[HN Gopher] Watching video twice at 2x can benefit learning bett...
___________________________________________________________________
Watching video twice at 2x can benefit learning better than once at
normal speed
Author : jvican
Score : 289 points
Date : 2021-12-23 09:19 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digest.bps.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (digest.bps.org.uk)
| gnicholas wrote:
| For those who didn't read the full article, a couple tidbits not
| covered in the headline:
|
| > _The timing mattered, though: only those who'd watched the 2x
| video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than
| right after the first viewing, got this advantage._
|
| Also, if subjects watched only once, there was no downside vis a
| vis 1x watching, until reaching 2.5x:
|
| > _the 1.5x and 2x groups did just as well on the tests as those
| who'd watched the videos at normal speed, both immediately
| afterwards and one week on. Only at 2.5x was learning impaired._
| m_st wrote:
| Great idea and I can relate to that. However, I still prefer text
| and reading. I'm always missing CTRL+F / CMD+F with video
| bookmarks.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder if khan academy noticed this too.
| calibas wrote:
| From the actual study:
|
| >We also compared learning outcomes after watching videos once at
| 1x or twice at 2x speed. _There was not an advantage to watching
| twice at 2x speed_ but if participants watched the video again at
| 2x speed immediately before the test, compared with watching once
| at 1x a week before the test, comprehension improved.
|
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3899?af=R
|
| Seems like an odd comparison to make, watching a video one week
| before a test versus twice immediately before the test.
| Eliezer wrote:
| Okay but is that still true if you use batch normalization and
| does it beat SOTA
| ahdh8f4hf4h8 wrote:
| (Note: full study PDF is on researchgate)
|
| I would take this with a giant grain of salt:
|
| 1.) N is in the hundreds of students, all with similar
| backgrounds - likely a highly specific population. It may not
| generalize well.
|
| 2.) The videos were pretty short: 3-15 minutes long.
|
| 3.) The overall effect size is pretty miniscule - it would make
| little practical difference.
|
| 4.) The video topics were roman history and real estate
| appraisals.
|
| It will be interesting to see if this generalizes (to longer
| durations, more technical topics, more diverse population, etc.),
| but given the above I wouldn't change any personal habits based
| on this study.
| rocqua wrote:
| Would be interesting if e.g. watching twice at 3x speed would
| yield the same result as just watching once.
| calf wrote:
| My problem is that they're studying retention, not mastery.
| Like how would this work for math or science lecture at the
| senior or graduate level?
|
| In a more radical way I almost think playing a video in any
| nonlinear, noncontinuous fashion would have learning advantages
| because what matters isn't what you passively remember from the
| lecture but the amount of work you spend actively thinking
| about the material.
| binkHN wrote:
| I watch most of my videos at 2x. Well, 1.75x as 2x sometimes
| makes it too difficult to understand someone, particularly if
| that person has a strong accent. I find this allows me to digest
| more content in less time, especially if the person is a slow
| speaker.
|
| If I miss something or can't grok something well enough, I'll
| rewind or, well, slow it down a bit for that piece.
|
| What do I not watch at 2x? Movie trailers. I want to appreciate
| the theatrical efforts.
| OJFord wrote:
| Isn't this a straightforward corollary of 'more than 50%
| information can be gleaned when watching at 2x speed'?
| jonsen wrote:
| I'll buy that, if you mean 'more than 50% of the information,
| that can be gleaned when watching at 1x speed, can be gleaned
| when watching at 2x speed'.
| bopbeepboop wrote:
| yccs27 wrote:
| Not necessarily. Watching a second time will usually give you
| less new information than the first time (obviously if you
| already know more than 50%, there is less to learn)
| OJFord wrote:
| But revisiting content is good and helps learning. So what I
| meant was that as long as you're not purely re-watching to
| catch what you missed the first time due to speed, any
| overlap is beneficial.
| spodek wrote:
| > _Watching lecture videos is now a major part of many students'
| university experience._
|
| This sentence is the most important, describing a failure in
| education. Once I learned to teach through project-based
| learning, I'm never going back, largely because of student
| feedback, that they learn more and are more engaged.
|
| I'm not saying we don't learn from lecture at all, but a lot less
| relative to other ways. Maybe some subjects or professors work
| with lecturing, but not subjects that I studied in college.
| commoner wrote:
| The most important sentence in the article:
|
| > The timing mattered, though: only those who'd watched the 2x
| video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than
| right after the first viewing, got this advantage.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| What about watching a video at 1x twice
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Sounds a lot like early spaced repetition effects
| (supermemo/anki) but without the extended repetitions?
| laserlight wrote:
| More like cramming before the exam in this case. Though, one
| can use rewatching as a spaced repetition session. The key
| would be to actively try to remember the narrative of the
| lecture. Otherwise, passive rewatching wouldn't help as much.
