Inspired by some of the comments in Back To The Basics I thought it might be interesting to see whether and how video embedding works in the discussion area.  The experiment is intended to function technically to see if this is possible, but also socially to see if the reaction is good and the comments are high quality.

When trying to set up this video I clicked the "HTML" button among the text tools (to the right of "Insert/edit image" and to the left of "Insert horizontal ruler".  In the text box that popped up, I pasted the html that I had already found on youtube by pressing the "Embed" button for a video that seemed thematically appropriate.

Assuming that this technically succeeds, we'll all have an some anecdotal evidence about whether videos are a positive contribution to LW.

One thing that might be useful to mention is that QualiaSoup has produced about 28 videos of which I picked one that seemed particularly relevant to this forum and that I watched before posting.  I didn't really learn anything from this but I also didn't notice anything glaringly wrong with it.  If this experiment is good enough to repeat we might want to think about the standards we'd expect video posts to live up to.  Not sure what those should be, but it seemed like a good idea to mention that conversation around this might be useful.

Without further ado, "The Problem With Anecdotes"...

 

 

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Five anecdotes:

  • It worked for me using Firefox (with Flashblock - it took some extra clicking to get it to run.)
  • It worked for me using Safari (on iMac)
  • It worked for me using Chrome
  • It did not work for me using Safari on an iPad. Flash just isn't supported on iPad.
  • I liked it and would like to see more of this sort of thing on LessWrong.

ETA: A direct link to the youtube video would be better than embedding for iPad users.

[-][anonymous]00

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I love QualiaSoup. I routinely link his video on Open-Mindedness when I am accused of being "close-minded" about someone's unsupported religious/spiritual/supernatural/paranormal claims.