good morning John it's Friday I think
that we have all been in this situation
at one point or another I'm on the home
screen of my YouTube app YouTube shows
me a thumbnail and then I'm on the
desktop homepage and it shows it to me
again showing up at the autoplay after
veritasium video on black holes super
really must think this video is right
for me and Sega cave and he watch the
unseen inefficiency of escalator
etiquette and uh okay first the title is
fine there is unseen inefficiency caused
by escalator etiquette the thumbnail and
the video however are making a case the
split is wrong is it let's go through
the argument escalators move all the
time so they can carry far more people
than elevators this capacity is why we
use point number two in cities there is
an unspoken and sometimes explicit rule
that you should stand on the right so
people can walk on the left point number
three this split decreases the carrying
capacity of the escalator because
walkers take up more space than
standards and this is somewhat
surprisingly true it is the principal
inefficiency in the unseen and
efficiency of escalator etiquette then
we have a bit of a leap in the end the
video goes so far as to suggest that
individuals start some kind of mass
cultural protests standing on the left
and the right in order to stop the
Menace of inefficient escalators and
start the revolution except that this
didn't really seem right to me and
probably doesn't do a lot of other
people because the problem this video
endeavors to solve with this mass
cultural shift is the problem of over
capacity escalators but escalators are
almost never at capacity the Holborn
station metro experiment in London this
was an escalator that was often at
capacity it's also a very long escalator
so most people choose to stand leaving
one side of the escalator almost
entirely empty and even in this
situation they only had standing on both
sides during peak times in that
situation at that station yes it is
better for everybody to stand but in the
vast majority of situations escalators
are nowhere near capacity because
capacity is what escalators are so good
at so to summarize the situation what's
the right way to ride an escalator
it depends this split isn't the best
solution except when it is which is
almost all the time the 2014 study cited
in the video actually only recommends
standing on both sides during
emergencies which by the way you should
stand on escalators during an emergency
especially if there are a lot of people
behind you two people per step no
running no walking that is good advice
but it's not advice that's gonna get you
YouTube clicks and ultimately that's why
I'm making this dumb video right now
I've been writing professionally on the
internet for a long time like for scale
like I started before Milly Bobby Brown
existed so I'm perfectly aware of the
hoops that you can jump through to make
something that's pretty interesting
become like a right just click I wrote a
media company we talk all the time about
how a scishow topic isn't good unless it
surprises people rate estas and media
isn't toward one side of a political
spectrum or the other it's toward
interesting terrible story because
that's the biggest bias our audience has
now am I saying that this escalator
video is bad yes it was very close to
not being bad inefficiency absolutely
start the revolution no this is the
difficulty of being a creator or a media
company in a world with like infinite
content we have to chase the interesting
so much so that sometimes we end up
manufacturing the interesting I could
have picked a billion other videos I'm
aware of that it shows this one is a
fairly non-controversial example so I
apologize to the person who made it
because it was like a pretty well-done
video it was very interesting lots of
good facts it manufactured some
interesting that didn't exist I have
also been guilty of this especially
early in my blogging career the reason
I'm making this video is because like a
lot of people crash course Destin from
smarter every day many many other people
are starting to realize that like we
need to be taking this stuff more
seriously and paying attention to how
our buttons are getting pushed by the
content that we're enjoying and
ingesting because maybe if we all start
taking our clicks a little more
seriously we can start the revolution
John I'll see you on Tuesday John thank
you for your amazing video from sierra
leone i'm linking to it right here
everybody needs to go watch this that's
all