| unknownus3r wrote:
| Another thing: what were the scores? If the 2x watchers got a
| 70 instead of a 50 does that really help? In college I was
| trying to get As not Cs
| geocrasher wrote:
| If anybody can watch the following video at 2x and get _anything_
| out of it, you 're a better man than I.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_7Y33AoagY
| adenadel wrote:
| In case anyone is interested, you can get 3x or 4x on YouTube by
| opening the console and using this one-liner
|
| document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 3
| jasode wrote:
| I'm guessing the submission might be in response to the recent
| "Against 3x" essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621642
|
| Another variation on 2x is to listen to _2 different people at
| 2x_ on the same topic can convey concepts better than listening
| to only 1 at 1x. Different speakers use different vocabulary,
| different analogies, etc.
|
| As for listening to the same presentation twice at 2x, one reason
| it works better is that most narratives or lectures do not
| provide a "mental map" or "scaffolding" to hang all the sentences
| on. So the 1st pass feels like it's a bit random and incoherent
| but it lets listeners mentally build an outline structure in
| their head, and then the 2nd pass makes it easier to link the
| sentences to that structure and it feels more coherent.
|
| If speakers did a better job of explicitly providing that outline
| structure _and constantly referring back to it during the
| narration_ so listeners don 't get lost, the 2nd pass wouldn't be
| as necessary.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Would be interesting to know the duration of the videos used.
| Spaced learning is known to work, but the timings used are
| important.
| aj7 wrote:
| The entire concept of listening to lectures at all is under fire.
| See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-lecturing-
| me...
| gsich wrote:
| No shit, with Youtube favoring longer videos content creators
| need to pan out the running time.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| At one time there was an incitation to make 10 minutes long
| videos but I don't think it is the case anymore. And while some
| videos are padded out as an attempt to increase watch time,
| most of the successful channels don't do it. For example, Lock
| Picking Lawyer is particularly successful for the niche topic
| it covers, and the author credit its short and to the point
| videos as a contributing factor.
|
| Speaking slowly is the norm in education in general. My parents
| are both teachers, I am not but I received basic training in
| education too, and "speak slowly" is always among the top
| advice. Maybe we need to review the rules for video you can
| control at will.
| mindvirus wrote:
| I did the Georgia Tech OMSCS, and this was similar to my study
| strategy.
|
| I'd watch the lecture videos 4 times total:
|
| - Once at normal speed, without taking notes.
|
| - Once at 1.5 or 2x speed (depending on lecturer) to take notes.
|
| - Then I'd do a 2x speed run of all of the content before
| midterms and finals.
|
| I felt like it worked really well, and even years later I feel
| I've retained a ton of what I learned.
| [deleted]
| sureklix wrote:
| "The more actively you try to learn the better you learn"
| category conclusion.
|
| Any tools/frontends for ultimate youtube-based learning? Some
| things I miss: - highlight code screencasts (so I can copy and
| paste) - 3x (not all have 2x in youtube) - transcript extract and
| keyword search and jump to that location in the video => there
| must be someone doing this
|
| PS: Not trying to promote any project by asking this, genuinely
| curious.
| judahmeek wrote:
| If you really want to remember tips from a video, take notes.
| newswasboring wrote:
| Agreed, the experiment had an odd setup.
|
| > They were told to watch the videos in full screen mode and
| not to pause them or take any notes.
| hhmc wrote:
| It sounds like the appropriate setup for the effect they were
| actually investigating.
| newswasboring wrote:
| If they are investigating retention then yes, but studying
| is more than that, right? You may recall a bunch of facts
| but have no understanding of what is happening.
| nickjj wrote:
| There's another benefit of watching something at 2x too which
| wasn't mentioned which is it can put you into a more receptive
| mental state.
|
| I don't know if anyone else is like this but inefficiencies tend
| to bug me. This is purely personal preference but folks who talk
| slow or use a lot of filler words can ruin a video for me to the
| point where I'm focusing on that instead of the material.
|
| I tend to listen to everything at 2x (instructional videos,
| podcasts, etc.) and I don't really see any downsides even if it's
| only watched once. If it's something deep or you're following
| along with code then you'll be pausing the video no matter what
| speed you listen to it to apply what you're watching. When you
| factor all of that together you can IMO absorb things just as
| well as 1x.
| medstrom wrote:
| Exactly! It's possible you and I have ADHD, but it's worth
| giving out this tip. Watching at a sped up rate lets you filter
| out the crap and find the "real" content.
|
| In a simple world you'd just slow it back down to 1x when you
| get to this point, and you wouldn't need 2x, you could just
| skip forwards 10 seconds at a time like most people until you
| find it.
|
| Unfortunately there tends to be fillers throughout the video,
| even inside of the sentences people speak. The real lifehack is
| to keep the high speed and then pause when the video said
| something important, so you can digest what you just heard, and
| resume - rinse and repeat.
|
| A variant solution I prefer is to always be regulating the
| speed according to the load on your attention span. Videos
| change so much in info density from one minute to the next,
| it's nothing short of strange to watch at one set speed
| throughout. I think the fact it's so common to "give up" and
| "accept" a given video speed is an artifact of the fact that
| people have never had the experience of letting their
| subconscious finely control the speed with muscle-memory. Doing
| it keeps your attention at 100% usage all the time. Low info
| density, high speed. High info density, low speed. Use a
| browser addon that gives you hotkey control over the speed, or
| use ff2mpv to exploit mpv's native speed controls.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I have basically the same approach. I don't absorb
| information that well from video because of the fixed pacing.
