More on Youtube, Russell, whackjobs

Following up on that earlier Russell finding on Youtube, I see that there’s a veritable treasure trove of Russell stuff on there. For instance, I quite like the little TVO presentation on the Three Passions Of Bertrand Russell, or getting to listen to Russell debate the existence of God with a Jesuit philosophy scholarI actually went on to read the transcript of the full debate from which this was extracted., or even seeing Walter Cronkite report on Russell’s death, a few years before I was born.

All of that, and the other Russell-bits there, are quite interesting to me.

Almost equally interesting, but both more immediately amusing, and more soul-destroying in the long term, are the comments on the various videos. Youtube comments are infamous as being among the worst repositories of drivel on the net, but some of these are choice even by that standard. The ones on the Cronkite report, for example, seem to contain within them the very antithesis of the rationality and clear thought that Russell argued for.

I may be doing some more Youtube searches to see what other unexpected goodies I can turn up, but I think I’m going to ignore those comments.