Mind Field (TV Series 2017– ) Poster

(2017– )

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8/10
A Genuinely Well Made Educational Series
seige-hound27 January 2017
Mind Field is a great edutainment show about human psychology. If you have YouTube Red, it's by far the best thing I've seen on the platform thus far and well worth the watch.

Mind field is mostly replicating and demonstrating famous concepts in human psychology, like how isolation influences the perception of time, or how people conform to the larger group even when they know the group is wrong. It is an incredibly fascinating series that takes VSauce's trademark style of mixing comedy with science, mathematics and philosophy that made him one of the largest educational channels on Youtube, and giving it a little extra budget.

Is Mind Field worth getting Red over? I'm not sure but I would consider it. I got Youtube Red because it came as a package with Google Play Music streaming, which I got as a replacement to Spotify. There isn't too much good or interesting on the Red platform yet IMO, but if you are interested in ad-free Youtube and music streaming for about $10 a month, than Mind Field is a great cherry on top of that deal.

Overall, Mind Field is a well made and fun show that, while not offering anything new to the scientific field per se, is a great way to introduce some psychological concepts to a wider audience.
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10/10
10/10 across all spheres
vitoappleid18 June 2017
I've only seen two episodes so far but I'm already hooked beyond my mind with this show! Michael, the host, whose Youtube series I loved strongly throughout the years, really makes 20+ minutes fly away as you learn stuff that quite literally shape our daily lives.

Filmed to a high standard, produced with heavy effort reflecting in show's quality, we are led into the depths of new cognition, by Michael (now finally recognized for being a super-talented brainiac he is) leading the show in a chilled, information-packed and comical manner, never failing to captivate your imagination with new facts while cracking you up in the process.

Many thanks from a massive fan and I hope you reach the heights you deserve, Michael. Keep our minds in your field.
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10/10
Amazing show!
rockiesnumber20 February 2017
This is by far one of the most psychologically educational shows I've ever seen in my entire life. This show is beyond interesting. It takes interesting to an entirely new level.

I recommend this show to everybody! I love it so much! It's well worth getting YouTube red, even for this show alone. This is now my favorite show. Along with my favorite youtuber!
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Absolutely worth the watch... with a little but
julius-sander948 October 2018
This show is for everyone who is interested in psychological concepts and experiments. It's full of all these famous experiments and concepts you might have heard of: the Milgram Experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Trolley Problem, the Bystander Effect, etc.

But Mind Field doesn't just show these experiments and explain the results. It also tries to do something new in each episode. This can be taking a psychological/philosophical concept and then make an experiment to see how people act in real life, when confronted with these problems and dilemmas. Or they take an already existing experiment and try to go a step further or approach a different angle.

To make sure the experiments are as good as possible and results are actually useful, Michael (the host) always consults with scientists and such before and during the experiments.

All this is absolutely great and you learn a lot about these topics even if you are familiar with the experiments.

BUT: There are some things about the way the show does (most of) the experiments that I didn't like or think could be done way better.

My first problem is how a lot of these experiments are designed: There are some voluntary participants who think they are about to do an experiment ablout one thing, but it's actually about something different and all the people around them are actors. There is always a good chance that the participants are aware of that possibility, because it isn't something shockingly new. A lot of famous experiments most people know work just like that. So you always have to wonder, if these people know what's up and just play along, which makes their data invalid. In addition a lot of the experiments are based on other experiments a lot of people know. So they might not anticipate anything unusual at first, but then see the pattern and remember this experiment they heard so much about.

This gets even worse, when Michael Stevens, a webshow host with 13 Mio subscribers pretends to be a scientist who directs a new experiment. If anyone who participates knows him, they must know that something is off.

My last problem is the number of participants in the experiments. Of course it is not possible for a web show to do an experiment with 1.000 people and then film the whole thing. But there are a lot of experiments where they take about 8 people and then pretend that this is enough for the results to be proof. I saw a podcast with Michael about the show and it seemed as if there is a lot of unused data that didn't make it into the final cut and that makes perfect sense, because otherwise these videos would go for hours without anything new. But if there were mir participants than we are shown, it would be nice to have some numbers. Even as a short text between to scenes. It would give these experiments a lot more credibility.

Nevertheless: It is an awesome show and I strongly recommend watching it. My review might sound like the show is unprofessional and stupid, but that is definitely not the case. It teaches you a lot about psychology and human behavior while always trying to find out something new by doing actual experiments that haven't been done before with real scientists to help and advise them. And the results make perfect sense and everyone who knows and loves Vsauce can probably imagine how great Michael explains these complex topics to an audience that doesn't know to much about it. I just think that such an awesome show could be improved by trying to eliminate these little weaknesses as good as possible.