| I would much rather read which lets me speed up and slow down
| automatically. When I need to absorb a video, I find speed
| controls to be incredibly useful. For low density
| information, I set the speed as high as I can and still
| understand the speaker. This is like skimming a text. If the
| speaker gets to something high density, I will slow down or
| even listen to the section multiple times. This is like
| reading slowly for maximum understanding.
|
| I am honestly a bit frustrated with how much information is
| getting locked up in videos as I find them a pretty poor
| format in comparison to text annotated with diagrams.
| anish_m wrote:
| Ditto for me. when people speak, they tend to speak slow add a
| lot of unnecessary/repetitive information especially lectures.
| On the learner side, I tend to be much more focussed when
| watching at 2x speed, otherwise, i get distracted and think of
| something else during those slow paces. That was a big problem
| for me in classroom lectures, moments of important information
| gets overshadowed by low density information. WOnder how well I
| would have performed in college if it were through a video
| lecture!
| ncfausti wrote:
| Was waiting for this comment, as all the top ones were mostly
| dismissive of the findings. As someone with ADHD, this is
| exactly how it feels to me. Increasing the playback speed is
| like going into a mode where the content of what the speaker is
| saying becomes the only thing my brain cares about, as opposed
| to the secondary characteristics like their pauses between
| words, accent, speaking style, etc.
| nickjj wrote:
| I don't know if I have ADHD but my brain will very much
| filter out what it perceives as inefficient waste and replace
| it with whatever thoughts are important at the time, such as
| would you get shocked if you put uncooked spaghetti into a
| live outlet.
| zarzavat wrote:
| I can vouch for this technique. Most native speakers can listen
| much faster than they can talk. Blind users often turn their
| screen reader speed up to 11.
|
| When you listen to a video at a fast speed, it allows you to fit
| more information into your working memory than you would have
| been able to .. if .. the .. speaker .. um ... was ... talking ..
| er ... like ... ... sorry what were we talking about? Oh yes
| listening at a fast wpm aids understanding of the content. Listen
| at a speed that is on the border of intelligibility and when you
| notice that something doesn't make sense, pause the video and go
| back and listen to it again immediately. This active engagement
| with the content is key instead of passively sitting back and
| watching a video.
|
| It doesn't work for all content. Some people just speak really
| fast and accurately. But for the average online lecture it works
| super well.
| 14 wrote:
| I forgot I turned up my Netflix speed to 1.25x and ended up
| watching many shows at that speed when I realized it it was
| very foreign to go back to normal speed and they sounded very
| slow and annoying. But 11x speed sounds difficult, though I
| believe what you say so probably just difficult for me.
| nimbius wrote:
| Charlatans begone. 2x is a fashion statement and Ive been
| learning at a much faster rate for quite some time.
|
| The real answer to speed learning, is to watch the video at 200x,
| in a concrete room buried ten meters deep, with your nose pressed
| pensively to a 50" flatscreen surrounded by a frigid black ocean
| of PA speakers and amplifiers. Ive found that in five to seven
| hours, Ive fully comprehended the video as it "repeats twice", ad
| infinitum.
|
| now, the volume is critical as it is not to concede 110db at any
| time. this promotes learning at 200x the volume of the original
| video. At the end of your learning session it is important to
| remain unclothed, as this promotes the knowledge to absorb into
| your body fastest whilst the room leaves you in inscrutable
| darkness, to succor a distant memory of the learning materials
| interdisciplinary themes and objectives.
|
| Once youve climbed from the pit --and washed the learning jelly
| from yourself-- then you will have attained full and complete
| knowledge of how to properly tie a tie, or water a houseplant, or
| whatever you should need to learn. The pit will remain there for
| you should you ever dare to utter another question in wonderment.
| kingcharles wrote:
| I read this comment at 200x speed.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| My only regret is that I have only one upvote to give
| soperj wrote:
| I've found that you can cut your time in half by using 2
| computers and watching both videos @ 200x, simultaneously.
| amelius wrote:
| And save even more time by playing the videos while you
| sleep.
| munk-a wrote:
| Personally I tile VMs[1] playing the video at 16x at full
| resolution scaled down to fit all 16 on the screen. It's
| really eye opening.
|
| 1. Obviously required for technical reasons - I assume
| everyone is fully aware of why.
| jasode wrote:
| _> 2x is a fashion statement_
|
| The top 2 voted comments including yours made me understand for
| the first time that some people hearing others talk about "2x
| benefits" perceive it as silly superhuman braggadocio. (Maybe
| the "2x" does sound like Patrick Bateman's American Psycho
| morning routine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjKNbfA64EE)
|
| Yep, I understand what your humor is trying to do.
|
| As counterpoint, the blind have been using screen readers TTS
| (text-to-speech) at 2x to 3x (~300 wpm) for a long time but the
| masses didn't notice. (E.g. A blind programmer using TTS at 450
| wpm which is about ~4x normal speaking speed:
| https://www.vincit.fi/en/software-development-450-words-
| per-...)
