1 HN user recommended this explainer1 month2021–2022score 1.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
HN mentions it as a related, well-made Veritasium video when infinity and Hilbert's hotel come up.
Veritasium shows how Hilbert's infinite hotel can still run out of room, using infinite buses of guests. It explains the surprising answer in a short animated segment.
I love Veritasium. Derek has done a number of videos that are awesome like this. The videos are great and educational, but he also manages to subtly weave in an almost spiritual subtext to them as well. For example, in this one, you learn about imaginary numbers in some cool ways, history, how awesome e^ix is, etc, but also this yen-yang balance between embracing not only what is real but taking a chance on what is imaginary. Some of my other favorites: - [link] - [link] - [this video] - [link] - [link] I think he’s going to lose the $10,000 bet on the car though.
Veritasium describes a similar situation (not the AOC); a hotel that has infinite rooms and what happens when an infinite number of buses each with an infinite number of guests pulls up. [this video]
Pithy, but I’d actually argue the opposite. As someone who consumes quite a bit of science content on YouTube, it’s actually quite jarring to go back to traditional TV science shows. It feels a lot less information dense and more time-wasting. An interesting example is when Veritasium, who normally does the usual YouTube science content, got some big budget funding for one video [1] and produced it in a style more like what you’d see on TV. It was striking how there was so much filler and dramatization to try to make it interesting, and the whole thing felt dumbed down compared to his usual content, for example [2], which is deeper and relatively information-dense. And there are channels like PBS Spacetime which go far, far beyond anything I’ve ever seen in any media aimed at a general audience [3]. [1] [link] [2] [this video] [3] [link]
Example of Veritasium's usual deeper, information-dense content.
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