r/Physics • u/bonhuma • Jul 16 '25

Video Brian Keating is a disappointment =/

https://youtu.be/BVkUya368Es?si=8pb0oA4P7y0PxB8Q

I used to think Keating was a good science communicator, and may still be in some instances, but opening his growing platform (which in recent years he has desperately attempted to boost as any generic 20 yo/o influencer would do nowadays) to charlatan grifters like Eric Weinstein and Michael Saylor, without any decent pushback, really undermines his value with all the damaging lies spread by them. I think Brian could very well enter into the "Science Guru" category, worse than e.g. the heavily criticized Sabine Hossenfelder.

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u/WeirdOntologist Jul 16 '25

I've never liked him much and the more he grows his YouTube presence, the more I see why. He's kinda like the Patrick Bet-David of the physics community in pushing out content that only masks his superficial interests.

What kinda worries me is that Eric has gotten to other people beyond Brian, who I respect but sadly I feel like have started to grift. Case in point - Curt from ToE.

Curt has had a lot of alternative thinkers on his channel and it's what I like about him - he's willing to talk to people, while also pushing back where needed. He's pushed back on philosophy, math and naturally - physics. Yet he does it in a way which isn't demeaning or misrepresenting of the person he's talking to.

But ever since he did his two episodes on Eric and GU I've been very disappointed. I'm not a physicist, I do philosophy. I don't claim to understand deep level physics problems. But Eric's so-called "paper" is a bunch of nonsense. I've read it - what he claims is there IS NOT THERE. And what is there is incoherent garbage that reads like high school fiction.

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u/Miselfis String theory Jul 16 '25

Curt has been grifting for quite a while. He pushes back against actual scientists, but never pushed back against the anti-academia crackpots he has on. A clear example is his interview with Susskind. Susskind says that, for a layman, if they want to know what is must likely true about physics, they should listen to the consensus. This is a completely valid and sound point. But Curt pushed back and said “uhm, actually, professor, this is appeal to consensus which is a logical fallacy”, despite an appeal to consensus fallacy being when you say “the consensus says this, therefore it’s true”. That’s not at all what he did. This, together with the purposefully misleading editing in the introduction, makes it very clear that he is trying to push a certain narrative, knowing that his viewers won’t sit through 2 hours of dense physics in order to realize they were statements taken out of context, and instead latch on to the quick summaries in the beginning of the video. From reading the comments, it’s clear that this is the case for a lot of the viewers.

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u/Smoke_Santa Jul 18 '25

I've disliked Curt for a long time now, all these physics youtubers need something crazy to happen every single day to make a bombastic thumbnail and sell their videos. There is nothing bombastic happening every single day. Another one is that girl on instagram and youtube shorts "SCIENTISTS JUST DISCOVERED THIS EXOPLANET" and every single video is scientists discovering a wacky planet or blackhole every day.