|
| However, when popular websites like Youtube added "2x" speedup
| function to videos, the _general public_ suddenly noticed how
| it made many lethargic and dull videos more bearable to watch.
| (Or it turns 20-minute videos that are too long and stay
| unwatched into more manageable 10-minute videos that are easier
| to digest.)
|
| It doesn't take superhuman ability to comprehend many videos at
| 2x. A lot of us can just do what the blind have been doing with
| playback technology.
|
| (As for those productivity maximizers who looking beyond 2x and
| are interested in superhuman 4x+ abilities, there may be
| evidence from blind people that the brain can be trained to
| understand extremely fast speech:
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-
| blin...)
| browningstreet wrote:
| I'm doing a certification right now and watching the videos
| at 1.2x. I flagged a little at 1.5x. I'm thinking I'll try
| 2.x0 again but in 20 minute stints and take more breaks,
| which could help my overall stamina given I still have hours
| of video to watch.
|
| The videos themselves aren't really the problem, it's the
| constant repetition. "Here's what we're going to present,
| here were are presenting, here's a summary of what we just
| presented."
|
| If we could convince curriculum developers to put out an
| express version of their material -- nixing the pleasantries,
| intros, summaries, and outros -- we'd have plenty of time to
| consume the entirety of it in a casual 1.0-1.2x speed-up.
| [deleted]
| brnt wrote:
| > However, when popular websites like Youtube added "2x"
| speedup function to videos, the general public suddenly
| noticed how it made many lethargic and dull videos more
| bearable to watch.
|
| Perhaps it just means that some (many?) are watching too many
| videos and/or videos of a particular kind. So many people are
| imitating 'news voice' or waste energy and our time with
| production value. Most videos shouldn't even be videos at
| all.
|
| It's a non problem to me. I just don't watch so many shitty
| videos.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Perhaps it just means that some (many?) are watching too
| many videos and/or videos of a particular kind. It's a non
| problem to me._
|
| A lot of videos have good visual content (how-to, etc) but
| the pacing and speech is too slow.
|
| Also because of COVID, a lot of students were forced to
| watch video lectures and it increased awareness of using 2x
| as a legitimate tool to quickly process slow professors or
| selectively slow down to 1x only the sections that were
| difficult to understand.
|
| There's modern technology now for listeners to bend the
| media to suit their brain rather than being forced to
| suffer the slow pacing of the content creator. This is why
| many people embrace 2x as a tool to enhance learning.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| In my last couple years in college they started doing
| more recorded lectures. Most felt pretty good at 1.5x
| speed. But there was one professor that I was so glad
| that 3x was an option.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| In the next thread on learning techniques, we will upvote some
| anecdotal "learning hack", but for now, we're criticizing an
| actual study.
| antod wrote:
| You wouldn't also be a Disaster Area fan?
|
| https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Disaster_Area
| asdffdsa wrote:
| For technical subjects (the "most important subjects" with
| respect to the future career I was planning), I never came out of
| lectures feeling like I understood the material. Only after
| reading the textbook, doing exercises, and re-reading the
| textbook (or looking up a concept online for an alternate
| explanation if the textbook's writing was ambiguous) did I feel
| any sort of confidence or perform well on exams.
|
| Watching the lecture helped cement the material after already
| having a degree of knowledge, but they served best as optional,
| supplementary material. Since it served mainly to connect
| concepts together, I can see how watching it at 2x speed would
| serve the same purpose, but faster.
|
| Most people in university would spend the bare minimum amount of
| time on both reading, exercises, and lecture in order to get a
| good grade, where good was defined as "the grade required in
| order to land a high-paying job". Since I was a non-conformist, I
| specifically made a point to read all the material assigned (and
| probably achieved ~80 - 90%), and one of my favorite activities
| when I was (rarely) ahead of schedule was to spend an hour
| reading a couple pages or a chapter of literature from an
| elective course. Every word, phrase, and sentence I would ponder
| about the meaning the author conveyed through multiple lenses
| (e.g. how did it affect the characters, the theme, the scenery,
| the world of the author, the culture he/she wrote them in, as
| well as the relation/history of the words used throughout the
| novel -- was this a motif? Did the phrase relate to any motifs?).
|
| My professor mentioned "these books were meant to be enjoyed over
| many afternoons, to be read at leisure and to relate it to life
| with all its silly impossible circumstances and happenings". What
| was the end result of all this slow reading? In one narrow sense,
| it led to me getting worse grades than perhaps I would have if I
| allocated all my time towards getting the best career possible.
| It also led to depression -- self-inflicted -- and existentialist
| contemplation as my outcomes were incredibly poor relatively
| speaking.
|
| What were some of the positives? Sometimes I can look at the
| brick walkway beneath me and make some quirky, half-sensical
| remark like "ah, the herringbone structure. The same one
| Brunelleschi used in the Duomo in Florence", to which any
| unfortunate souls try their best to follow socially as if that
| remark makes any sense in our conversation. Who knows, maybe
| Sartre would approve.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| I'm a bit puzzled by the recurring apparition of articles about
| learning faster on HN.
