Is watching video tutorials acceptable?

[Anonymous No.9870113]

If I am interested in learning something and there are a lot of video tutorials and easy beginner guides about it, should I use them? Is there any point in learning about the subject, then?

I feel like I'm being a mental cuckold by taking the easy route and learning from somebody who is specifically trying to teach me and help me understand. But I also don't like wasting time.

[Anonymous No.9870125]

why the fuck do you care what /sci/ thinks is acceptable lmao
that's truly mentally cucked

[Anonymous No.9870145]

>>9870113

[Anonymous No.9870149]

>>9870125
some people on /sci/ have self-taught things

I want to know if people who actually self-teach use tutorials for dummies or if they just go straight for the academic literature. Basically, I want to know if being dumb enough to benefit from tutorials means you are too dumb to actually learn something

[Anonymous No.9870403]

If this isn't bait, you've completely misunderstood -why- video tutorials are usually bad.

[Anonymous No.9870672]

>>9870113
I like to watch a video about what I'm about to study, so I can understand the general concept of it before actually studying. It helps me so I won't get lost in the middle of the reading

[Anonymous No.9870696]

You realize that smart people aren’t just born knowing everything right? It’s like saying “do I have to encounter a word in English to be able to know it’s definition?” The difference is that the smart person will digest and then be able to use the word properly with less encounters.

[Anonymous No.9870702]

>>9870403
so why are they bad?

[Anonymous No.9870720]

>>9870113
Video lectures are okay at first, but they're in no way structured and organized for efficient study of subject matter like textbooks, lecture notes or actual lectures. With video lectures you're prone to learning the material much more passively, while doing the full textbook run with all the exercises will really grind the knowledge in your noggin'. I think they're mostly okay at high school level or when you don't really need mastery of some subject.

Khan Academy helped me, for example, to refresh all the high school math I needed to study physics and it obviously worked well despite all the nay-sayers, because I graduated recently with flying colours.

[Anonymous No.9870744]

>>9870113
The "easy" route? Let's see:

i) videos have their own pace
ii) author of books are generally smarter than authors of videos
iii) you can't easily look at different parts of a video
iv) most video transcriptions reveal they are loaded with unimportant fillers
v) videos can't be easily reviewed and edited like text
vi) videos are not abstract as text
vii) videos require constant focus
viii) audio has a lower bit rate than text in your brain

Nobody likes wasting time, but are you really not wasting time with videos? Are they really "easy"? That is what is bothering you.

[Anonymous No.9870818]

>>9870744
same criticism can be applied to lectures.

[Anonymous No.9870865]

>>9870818
Yes, with a few distinctions of course, but it explains why lectures need to be secondary to a reading material. A lecture in video format isn't the same mixed mess of an edited video, there is order and formality in a lecture. If not in video format, questions are often asked in a lecture. The lecturer has done it over and over, and usually expects you to reach for the texts either before or after. The pace of the lecture is slow but there is depth, and ideally it shouldn't strain your attention. If you are lucky, the lecture is self-contained and you can get out of it with new useful information, instead of being a just a review of book topics.

[Anonymous No.9870869]

>>9870702
Video tutorials don't teach you something as well as simply doing it will. They trick you into thinking you understand when really you're just regurgitating someone else's words.

[Anonymous No.9871013]

>>9870744
>>9870818
>>9870865
Honestly I fucking hate lectures. I always lose attention after the professor has been repeating the same trivial thing for like 10 minutes, only to catch up at a later time and realize that I've missed a bunch of key definitons or something. So after my first year in uni I stopped going to lectures all together, haven't looked back.
>>9870403
>>9870869
I've actually run into this problem before. You watch videos, think you know something, go to sleep - and then you remember fuck all the enxt day. Nowadays I take notes vigorously at every step if possible when watching vids and do excercises in parallel (easy when it's coding and shit). But I am wondering if the whole approach is actually harmful and whether I should be trying to do it all myself based purely off some text.

[Anonymous No.9871101]

>>9870113
It doesn't matter how you get there. What matters is that you get there.
Sidenote: I want to kill myself, because of exam stress.

[Anonymous No.9871137]

>>9871101
What are you studying? I find university shit to be fairly trivial for the most part but I'm studying engineering so it's to be expected. I am learning stuff I am interested in in my free time.

[Anonymous No.9871285]

>>9870113
I prefer jumping into the real stuff where the pressure build up and gets me to learn very efficiently. E.g : If I were to learn a sport, I'd find a professional, tell him to shut the fuck up and play against me at the concerned sport. I'd get frustrated (by always losing in the first days) which would push my brain to focus and catch on the professional lvl quickly.

[Anonymous No.9871366]

>>9871013
You lose time basing your exercise based of the principle without any examples as it takes your mind a bit of work to do it. If you read the principle and then make a a first example on your own, and then do some more problems you're good to go. Not even in that order. Whatever it hits you.

[Anonymous No.9871572]

I strongly believe that any kind of teacher simply opens a door to additional knowledge, it's up to the receiver to learn and interpret the subject matter accordingly.

Tutorials are good for beginners, because it has the possibility of being the foundation of understanding. Allowing you to finds different ways to delve into. Now, if you rely on these, you're fucked, no one learns things by being spoonfed.

[Anonymous No.9871682]

>>9871013
Are we talking PatrickJMT class of video tutorial? They are good for playing the exam game. I found that I used video tutors a lot in my 1st and 2nd year of university. My 3rd year was basically all private study