actually said then all you are getting is what someone else says, not what the author said.

And I'm fine by it. As I said, it's not the author that matters. The historian is not the reason why I read history, for instance, it's the history which is the reason I would read history.

Not a good analogy as in either case the actual content is not affected.

Well quality is content, so it does matter, I won't watch a movie made for high-quality on low-quality on principle, it's not the same, it's not the right "content". So it makes a big and substantial difference, I've only ever watched one video camera shoot for instance, and that was in a movie where quality had very little to say (it was "The Dictator", where the jokes are the fun and less important to the visual show-off).

Would you prefer to watch shorter films where another editor has chopped out all the bits they found boring? If so then you might as well just watch the preview and be done with it but do you think you could then say you'd seen the film?

I'd say we already get that, but, it only works when you've covered a whole "story" that keeps essential items while discarding only the less valuable items from it. For instance the first hobbit movie was slightly too long because even thought the movie as a whole was one of a kind especially with its songs, I found myself actually bored for a few seconds in more than one part of the movie, it was especially when they filmed them just travelling. Where nothing happened and they were doing nothing of importance. That's a clear sign the movie could've been trimmed slightly more to perfect the jewel. Perhaps they could've saved up to 5 minutes of playtime just cutting the length of some scenes or discarding them all together. That they are making 3 movies I think is wonderful but it'll be a stark difference to movies where you only get a little bit of the goodies while in these movies they will produce lengthy boring scenes that has little value except making the movie longer.

[The Voice of Time]

Wiltrack and his... thing... for drama and the absurd.

[Arising_uk]

.

The dynamic of the world has changed...and it will continue even MORE DRAMATIC change.

For the vast bulk of the world its been pretty much the same for generations. You confuse your world with the world.

NO ONE HAS THE TIME TO READ BOOKS ANYMORE. No one want's to even spend more than a few minutes watching a video online.

Pretty much no-one has ever read books other than the literate few, even now the larger bulk of people are pretty much functionally illiterate. The vast majority of people in the world have no online access. Although most will watch a film for at least an hour and most will listen to a song that lasts a few minutes. You confuse your world with the world.

Information is FLYING at us.

It is and being literate allows one to discriminate.

No one has the time to be in-depth. We barely have time to skim articles.

Most of the world is to busy working to survive to have any time at all for leisurely pursuits but those who wish to have the time study something in-depth to make a living so that they can have the time to educate themselves.

Images & words are quickly becoming the blur of white-noise.

Not really, it's just the chatter of the illiterate masses. Always been around but more accessible now.

Good luck with that.

No luck needed.

Your world is burning. No time to analyze the flames...run. JUST RUN.

How dramatic.

[marjoramblues]

Voice:

...I was talking about philosophical books having a lot of stuff in it that is not interesting. It depends upon what you find interesting yourself, but for instance I'm not very interested in Heidegger, but not disinterested enough to not care what ideas he might present. Reading one of his works I would get a lot of garbage I didn't want to read, however, with a YouTube movie, I have the opportunity to get all of the essential pieces in one compact format with criticism and commentary added into it. That's what makes this professor who does these videos so genius for us consumers.

I think there is something in incorporating discussions about philo youtubes and films in this 'Book Club'; it is not an either/or scenario and one thing can lead to another...

Perhaps, time to change the name to summat else...less dusty...

[The Voice of Time]

Aye, Marjor.

Let's trust the moderator is reading you