|
| I don't think I have suffered from the speed at which material
| covers a subject since I left school. Finding interesting
| material, properly structured with a good balance of introductory
| and in depth coverage and giving solid insight into a topic
| remains challenging -- it already was when I was a student to be
| fair. Good teaching ressources are the exception rather than the
| norm. Finding the time to properly conceptualise and deeply think
| about what I'm trying to learn has been challenging. But the
| speed at which I can consume teaching material is not something I
| remember being bothered by this past decade. Thinking about it
| more often than not I wish I could actually go slower rather than
| faster.
|
| I'm curious about how the experience of others commenters differ
| here as it's obviously a topic of interest to some in this
| community.
| konschubert wrote:
| When I studied Physics as an undergraduate, I would regularly
| spend 3 hours just to _really understand_ the content of the
| notes I had taken in a 1.5 hour lecture.
|
| The speed of consuming the content was never the limiting
| factor.
|
| When I listen to an interesting podcast, I often pause the
| track to think about implications of what was just said or to
| formulate a rebuttal in my head.
|
| I guess there are different kinds of learning and different
| levels of understanding something.
| dotancohen wrote:
| With three or four two-hour lectures every day, multiplying
| the studying time by 3 would leave at most six hours for
| eating, sleeping, and maintenance such as buying food and
| bathing. Never mind working. I doubt that many university
| students could do that.
| konschubert wrote:
| There were only one or two lectures like this a day. The
| rest were labs and exercises. And only Mon-Fri.
|
| But you're right, this still comes out to 30 hours of
| lecture review a week, which seems a bit more than I
| remember. 20 seems more realistic.
|
| I guess the average was less than 3 hours per lecture.
| nottorp wrote:
| You probably remember the ones that did take 3 hours to
| understand but you've forgotten all those that were
| simple enough that you already left the lecture hall with
| an understanding of the material.
| konschubert wrote:
| I know for sure that I had to go through every one of
| them in the first couple of semesters. :)
|
| But you are right in that there is a bias in how I
| remember it: Not all of them took 3 hours.
| dlisboa wrote:
| It's mostly about efficiency. If you want to watch a 4 minute
| video and the first 2 minutes were ads, wouldn't you skip it?
| Same principle: people talk slower than necessary in many of
| these videos, or make unnecessary edits that slow it down
| content-wise.
|
| I think this search for faster learning is fueled by the
| realization that we only have so many lines of text, or minutes
| of video or audio content, that we can consume in life. I don't
| want to waste that on ads or someone's idea of a fancy video
| transition. It's the reason why I don't like podcasts or radio
| programs: too much of it is spent on introductions or random
| subjects. I have other shit to do, so if I can maximize the
| retention in a shorter timespan, that's much better.
|
| There's an ever-present desire to learn more, and the more you
| learn the more new topics you find out about. Personally I am a
| bit bothered. I bought a bunch of books over the years and
| recently I've realized maybe I won't be able to go through all
| of them at my current speed. So I'm trying to learn how to read
| faster (with retention) and be more methodical about it.
|
| For things you need to go in depth the learning is necessarily
| slow: a college course, a textbook, years of experience. But if
| I want to learn something small that has less relevance to my
| life, I don't want to waste that time.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| I certainly wish I was able to learn more quickly, and I'm sure
| that would be true no matter how quickly I was able to learn.
| The availability of quality material is an orthogonal issue to
| me, the worse the material the longer it takes to digest. I
| would also of course enjoy being able to take my time more, but
| there's so much I'm interested in that I wish I was able to get
| through more of it.
| watwut wrote:
| For me, when speaker talks slowly, I tend to loose attention. I
| get bored, start to think about something else or just
| daydream. Then I have no idea what was told and have to rewind
| back. Speeding it up helps a lot, I stay engaged.
|
| Imo, speakers in educational videos tend talk very slowly. They
| do not talk in normal talking speed, they are slowed and
| speeding it up is basically moving them to normal speed.
| briga wrote:
| > Good teaching ressources are the exception rather than the
| norm
|
| I have to disagree here. There has never been a time in history
| where it has been easier to access high quality educational
| materials. See, for instance, MIT OpenCourseWare. Many other
| great universities have similar programs (Stanford, Berkeley).
| That, combined with the countless people putting out
| educational content on platforms like YouTube and Coursera,
| means that it's basically possible for anyone with an internet
| connection to learn from some of the world's best teachers.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| My experience at a university comparable to Stanford and
| Berkeley is that lectures perfectly conform to what I said:
| good ones are the exception rather than the norm. Most
| lectures are mostly useless as a form of teaching material
| outside of offering you the ability to ask the question you
| have to a specialist and the syllabus hopefully pointing you
| towards good books while telling you which chapters you can
| skip if you just want a sound but basic overview of a
| subject. I would much rather read than listen or watch
| something.
|
| I think the problem remains the same nowadays that it was
| before when people in large cities had access to good
| learning material through their public libraries: knowing
| which are the good resources amongst all that is available.
| strangeattractr wrote:
| Have you tried watching things at 2x speed? I watch anything
| educational at 2x stopping to replay (often several times)
| anything I don't understand, watching at normal speed. I end up
| powering through the bits I understand and focusing on parts I
| don't. I also find the fact that I really have to concentrate
| to decipher what's being said means I don't get distracted.
