2veritasium - 2013-04-15
Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Hawking are just some of the young scientists that have profoundly shaped science. Why is youth a key element in a revolutionary scientist. Note: this vlog contains a fair deal of conjecture. I invite healthy discussion and debate.
Is it just me or does anyone else feel super happy when they watch Veritasium's videos?
He is putting much exitement into his voice and expressions and looks alot into the camera, you basically interpret this as attraction. Badabum you are a happy little smiling boy/girl|girl/boy becouse your hypotalamus is producing some fancy hormons getting you ready to mate, mate ;)
GGharjan They're motivotional
its because his lovely beard <3 <3 <3
I love all his videos
I watch to remove my depression and frustration.....i somehow came to know about it and my inclination towards science has let me help calm my mind :)
As an old undergraduate in physics, this notion depresses the hell out of me.
Johannes Diderik van der Waals _ Nobel prize in Physics, wrote thesis at the age of 36.
Wilhelm Röntgen _ Nobel prize in Physics, discovered Electromagnetic radiation at age 50.
Henri Becquerel _ Nobel prize in Physics, studied physics at age 40.
John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh _ Nobel prize in Physics, worked on his research at 50 years of age.
Philipp Lenard _ Nobel prize in Physics begin working on research at age 30.
Max Planck _ Nobel Prize in Physics, worked on his experiments at 40 years of age.
Neil Bohr _ Nobel Prize in Physics, worked on his experiments at 26
Charles Darwin published his book when he was 50 years of age. Etc.. There is so much more.. Don't believe everything you hear on youtube.
+DreadKyller university is a good opportunity to meet a lot of smart people which exposes you to different perspectives, build important connections that may land you a good internship / job, learn the necessary info & skills, build good habits like time management skills (Uni FORCES you to do it with all the work you need to complete), access to labs with all the equipment, etc.
If you can do all that alone & are able to convince employers of your capabilities w/o a degree, you probably represent <0.005% of people.
Unless the colleges that you are referring to are some shitty schools that most people have never heard of.
I wouldn't worry about it too much. This perspective only makes sense if you think of scientific progress in a superficial, Kuhnian way. Plenty contribute throughout their lives, while many young geniuses burnout. And i don't know if fame and fortune should be the focus of any discussion of science. Hope you do well!
As someone who has finished physics years ago. Don't worry. We are all told that we will change the world and some of us do. Keep on working hard though. In a major company the most interesting jobs are given to the smartest and most talented people IF they apply for them. Anyway. If I look around me we are all leading happy comfortable lives and it's such a relief that I no longer need to care about changing the world. Turns out the only one who expected that of me was.... well me. Everyone else just respects you (to some degree) for having finished a physics degree. Afterwards you're kind of free to carve out for yourself who you want to be. With money, because you have a nice stable job now. So basically, keep hanging in there. Go study abroad if you can and it'll be alright.
@DreadKyller I mean, but most people aren't going to go out of their way to learn mathematics and their applications with the same depth as at university on their own. They'll say they've learned it, yeah, but most won't know it as well.
Plus being in academia, and being surrounded by the environment and those opportunities is INCREDIBLY useful to anyone who wants to go into science and engineering.
The only people who say other wise are people who can't go to college, couldn't cut it in college, or are contrarians without basis.
dude that driving is sooooooooo unsafe
Not really
Cuz u were programmed to think that using other things while driving is dangerous
Sh Mj I hope you lose your driving license.
Reported to police
I'm not sure I agree actually. Sure, many of the most famous discoveries were made by younger people, but I'd argue that those are really only a very small fraction of the total discoveries. This is especially apparent in mathematics. I'd say that discoveries made by older people tend to be more complicated and sophisticated than those made by younger people, if less revolutionary in a general sense, and as a result tend to be reported on and immortalized less, because they are more difficult for the public to understand. For example, Andrey Markov, who was a brilliant mathematician, and discovered, or created, the Markov Chain (which allows us to find the equilibrium state of a system of probabilities by exponentiating a matrix), did so when he was in his fifties, and it was, and is, still pretty groundbreaking in a number of scientific fields and applications, however it's not super easy to explain, so I'll bet fewer people in the public would know about it. Another example is the Forrier Transform, which is so applicable to so many situations today that it's almost ludicrous that the term isn't common knowledge. Joseph Forrier was 54 when he devised it. Not that I'm saying only old people make great discoveries either; I just think that older scientists tend to go for more specialized and elaborate research in their given field; probably due to their expansive knowledge, while younger people use their creativity to rethink more general assumptions, probably partially as a result of not having the same expansive comprehension of the specifics. And bear in mind, I say this as a young student myself.
