3Blue1Brown is impressive in how it uses visualizations, cute faces, soothing voiceovers, etc. but keeps pulling you down the rabbit hole. So at the end of the video you know that you don't know stuff you either think you knew or didn't know existed. And then you start looking up Wikipedia and just getting lost in the music.
This is really really rare. Education as entertainment means that the goal is to get the consumer to feel good about himself, to feel like he learned something. You're getting paid (in money or kudos or whatever) to engage the consumer's narcissism, not his curiosity.
> ...keeps pulling you down the rabbit hole. So at the end of the video you know that you don't know stuff you either think you knew or didn't know existed. And then you start looking up Wikipedia and just getting lost in the music.
Education as entertainment means that the goal is to get the consumer to feel good about himself, to feel like he learned something. You're getting paid (in money or kudos or whatever) to engage the consumer's narcissism, not his curiosity.
This is a profound observation. I’m not sure it only applies in entertainment.
I’ve heard it put other ways, but your version, if applied to education as a whole, might be a pretty big deal. There’s no shortage of evidence, either; from Ivy League campuses to niche interest subcultures.
Maybe “narcissism” isn’t the best word, but some sort of similar tension related to confidence seems to be associated with successful educational environments. We commonly attribute it to a one-way causal relationship, but you’re articulating the opposite. Likewise, we are used to acknowledging that ‘not giving up’, or ‘belief in one’s self’ is a necessity, but again you’re making a separate claim.
You’re saying, in so many words, the confidence in and of itself defines the will as well as the curiosity. And I can’t argue with it. I want to, but I’m not sure I can.
I feel like the key thing about a "growth oriented mindset" or some near-equivalent buzzword is that the normal state of affairs to not know things. This is the foundation (in Socrates) of our civilization.
What I've been trying to articulate here and there in the past few weeks that the object of intellectual development should be acquiring structured ways of not knowing. Rigorous mathematics is such a way: in basic analysis class you get red marks for thinking you know things you can't prove. The buddhism of the Heart Sutra is another: the Heart Sutra boils down to "we want to know big truths about emtpiness and suffering to transcend it and achieve Nirvana, but because of emptiness there's no way to know and nothing to know; therefore, recite these magic words because that's what wise men do". (It sounds like a scam, but it's really deep in how the argument is actually made in length).
This of course runs counter to beliefs in "ultratechnology" such that we'll soon soon craft our own transcendence. But eh, we shall fight in the shade.