|
| While some stuff that gets posted here veers into productivity
| cult status, I personally don't think this deserves to be
| lumped in with that. In spite of speeding it up, I probably
| spend the same amount of time watching the lecture as I would
| at normal speed. I do it because in my experience any concept
| that's novel or hard in a lecture won't be understood by me on
| the first viewing. So will require several attempts and usually
| reading something.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| Most people on YouTube talk slowly enough that 2x is more
| than feasible. (Or maybe I need to drink less coffee and swap
| the jungle for house)
| mc32 wrote:
| I agree many presenters on YouTube speak way too slowly and
| need to be sped up to 1.5x. At 2x I find I miss some of the
| demonstration though ("white boarding") and I have to
| "rewind".
| stevehawk wrote:
| youtubers gotta hit that 10 minute mark for the real
| money, i believe
| friedman23 wrote:
| So you watch lectures at 2x speed while listening to music?
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I said jungle, not gabber. ;)
| netizen-936824 wrote:
| >swap the jungle for house
|
| In all seriousness it may actually help. I notice when I
| swap to lower BPM music I process information differently.
| Same with novel music and lyrics, they change processing
| VeninVidiaVicii wrote:
| I use 2-3x speed to get through the recorded videos of my
| "umm"-ing prokaryotic molecular biology professor (during
| COVID). However, when I'm watching something for fun, I hate
| to speed through it, because I enjoy the watching process.
| strangeattractr wrote:
| Would never speed up something I was watching for
| enjoyment. I was slightly puzzled when I saw Netflix enable
| speeding up video, I suppose someone out there must have
| wanted it.
| Cpoll wrote:
| I know a few people who like doing that when they decide
| they don't like a movie they're watching but still want
| to finish it. I've watched Man on Fire this way and found
| it very comedic at 1.75x speed.
| dahart wrote:
| I suffer from feeling like I should finish watching
| things I started even after realizing I don't like it.
| I've also come to the realization that it is freeing and
| making progress and good use of my time to force myself
| to decide to stop watching the show. It might be a kind
| of sunk cost fallacy that I'm fighting, feeling the need
| to check if there's a surprise or if the ending gets
| better, feeling like I have to make sure I didn't miss
| out on something good after all. Never tried speed-ending
| a video on Netflix, but I have on YouTube. But thinking
| about it now, I'm going to try harder to double down on
| consciously turning something off instead of wasting my
| time more quickly.
| waterhouse wrote:
| A thing I've done a few times with TV shows is go read
| the Wikipedia summaries of the remaining episodes. Much
| faster than watching them. (In one case I then decided
| the rest was worth watching; in several others, I
| didn't.)
| ivanhoe wrote:
| I do this when binge watching TV series, as the quality
| often fluctuates between the episodes through the season.
| So when (usually in the middle of the season) things get
| too slow I just switch to watching it on 1.5x - 2x speed,
| rather than fast forwarding through the episode. Helps me
| with managing that fear of missing out something
| "important" in the plot...
| mlyle wrote:
| Recap episodes! There's a few slivers of new plot buried
| in there, but I don't need to see the rest at 1x speed.
| karmakaze wrote:
| It's quite useful for movies that were edited to meet a
| length but don't actually have the content to match. Some
| speed can raise the interest density to make it watchable
| again. Also/similarly for some older movies which have a
| slower-paced style that doesn't fit today's conventions
| and expectations. Slower takes more art/skill to do more
| with less, and it's so refreshing when it works. [Same
| for wide shots rather than close-up frantically-cut
| action.] I'd never speed those up, and rather watch them
| on a day I have the time.
| aurizon wrote:
| Worth trying, especially with those slow stuttering drones on
| youtube, and as the strangeattractor says you can always
| rewind selected parts as needed. The idea of varied speed
| viewing has been well known in times past for video as well
| as audio. There are also the gap compressors that are useful
| in audio streams that serve the words with variably reduced
| word gaps. I do wish they also had a stutter, um, ahh
| stripper for audio that have not used post production editing
| to eliminate gaps/ums. ahs and stutters etc. There are a
| number of training courses that help you in becoming an audio
| reader that many youtubers should well have a look at.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=audio+reader+training&rlz=1C.
| ..
| mannykannot wrote:
| > I probably spend the same amount of time watching the
| lecture as I would at normal speed.
|
| The article's title does not suggest you should do otherwise,
| though its body suggests that you could do just as well, with
| a single 2X pass, as with a single 1X one.
|
| I also use a variable rate, depending on the complexity and
| novelty (for me) of the material, and also how well it is
| presented. I also do this for better comprehension, not to
| get through it faster. I find it useful to have subtitles on,
| when available.
| strangeattractr wrote:
| Subtitles can be a massive help if they're accurate when
| watching sped up. YouTube autogen ones are often
| distractingly wrong though
| jasode wrote:
| _> I don't think I have suffered from the speed at which
| material covers a subject since I left school. [...] Thinking
| about it more often than not I wish I could actually go slower
| rather than faster. I'm curious about how the experience of
| others commenters differ here_
|
| For many listeners, they suffer from speakers _talking too
| slowly_ which causes them to tune out and become disengaged.
