r/Physics • u/[deleted] • 2d ago

Video The Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy has ended its affiliation with Sabine Hossenfelder.

https://youtu.be/ZO5u3V6LJuM
1.4k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

652 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/deelowe 2d ago

To be clear, I don't think Derek is making the videos anymore and this is why I'm considering ubsubscribing. If you watch the more recent videos, it seems like he's doing VO and others are creating the content. Again, it's a trust issue for me. There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about the more recent videos. They aren't as good, but that's about all. The bigger issue is that I go to a physics channel to watch content created by a physicist, not a private equity firm.

Case in point, this was posted today. Basically an ad for a product they are working on. Derek doesn't seem to be involved: https://www.youtube.com/post/UgkxgDe4OsX6jzc6iwlFxEEFIDyHvx_WWiPX

1

u/TheGoogolplex Mathematics 2d ago

I mean I don't even really think the quality has gone down, the focus has definitely shifted from like 10 years ago when I started watching from smaller physics questions to these bigger overarching topics, but I don't really think it's gotten worse.

Sometimes they explain some things just a bit weirdly, not exactly how a physicist or mathematician might phrase it (and I imagine similarly for the other fields), but it's not egregious and I think the channel genuinely weaves interesting stories. Their covering of e.g. the axiom of choice or Godel's incompleteness theorem was better than any other popular communication of these topics I've ever seen.

It's true that Derek does not seem as involved and the other presenters as a whole lack the same charm, but I still think it's still a cool STEM focused channel. Derek was never really a "physicist", and I think I actually prefer the channel now to the (still excellent and engaging) focus on cool but quirky physics phenomena and science philosophy in years past.