Also revolutionary theories may be published by young scientists because they are geniuses ; so they are more likely to publish something good sooner rather than later.
Then they might stop publishing revolutionary stuff because - as the de-facto experts of their own new field - they might feel obligated to investigate it deeper, instead of trying to find something revolutionary from scratch once again.
And Susskind... and Faraday....
Finally some counterexamples
Well explained...
Well explained...
keeps the sharks out? girl screams by getting attacked by shark 0:35
@James Whyte Nope. It's a shark fleeing by getting screamed by a girl.
@Enid Radaviq Thanks. Made my laugh for the day:-)
@Enid Radaviq No it's the shark screaming getting attacked by a girl.
@James Whyte Let that bitch die. The world must go on.
Veritasium's a land shark.
Don't vlog and drive when you need to hold the camera.
I think the situation was kind of alike for Darwin, Einstein and Newton. They were in a non demanding job (sea travel, with a lot of time to contemplate, Newton was at home when Trinity College was closed because of the plague when he took the time to do the math his own way, to understand it more deeply., Einstein was working at a patent office and used his evenings to discuss things with his first wife. They did not have an obligation to publish like the young scientists of today.Maybe we should give young scientists some slack to think things through if they feel that desire. Princeton does just that but maybe the people that come to Princeton are already too old and accomplished to benefit from it.
The blanc page hypothesis is not correct at all, Darwin, Newton and Einstein were far from blanc pages, in an earlier comment I already stated that the works of Euclid were Einsteins favorite at 12 years of age, Newton was immersed in the work of Aristotle, Kepler and Galilei, Darwin was a typical naturalist that collected as much biological information as possible. His works are really full of details from all kinds of sources, but mainly on the animal and plant breeding of the day.
I think you have to familiarize yourself with the old stuff when still relatively young to make the right type of breakthrough in your early twenties. Maybe if you familiarize yourself too late with the old stuff it becomes too late to change it.
1:07 einstein was so sexy
Einstein's a good example in another way: His lack of preconceptions allowed him to grasp Brownian motion, the photoelectric effect, and special relativity all in 1905, but the inertia of his preconceptions utterly prevented him from being able to embrace quantum physics (which, ironically, his early papers helped to bring into being), right up to his dying moment....
@The Scope of Science
Aww man, you just ruined the universe for me. Next time, use bigger spoiler tags!
@Knurte Farblekund LOL I'm generally a bit of downer at parties - I think it is because I usually say something sciencey before disclaiming SPOILER.. Thats my take on the situation at least..
Well, it was more the Copenhagen interpretation and certain bits of quantum mechanics than quantum mechanics as a whole. He had much to agree with Erwin schrodinger, who created the schrodinger equation.
A bit late, but I need to correct something.
Einstein's inertia HELPED quantum physics. Even if we remember him as the uncle trying to refute everything you claim, in science this attitude is a really good job. He created A LOT of experiments to refute the theory.
At that time (and still now), quantum physics is often "shut up and calculate". What we also learned from Einstein is "stop your math for a moment and check if your answer describes reality !".
Einstein didn't deny quantum physics, he denied the probabilistic interpretation, which anybody who's actually studied it properly will tell you is a load of bullshit.
i wonder if this has anything to do with the survivor bias ( yes i just came from that video :v)
Maybe because when young people make notorious things they get more attention than old ones, like when he said in the survivor bias video that Bill Gates and other successful people who left university makes us think that leaving university is a good thing, but when you see the data it's not like that.
I thought so too. And also, there can be a confirmation bias (he names 3 scientists to support the claim, but there can be more people who made some great thing as old guys. He does not mention what percentage of scientists do their main discoveries young vs. old).
wrg,idts
Just coming from that video too I was thinking the same.