| This handicaps learning instead of enhances it.
|
| A lot of people can read text at ~200 to 300 wpm. Since many
| speakers talk at ~100 wpm, accelerating videos to 2x or more
| just gets the audio in the same ~200 wpm range.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > For many listeners, they suffer from speakers talking too
| slowly which causes them to tune out and become disengaged.
| This handicaps learning instead of enhances it.
|
| When I was in school last year I really loved online, pre-
| recorded, lectures for this reason. I could put speed on 1.5x
| or even 2x speed. If I missed something I'd tap my left arrow
| to go back a few seconds or write the time stamp down and
| come back later. Slow speaking videos drive me crazy.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| This.
|
| There are semi-mandatory courses we need to take occasionally
| at work; and both the speed, and ratio of useful content, are
| dismal. E.g. Oracle University releases these 24 or 40hr
| courses which probably have, dunno, 6 hrs of content? Maybe?
|
| It is brutal to try to spend a week going through something
| so atrociously slow and informationally sparse. Ability to
| speed it up (sometimes 1.25, 1.5 or 2.0 times) brings it into
| actually manageable.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| After some level of learning the eloquence of the author
| (barring some minimum standards) is probably not as material,
| it's more about the content itself. Talking about graduate
| level courses, presumably ones not too math heavy, I can see
| this working. Or for lectures and seminars on research by
| professors (though one rarely is trying to remember every
| detail).
| hliyan wrote:
| > Finding the time to properly conceptualise and deeply think
| about what I'm trying to learn has been challenging
|
| This reminds me of something that happened to me 20 years ago,
| and cemented my view that teaching should be bottom-up: waiting
| for our computer architecture lecturer to arrive for the day's
| lecture -- Interrupts -- I quipped to a friend "I hope he
| doesn't just walk in and say 'There's something called
| interrupts'". In a comedic bit of prophecy, the lecturer just
| then walks in, walks over to the board and says, "There's
| something called interrupts".
|
| Today, if I were him, I would never start by defining the
| solution. I wouldn't even name it at first. I would first state
| the problem: we know that a traditional CPU can process only
| one instruction at a time. And last time we learned that it
| looks at the program counter at the end of each instruction to
| see what instruction needs to be executed next. Now if the CPU
| keeps breathlessly executing the instructions from memory, it's
| never going to have time to check if I/O devices have any data.
| How do we solve this problem?
|
| A good student will start by suggesting that we have the
| program poll the I/O devices regularly. Then someone will
| likely mention the overhead of repeated polling, especially
| when when there are no inputs most of the time. This should
| eventually lead to the idea that the CPU itself (rather than
| the program) should check some sort of input signal between the
| execution of every instruction. An I/O device would set this
| input to an active state when it has input for the CPU, and the
| CPU will catch it immediately after the current instruction.
| Now at that point, there is no way to tell the CPU which set of
| instructions to run in response. Instead, we'll have to store
| those instructions in some specific location that is known to
| the CPU. Now what do you call this scheme? Interrupts.
| butwhywhyoh wrote:
| This is excellently put and explained. I wish most educators
| took this approach as well. It seems a large part of
| education is handing out solutions to barely-defined
| problems, and the idea is to memorize the solutions.
| jimhefferon wrote:
| What an interesting comment. I also find that there is a lot of
| not great learning materials available. Perhaps it is not
| surprising, but the really quite good is uncommon. And, I
| expect that poor materials lead to poor learning, missed
| things, misunderstood things, etc.
|
| But another point is that the presentation is not the main
| place where people learn, at least in math, which is the field
| I teach in. The main place people learn is in doing the
| exercises. I will pull a number out of my posterior and say it
| is 80% exercises (a matter of opinion, I concede, but what else
| can you do with opinions besides spread them around?).
| Obviously twiddling with video speeds doesn't apply at all to
| that.
| jacquesm wrote:
| A lot of IT is centered around staying current, which occupies
| a substantial portion of your time. Being able to do that
| quicker is an immediate boost for your productivity. This isn't
| all at the level of learning physics or rocket science, it can
| simply be a tutorial about a new framework (every 6 months or
| so) or a library, a new development tool or orchestration
| method. Personally I prefer to read but with the easy way that
| video can be monetized a lot of things that in the past would
| be blog posts and long form articles or web based tutorials are
| now posted on youtube. And sometimes there aren't any
| alternatives so you're forced to use video even if you'd rather
| use some other medium.
| biztos wrote:
| I'm not convinced that being "more current more quickly" is
| going to boost your _productivity_ but it will probably boost
| your paycheck if you 're willing to job-hop.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Compared to most other fields IT moves relatively fast,
| learning is a part of being active in this field if not
| you'll never be able to make a career out of it even if you
| stay in the same place. Very rarely do you find companies
| where the tech doesn't meaningfully change over the period
| of a lifetime's employment, and that by itself is very rare
| if only due to the speed with which companies come into
| being, merge, split or get acquired and do wholesale
| technology changes.
|
| IT and learning go hand in hand.
