simulation argument

Two Minute Papers covers a paper on speeding up fluid and smoke simulation with convolutional networks. It contrasts the approach with earlier regression forest methods.

An animated simulation comparing single-winner voting methods such as plurality, instant runoff and STAR. Colored regions show which candidate wins as a randomized electorate shifts across a two-dimensional political space, building on Ka-Ping Yee's earlier diagrams.

Primer simulates green beard altruism, where individuals recognize and help others carrying a shared marker, and shows how imposters affect its evolution. It is an animated evolution simulation based on published papers.

Veritasium examines the role of luck in success, with simulations and examples showing how small advantages and chance can compound. It argues that top outcomes are disproportionately luck-driven while still crediting effort.

Kurzgesagt makes a selfish case for improving the world, arguing that helping people far away raises prosperity and innovation for everyone, including yourself. The animated video frames this as egoistic altruism and positive-sum cooperation.

Mark Handley of UCL explains, with simulation visualizations, how early Starlink satellites without inter-satellite links could still give low-latency wide-area communication by hopping via ground relays. He shows it can beat fibre on many long paths.

Tom Scott visits the Swiss Military Museum to see the last surviving 1970s tank-driving simulator. It uses a real camera moving over a miniature model landscape rather than any computer graphics.

Primer uses simulations to compare voting systems such as first-past-the-post, approval, ranked choice and others. It shows how each system behaves and can be manipulated, with links to further voting theory resources.

CGP Grey compares airplane boarding methods, based on an arXiv paper, and shows why the intuitive back-to-front approach is slow while random or outside-in boarding does better.

Numberphile's James Grime explains Cantor's result that some infinities are bigger than others, including why the reals outnumber the integers. It is a short, accessible introduction to countable and uncountable infinity.

Ben Felix rebuts common arguments for holding only US stocks, such as past outperformance and international revenue exposure. He supports the case for international diversification with cited academic research.

Tom Scott explains why electronic voting is a bad idea. Elections must be trusted by everyone and attacks on software scale in ways attacks on paper do not, so open source or blockchain fixes do not solve it.

Not Just Bikes introduces the "stroad", a street-road hybrid common in the US and Canada that fails at both jobs. He contrasts it with Dutch design, where each road has a single purpose, and covers cost, danger and ugliness.

Not Just Bikes explains the Strong Towns argument that car-dependent American suburbs cost more to maintain than they generate in taxes. It describes the growth Ponzi scheme that props up municipal finances.

CGP Grey explains why European diseases devastated the Americas while few deadly diseases traveled the other way. He ties it to livestock domestication, dense cities, and the ideas of Guns, Germs and Steel.

Not Just Bikes argues that the Netherlands, famed for cycling, is also the best country for drivers. It explains how prioritizing walking, cycling and transit makes driving faster and more pleasant.

A short animated simulation comparing how Multics and Unix were developed, showing why Unix's small composable programs and pipes gave it a efficiency advantage. It frames Unix as a moonshot achievable by a small team.

Technology Connections explains how LED traffic lights, which do not melt snow, drew complaints and were blamed for accidents. He uses it to illustrate the 'but sometimes' fallacy against new technology.

An animated visualization of basic quantum mechanics using a free particle, with simulations based on the actual equations. It covers waves, particles, and how measurement collapses the wavefunction.

Kurzgesagt's short animated video asks whether humanity should try to end aging, and argues the case for curing age-related disease. It is part one of a pair, with a second part by CGP Grey.

Veritasium debunks common climate change myths in under seven minutes, with references to NASA and published research. Topics include CO2 sources, sea ice and 1970s predictions of cooling.

Mark Handley of UCL looks at how SpaceX's November 2018 revisions to the Starlink constellation affect network behavior. The video visualizes the orbits and routing and estimates latencies, building on his earlier video and research paper.

Isaac Arthur examines the Dark Forest theory, Cixin Liu's proposed solution to the Fermi Paradox in which civilizations stay silent and may destroy any that reveal themselves. He tests the theory's underlying assumptions and arguments.

A short CGP Grey animation showing how the US electoral college lets a candidate win the presidency with as little as about 22 percent of the popular vote. It lays out the arithmetic of winning states by narrow margins.

Veritasium explores why time seems to speed up as we age, covering chronoception and several competing explanations beyond the common proportional-theory argument.

Geoff Cumming uses a simulation to show how wildly the p value varies from one replication to the next because of sampling variability. He argues for estimation and confidence intervals over null hypothesis significance testing.

3Blue1Brown presents Bayes' theorem through a geometric diagram, showing how evidence should update beliefs. It works through the Kahneman and Tversky style questions and base rates.

This Place argues that the uncanny valley is a flawed concept, since 'human likeness' is too broad and the supporting evidence is cherry-picked. It proposes that the creepiness really comes from how animated characters and robots move.

RethinkX summarizes its report arguing that mainstream LCOE estimates are inflating a bubble in coal, gas, nuclear and hydro assets. It claims solar, wind and batteries will strand conventional energy investments.

A Numberphile video in which physicists Tony Padilla and Ed Copeland show a seemingly astounding result that 1+2+3+4+... equals -1/12. The argument is informal and has drawn criticism for glossing over what the result actually means.

CGP Grey's short animated argument for abolishing the US penny, covering its cost and history.

PBS Space Time explains how spacetime geometry and light cones determine the order of events and what can cause what. It visualizes causality in special relativity.

Robert Miles goes through ten common reasons people give for dismissing AI safety, adapted from Stuart Russell's list, and answers each one. It is aimed at skeptics and newcomers.

Rational Animations explains Robin Hanson's grabby aliens model, which argues that humanity looks suspiciously early in cosmic history. Expanding civilizations set a deadline that explains our timing and bears on the Fermi paradox.

Tom Scott makes a short descriptivist argument that language keeps changing and that casual internet writing conventions, like lowercase typing and dropped full stops, are legitimate. It is part of his Language Files series, written with Gretchen McCulloch.

A PBS Space Time episode asking whether our universe could sit inside a black hole. It covers what physicists think happens inside black holes and the arguments for and against this idea.

Matt Parker of Stand-up Maths examines the Texas Supreme Court filing claiming Biden's 2020 win had a one-in-a-quadrillion chance. He walks through why the statistical argument is flawed.

An animated Sprouts video presenting Dietrich Bonhoeffer's argument that stupidity is more dangerous than evil, because reason cannot reach stupid people. It frames stupidity as a social and moral phenomenon.

Ben Felix examines whether the well-known 4% retirement withdrawal rule holds up, drawing on academic papers. He argues that a safe rate may be closer to 2.7%, especially for early retirees.