Oh shoot I'm 22 and I don't even know what the heck I'm doing with my life.
Exactly what I was thinking 0_0
I qualified as a radiographer, travelled a bunch, studied some more, performed in some theatre, published a short story, and received a literary award for it.
Wow amazing^^
3 years really is a long time lol
Comment of the year imo
To become a radiographer you typically have to get a degree in medical imaging. It's a highly specific technical degree, much like nursing.
Wow I only have a few years left to make a revolutionary discovery!
Any progress mate?
AshiesN ahahhhhaahahh
Is it safe to drive while holding a camera in one hand?
Apparently, because we have evidence he subsequently uploaded this video.
He referenced mostly scientists. In order to make a discovery in science, you have to know everything before it, before you can come up with something new. As Newton said, "If I have seen further than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
All of these scientists made these incredible discoveries at a young age, which meant they already knew everything before that at an even younger age. Scientists nowadays don't have that kind of knowledge until they are 30 and have a PhD. If you ever read what Feynman (famous physicist) was doing in high school, the kind of lecture provided by his high school physics teacher, you would see just how far ahead they were at an even younger age than their accomplishments. Feynman's father also used to read to him the encyclopedia throughout Feynman's infancy.
Young people today don't have a chance to discover anything because very, very few people have that kind of knowledge while young. The last question is: Why does being young help make a discovery? My theory is that it has to do with motivation and distractions. When you are young, you are highly motivated and have almost no distractions. It is hard to maintain a consistently high level of motivation for many years at a time. Paul Dirac (physicist on par with Einstein) once stated his work schedule: He worked I believe 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, and only took a break on Sundays, when he would frequently enjoy a walk to calm his mind.
This devotion is the key. You have to WORK. As Thomas Edison famously said, "Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." These words would be uttered in similar forms by later geniuses like Einstein. It is extremely difficult to maintain this level of work ethic over many years, which is necessary. Your motivation burns out, and additionally, you become subject to distractions. If you did not learn all the essentials before university, as these geniuses, then you will find yourself caged during these precious youthful years by all the knowledge and busy work acquiring it. Just graduating with a degree saps all your energy (I am a chemistry grad student). You also begin to understand concepts like love, independence, entertainment, financial self-sufficiency, and/or having a family. All of these take on increasing urgency as you complete your emancipation from your parents.
This is why I believe the prime-time for brilliance is when you are able to put in your highest amount of motivation to completing your work with the fewest distractions, which most often coincides with your youthful days, but can happen at any time. It's worth noting that many, many key inventions and scientific developments were also made by older scholars. Max Planck's theory of quantization (which provided the inspiration for Einstein's Nobel-Prize-winning publication) would be published when Planck was around 40 years old. Even Newton published his theory of gravity (the old legend that inspiration came when an apple landed on his head) at the age of 40, and many of his contributions came at ages greater than 30. James Clerk Maxwell, a physicist considered comparable to Newton and Einstein, published his most famous laws at around the age of 40. Einstein himself did not calculate general relativity until 1911, when he was 32. He would make further adaptions to it over the following 5 years, and I thought I remember some last-minute adjustments even being required on the 1919 experiment to prove it.
There are countless other examples today that don't receive recognition. There is perhaps some truth that certain ground-breaking developments can occur in fields that weren't fully developed (requiring less prior knowledge) and came from young people whose creativity had not yet been cemented by years of work in a particular system. However, this doesn't mean that all ground-breaking developments have come from young people. I believe that youth being the almost exclusive source of genius contributions is a myth; rather, the true explanation is that your pinnacle performance rises at around the time when your motivation is at a peak, distractions a minimum, and you have established sufficient knowledge in a particular field to advance it. These three conditions have the highest probability of coinciding in young individuals whose education is ahead of the curve, so it appears that young people have a tendency to drive progress more than older people, although further inspection provides substantial evidence that this is not the case.
This video makes me think about the quote "Nobody told them it was impossible, so they did it."
You guys have to empty your mind be formless , shapeless like water , now water can flow or it can crash be water my friend.
@cadkls Always thinking isn't a good thing like you seem to think lol.. 'Stop thinking, just do it'. You're probably meaning to boast about how you observe and dissect everything you look at.
