60 Second Adventures

60 Second Adventures

2011, Philosophy  -    -  Playlist 33 Comments
8.55
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Ratings: 8.55/10 from 244 users.

This is very interesting series of small videos in which the authors are asking many puzzling questions and they're giving simple explanations. For example how could a humble tortoise beat the legendary Greek hero Achilles in a race?

Will time travel ever be possible? What would happen if a man went back in time to a date before his parents were born and kill his own grandfather?

With no grandfather one of the man's parents would never have been born and therefore the man himself would never have existed. So there would be nobody to go back in time and kill the grandfather in the first place.

Can a machine ever be truly called intelligent? If there was a hotel with an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests what happens if someone new comes along looking for a place to stay? Is it true that the faster you travel through space the slower you move through time? Is it true that before you measure a particle, that particle is in a superposition of every possible state all at the same time?

An economy is a tricky thing to control and governments are always trying to figure out how to do it. Back in 1776 economist Adam Smith shocked everyone by saying that what government should actually do is just leave people alone to buy and sell freely among themselves. He suggested that if they just leave self-interested traders to compete with one another markets are guided for positive outcome as if by an invisible hand.

The English language begins with the phrase "Up yours Caesar" as the Romans leave Britain and a lot of Germanic tribes start flooding in, tribes such as the Angles and Saxons who together gave us the term Anglo-Saxons. The Romans left some very straight roads behind, but not much of their Latin language. The Anglo-Saxon vocabulary was much more useful.

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Lu
Lu
3 years ago

I don't know about accuracy, but this IS the Funniest thing I've watched in ages. And if it encourages people to learn, it's done more than some of the teachers'e had!

Philip Kelleher
Philip Kelleher
4 years ago

That was a painfully ignorant explanation of Economics, the typical verbiage of the many so-called 'economic experts'. Yet, the core elements of economies - the creation of money, by whom, and, the cancerous concept of 'interest' - is completely ignored. Another case of wilful ignorance, deception or complete foolishness. Take your pick !

g
g
5 years ago

ok. but unfortunately the series is unapologetically written from a white, eurocentric, male perspective. decent information, but incredibly biased presentation.

DustUp
DustUp
5 years ago

Open University showed that fiction can be entertaining, even science fiction. So called "Open University" in a different group of videos relating to free energy I saw years ago; they demonstrated supposed real working simple mechanical self powered devices or perpetual motion machines. Excepting they faked the motion. Those particular types of devices quickly (in less than one rotation) reach a balance point they cannot exceed, without outside assistance. They cannot work, they faked it without saying that they faked it. That is rotten and in the realm of scum rather than a center for learning ...because it would likely lead at least some others to try to build them and then being disgusted, deciding that all free energy devices are fake. Others would believe what they thought they saw. Both being wrong, which apparently was their goal; to ehf up people's minds. Much the same as this set of videos.

Have to chuckle at the arrogance of @Danny Wakeling. Clearly you haven't taken a course in physics which they claim to cover this very topic. However, in the same vein as @Danny, most science is just as arrogant and wrong. What they think they know isn't so.

The speed of light CLAIMED to be a constant and the fastest thing, isn't at all. It depends on the medium that it is passing through, as does sound.

Tesla pointed out that at least one scientist had measured particles traveling at speeds faster than the speed of light, about 1.24 times. And if I recall Tesla's own experiments lead him to believe that scientist was accurate. Which poked a big hole in Einstein's Theory of Relativity in which the speed of light was the fastest thing.

For all I know Danny could be right ...or wrong. NO one on earth that I am aware of knows. Claiming they do is silly arrogance. Dawkins is nothing but arrogant, efforting so mightily to be his own god; silly. Anyone that doesn't realize that there are forces at work, even within themselves, that are greater than themselves, shouldn't be trying to convince anyone of anything. Yet that seems to be much the case for so called scientists.

Just because some scientist/s claim that the universe is expanding means what? That it always will be? No. There is no way they can know that. Many things work in cycles of expansion and contraction or up and down (waves) or round and round, hot and cold, wet and dry, etc. Why not the universe? What these scientists think they see could be the doppler effect of galaxies of the universe which make up a huge cosmic ball heading for God on the other side of the ping pong table or pendulum toy thingy.

Donna
Donna
6 years ago

absolutely loved this, not in anyway a scientist, just a common thinking person, english language portion brought me great joy.

thatGuy
thatGuy
7 years ago

what i want to know is how the hell is a CAR traveling at light speed?it cant right? it has mass.

you would not be able to turn your car lights on because before you reached light speed your car would be crushed. right?

....Lace
....Lace
8 years ago

Who is driving a car at light speed... and THEN turning the head lights on lol :P
You're all wrong

Francesco
Francesco
8 years ago

Incredibly shallow and poor way of explaining very interesting topics. 0 stars out of 10.

Dean Thompson
Dean Thompson
9 years ago

Is that David Mitchell narrating?

Patrick
Patrick
9 years ago

I didn't like this one. It was wishy-washy. But I am getting a kick out of the argument in the comments section. These dudes are getting their panties in a bunch over math. lol

Calin Chifor
Calin Chifor
10 years ago

I believe the first one is flawed or poorly presented. Let's make some fair assumptions: the human is running at a mean speed of 5 m/s and has a distance of 100m to cover, that would take 20s. The tortoise 'runs' at 0.05 m/s and covers only the last 50m, that would take 1000s. Clearly the human overtakes the tortoise at some point. Easily resolved? YES!
I understand the idea that the runner always has to catch up smaller and smaller distances, but it just doesn't stand.

But, if the idea is presented differently, for instance: the human has to catch the tortoise (which is standing still), but is only allowed to cover half the distance between him and the tortoise, then things would get interesting in theory but also in practice. For example: distance is 100m; first only 50 meters are covered, then 25, then 12.5, then 6.25 and so on. No mater what the distance, there would still be a remaining half between them and he will never reach the tortoise; what ever distance remains to be covered, divided by 2 will never be 0, needed to reach the full 100m.
There you go: improvement !

Horst Manure
Horst Manure
10 years ago

What if you are travelling at the speed of light ..would your head lights still work????

Roger Brown
Roger Brown
10 years ago

Brilliant

Roger Brown
Roger Brown
10 years ago

Great!!!!!!!!

WiseGapist
WiseGapist
10 years ago

Great series of short videos that summarise some complicated concepts in a simple introductory way. Also nice to hear the narration from David Mitchell ^_^

Jo McKay
Jo McKay
10 years ago

Schrodinger takes the prize for best quote on quantum mechanics :)