And as always: Thanks for reading!
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10/10
Making "Hard" Science Accessible and Easy to Understand
industrialwonk23 March 2017
This show does a great job in making "hard" science easy to understand. Many of the science shows of today cannot explain complex topics in a simple to understand manner so they drub down the content which is a real shame. I have seen a major degradation in shows such as NOVA and journals such as "Scientific American." What is great about this show is that it explains, a very hard scientific topic, the how the human mind processes information in an easy to understand, entertaining, and accessible way. Kudos.
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10/10
Informative, educational and well made series
fqfifa14 January 2021
The series is an experimental type series that focuses on human senses, the human psyche and other psychological and technological concepts. Very interesting and gets you thinking.
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9/10
Something that trick our mind
rorizio26 October 2021
What I really like in Mind Field is the way how they approach the psychology and how they explain in details to us as well as the subjects in their episodes using a simple language and as subjects.

Mind Field replicates some concepts and show how our brain works and trick us many times and if you have courage to try one of these you'll probably enjoy.

I strongly agree that Mind Field should continue with more of these experiments.

There is a rich content inside this serie and as always with sense of humor.
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10/10
This is the best show i have seen for in the metrix.
tegrazero27 January 2019
As always.. keep watching..(background music in your head)
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9/10
Incredible educational show!
viktor-9522010 August 2023
This show is beyond marvelous! I have rewatched it several times and I can't believe it isn't even more regognized than it already is.

I would love to see this more used in the classroom or elsewhere. I think Micheal Stevens is one of the best YouTubers I have ever watched. As it becomes even more common for content creators to upload less frequently and better quality it is really nice to see that Micheal Stevens uploads videos that contain subjects that fascinate and interesting him. For years and years on end I have watched Mindfield and learned alot about human behaviour and the mind in general. This show is just a masterpiece!
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6/10
Interesting Psychology with some rigour ... but not enough
samyoung-826488 September 2020
It's hard to know where to begin. Many of the conclusions drawn in this documentary are insufficiently well thought out. Further, some of the experiments lack rigour ... for no good reason. Let's address concern #1. Seeing pictures of puppies makes people click bubble-wrap because they have alternative thoughts. What happens if you give people those blowable windmills or sand-timers? The conclusion from everyone I spoke to was that these people wanted to pat the puppy and the stimulation from their fingers was directed toward the bubble wrap (as one volunteer said herself). So, why focus the conclusion elsewhere? Then the science. 30% more bubbles were popped when people saw puppies. Was that on average? What were the actual figures? Or the people who were given choice of tea and had to decode words. Was this linked to their spelling ability? How big was the group size? The problem is that it's hard to tell (these and quite a few other cases) if it's like the Stanford Prison Experiment (aiming for a conclusion), poor communication or ignorance. It's really hard to tell. I've studied behavioural psychology a lot over the years. I knew many of these topics already. This is not the starting point you want to start with. The science is sufficiently sketchy that it's hard to pick what's credible and what's not. I'd give the hit rate about 6/10 ... so that's what I'm scoring this series.
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1/10
This show's experiments are fake, (nothing to spoil)
m-2957529 April 2020
Warning: Spoilers
I can't believe this was done by the Vsauce guy.

The sensory deprivation room experiment was an insulting hoax -Michael acted like the room was in categorical and absolute isolation, but it totally, unequivocally wasn't. -Not only were the walls way too thin, -But there was an air-duct that constituted a huge weak-link in the chain of isolation), and was probably only put there to reinforce the illusion that the room is so tight, that air needs to be blown in.

And here's the biggest one: The door's bottom edge wasn't in direct (and pressurized) contact with the floor, you can easily see light shining through that slit for goodness' sake!

This means that he couldn't have had audio deprivation, which means that he knew when people were working (they were just 2 or 3 meters away from him) which means that he could tell when it was daytime and night time because he could simply hear them talk. (really Michael? a crying mommy for dramatic effect ?)

Oh and that instance of him opening the door and 'almost' walking out before the 72 hours were done ? that's just forced acting done in order to give the episode a suspenseful climax (the episode was about to finish after all...so a moment of doubt and peril was needed before the denouement, right?)

And what about the fact that not only he knew what time it was and who was outside, but also was getting paid to just wait in a room ? how does this affect your moral/state of mind when you know money/ likes/ notoriety and future seasons (more money), are abound ? does this make your experiment count ? it's not scientific at all, I know, but does it have any weight whatsoever?

I was so disgusted, I mean it's the Vsauce guy!

but no, I wasn't disgusted because the episode was an excuse for a subtle product placement for scammy food replacement wannabe 'Soylent' (that stuff is a sham, and the plug was medieval )but because when I jumped online to read about what I was certain to be a plethora of people debunking the episode, I found an OCEAN of people reporting stagings/ and fakings spanning the entire series. in one of them, one of the test subjects was demonstrated to be an actor listed in the IMDB ! Even the soundtrack had uncanny resemblance to the theme of Far Cry 3's DLC: Blood Dragon, Michael probably didn't know that, but his music engineer did
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2/10
Keep in mind that this is staged and uses hired actors. It's not a documentary.
mkarpins-6606330 December 2018
Despite I liked the show very much I'm giving it 2 because this is not a documentary.

They hired actors and manipulated. Later on they lied to people about this. What is sad is that Michael did too :( Hope we haven't lost him to showbiz for good...

If you want more you can start investigating from Season 02 Episode 1 "The Greater Good"
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