@kalphitekil Always thinking doesn't mean always trying to understand and explain things. But that does take up roughly 80% of my total thinking time.
Stop thinking and just do it? That is the single worst thing to start doing in your life ever. I'd like to cross a road, let's not think about the ton and a half cars travelling at 40mph moving past me. Let's just cross the road eh? Yes. Best. Logic. Ever. I want to have this job when I'm older, but it requires this degree and those qualifications etc. So I need to work hard and pick my subjects accordingly. No, let's not think about it and just do it. Let's allow life to take me wherever. I don't really want to do my dream job, I dont mind if i end up working behind a cashier in McDonalds. Best. Logic. Ever.
Idiot.
And no, actually, I don't mean to boast about how I'm observing and dissecting everything I see in my mind. Because its a fact. I do observe everything, I do try to understand everything nearly all the time. Its what you call curiosity. Or in other words, being human. That's why we have technology today, because scientists had the curiosity to understand the world we live in. Like newtons laws of motion, Einstein s relativistic ideas. Maxwell and faradays work on electricity. The Dirac equation. Stephen Hawking's ideas on the early universe and black holes. All arised from curiosity.
@cadkls TLDR.You're pretty stupid if you think I'm telling you to walk in front of cars. If that's what you got from what I said, why and how are you even on the internet and why is Einstein even coming out of your fingertips? Aren't you a bit retarded bro?n You must get the biggest woody when someone gives you an opportunity such as this, wub wub wub wubbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb Then he even goes and lists off random scientists that are the MOST BASIC and well known as if he's read into anything more than his high school teacher has shown him omfg lmfao!!!!!!!!!!. and the work they proceeded on and talks about curiosity and blah blah we get it, you're a fucking loser lol. no one cares about what you're saying but you brofey.
@kalphitekil Lol what!? I was applying your logic to everyday situations. That doesn't mean I think you want me to walk in front of cars, it means an application of logic. Educate yourself.
Yes, I list the most basic scientists because of the major milestones in science they have achieved, they are merely examples of how curiosity is a good trait to have. I can list many more scientists who have achieved great things if you'd like? How many examples do I need to give? Why do I need to give less known examples? Why am I being scrutinised for giving examples of scientific greatness? I listed famous scientists (Dirac and Maxwell and Faraday aren't as well known) because not everyone on the Internet is familiar with Leon cooper or Edwin Hubble or Nikola Tesla or Aristotle, or Archimedes or Schrödinger or Enrico Fermi. Richard feyman, Robert Oppenheimer, Ernest Rutherford. Do you really have the ignorance to suggest that the majority of people on the internet know who these people here? So if you went up to a random person and said, "hey, what do you think about Rutherford's alpha particle experiment?" 9 times out of 10 people won't know what you're talking about. Simply because not everyone are scientists.
Anyway jeez, why the hate? All I said was I'm too smart to clear my mind? Firstly it was meant to be a joke, and secondly its true anyway. I just thought I'd joke about it on the internet. I didn't realise people would hate me for it. Christ, grow the fuck up and learn to take a fucking joke.
Bruce Lee fan alert!!!!!!
Good thing I'm 12.
And now you're 14. Just one more decade...
rip im 15 and i dont remember what this is
Lol
And now you’re 17, a year older than I am. How’s life?
Or could it simply be that young scientists are studying anyway so as they are researching they make use of old information and revamp it into something more useable for their time.
wait..wait..wait bunnies dont lay eggs?
Hecho En México wait they don't?
no they don't, they birth same way as dogs etc.
Cue depressing music
I do hope I get my motivation back, im turning 22, and this education system has been messing with my mind :(
That sounds kind of motivating. Just wait and you'll have perspective on life.
Current education paradigm is based on those made during the age of enlightenment, you should be worry, and you should not be restricted to the current paradigm, teachers, lecturer is not always right, your brain is not bound
Hey Derek. I'm 20 years old and was going through an designers block because of too much problems in my concept. This video motivated me so much, you have no idea. I put this video on half an hour ago or something like that. and at 04:57 i turned it off, got all my papers and sketching pen again and made incredible material. Thanks for the motivation! i'm young and i should do as much as possible with my healthy, young naivety! Great vid's on both channels btw! greetings from holland
Has someone with crippling depression ever grown out of it to become a revolutionary scientist? Or am I fucked?
Faraday use to suffer memory lost and depression if im memory serve me. watch the episode "electric boy" of cosmos
hahahah question!: is there a video where you don't mention inertia? (just joking :p )
"Dealers of Lightning" great book on what happens when you get a lot of young minds together.
"keep practicing until its second nature", thats what you taught me today!
You really made physics look fun for me and you helped me know what i want to study later (i am 13) i really want to thank you for this. Keep up the great work
+Peter Appel Dude good luck! I found out that I love physics until I was 21 :S the funny thing is that the day of my high school graduation I said to my mathematics teacher: "finally I am getting rid of mathematics" haha
8:14 Thought he said "flogging while you're driving", lol!!
1:27 "for his discoveries in physics theory, especially his findings of the photoelectric effect" dang thats some old time swedish.
is your phd available to be read online?
"That allows you to do multiple things at one time . . . . . . . blogging while you're driving . . ."
I wouldn't recommend it. That is the sort of practice that could result in you not being able to do anything, never mind multiple things at one time and it also has the capacity to inflict that same state on other people.
I also think that one of the reasons is that the most important discoveries usually require genius level scientists, so "common people" in the field, meaning people who needed a lot of work to become important in science, probably will never discover anything at the level of Einstein or Newton, so it is not until a genius comes to the game that some problems are solved, and in that case, it gets solved after only a couple of years investigating, being the person behind still very young in comparison with the average.
Well-placed "quiet moment" pauses at the end of these videos! It really enhances the message. Great posts, Derek!
Does anyone else think he looks like mans zelmerlow...
+victoria pownall A cross between Måns and Jon Richardson.
i don't know the other guy ...
@victoria pownall British comedian.
@AndroZeus oh righty
6:15 "it's like a gymnast career"
Older people are afraid of loss. As they become more and more invested in a particular pathway, they become less and less willing to give it up. People rarely change their basic values after age 30, i.e. science, religion, whatever. Change can be scary. Before a person can move on to something new, he must release the past, i.e. loss.
i always like to say,"you can program your brain to do and remember things by simply repeatedly doing them or triggering a memory..
enjoyed this video and especially the ending. thanks~!
"all the memory is in the head"
I ve heard recently that scientists found out that their was neurones in our whole body and especially in the skin and that they could potentially pre-work for the memorization of shapes and feelings through our senses.
I dont know if its true though, i dont remember the source.
It's like I've always said..."when you're young it's about possibility, old, probability."
Don't you think that choosing Einstein, Newton and Darwin is just another act of survivor-ship bias?
mwaura erick good point, but they were the most revolutionary of all
hi Derek, i have a suggestion.
why don't you summarise what your point is at the end of the video, or in your description?
for example, in this video, the 2 key points I've grasped is, the young mind does not have prior knowledge to inhibit one's creative and lateral thought
secondly, u mentioned about repetition?
Sausage party - rofl! ... dude I wish you had been my teacher, oh wait, I guess you are, hooray for youtube - a revolutionary channel that's 'really' young!
5:50
science, science, science, sausage party, science, ...
So after that revolutionary discovery you make, you can go do some more important stuff like finding love and raising kids 😉
6:27 Isn't he basically defining what we know as 'wisdom' here?
Thanks for your motiviation Derek, I was always already trying to just overcome myself but I think there's much more to it. Anyway
I first read"Why are scientists WRONG?" in the title haha
Don't camera around while driving!
Thank you man, for sharing your thoughts and for the tour :)
Okay, I have to say. I love your videos, and they're exactly what I need when I'm taking breaks between revision sessions. But boy... Your comment about the sausage fest made me laugh. Well done 👍🏻
Radle - 2016-07-06
I'm studying physics and I'm 25. Should I just kill myself?
fkkvc 13549 - 2019-04-12
Now you are 27, are you dead
HTC148 - 2019-05-27
yes
karthikeyan M.V - 2019-06-28
die bro
Eric W - 2019-07-12
JohnD thanks for that link, im going to seriously consider this as an option, would love to discuss it with you
pyropulse - 2020-03-02
Leibniz didn't start produce his calculus until he was 38.