| biztos wrote:
| > IT and learning go hand in hand.
|
| I couldn't agree more. But learning twice as many new
| frameworks twice as fast is, in my opinion, unlikely to
| give you a net gain in productivity. Unless your job is
| to use twice as many frameworks as the other guy, in
| which case congratulations on your employment at Google.
| /s
|
| Every professional should be learning new things as they
| go along. But you're not going to learn everything, and
| being good at This Thing Here also takes a lot of
| concentration, so I suggest that picking your skill-
| acquisition battles and diving deeper into some of the
| new things will make you more productive than having a
| larger set of latest-greatest notches on your belt.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Ah I see, ok, but that's not what I meant. I meant: if
| you are going to spend 300 hours of learning time versus
| 200 to learn the same content then you can spend the
| other 100 hours on something that is billable. People
| tend to not want to pay for time spent learning so that's
| an investment on the part of the learner, and a smaller
| investment with a higher pay-off translates into a better
| ROI.
| kristaps wrote:
| Right up there with other techie superstitions such as "editor
| x makes me a better programmer, because typing faster".
| strken wrote:
| When I read this I immediately thought "typing faster makes
| me a less annoyed programmer, and better would be a happy
| accident", then realised it was the same for speeding up or
| pausing audio. Having control over the speed at which ideas
| are launched at me is more about not getting distracted or
| frustrated than learning faster.
| aspaceman wrote:
| Patience is as much a skill as any other though. I don't
| quite understand this hyperoptimization. I'll speed up
| things I find a little dull or advertisements, but
| increasing the pace of everyone's speech for your sake
| seems....odd?
| lalopalota wrote:
| They are discussing speeding up the pace of the speech in
| videos they watch for their own sake. Nothing odd about
| that.
| xwolfi wrote:
| For me, I think I understand attention is the most important
| factor in learning, followed by practice.
|
| The material is the base, sometimes a bad quality material can
| even reinforce practice and attention.
|
| I remember how I learned serious programming at 14: a badly
| translated manual in French and a casio scientific calculator,
| no internet. I had to try each command, see what it did,
| guesstimate what it meant. I plowed through variables,
| goto/labels, printing, conditionals, had lots of problems
| conceptualising loops but figured it out talking with friends
| at school who struggled too, and ended up doing decent things
| with the calculator.
|
| When I started C at uni, nothing was new (except pointers, I
| admit lol): the very good material didnt help my fellow
| students much, in fact I remember helping them a lot gain a
| more intuitive understanding on what programs were and to love
| programming for the sake of it, me who learned from sheer
| frustration and trial and error with basically rope and wood.
|
| So I dunno... maybe I could have optimized my time but I still
| believe the sheer will to learn how machines ticked is what
| mattered, more than anything and that s always how I teach
| someone new to it: love the result and the process,
| independently of the details of implementation and you ll be
| able to program anything or at least know you CAN program
| anything eventually given enough courage and commitment.
|
| And at work, I m the multi hat guy who code on all the systems,
| on all the languages, always coming in as a humble idiot but
| slowly gnawing at the problems until I become expert and people
| at it for years start asking me questions, because I just never
| give up and never think it's too hard.
| temporalparts wrote:
| I want to see the study:
|
| > Watching video twice at normal speed can benefit learning
| better than once at 0.5x speed
|
| You need reasonable baselines, otherwise this just says: "going
| through a material twice improves learning outcomes".
| Nux wrote:
| In other words, repetition is the mother of all learning.
|
| Turns out my father was right. ;-)
| leobg wrote:
| Was it Donny Deutsch who said "I'd rather read 10 books 10 times
| than 100 books once"?
| vmception wrote:
| I listen at 2.5x and fast forward a lot with the arrow keys
|
| Downsides: Videos with background music for something
| instructional is bad. Stick to just talking. Even the intros that
| many people make are unnecessary. People that actually talk at a
| good faster speed and still have a long video are now the worst.
| paunthony wrote:
| I do think that this depends on how the information is presented
| and on you can take and digest information on the learning
| modules.
| nathias wrote:
| It's epistemically toxic to promote video as a learning tool.
| Videos are great for entertainment, entertainment can boraden
| your horizons, but it isn't a good tool for learning anything
| except when learning a skill that requires mimicking body
| movements.
| klibertp wrote:
| Well, there are people who would refuse to learn if not for the
| videos. What then? Are we going to sit in an increasingly
| sparsely-populated ivory tower and complain how nobody wants to
| learn, or are we going to try capturing the attention of such
| people in any way that works?
|
| To be honest, I agree with you. I like to read. I learn better
| when I read. Text is much more convenient in so many ways that
| I honestly don't understand why would anyone opt for a video
| instead. But the reality is that the average attention span and
| the kinds of concentration people are capable of changes with
| time, and recently started changing a lot in relatively short
| amounts of time (1 generation). That's reality, and we have to
| learn to cope with it - even if it's painful - or we won't be
| able to teach anyone anything!
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > Are we going to sit in an increasingly sparsely-populated
| ivory tower and complain how nobody wants to learn?
|
| Yes. I'm not going to put in the effort to reach out to
| video-only learners, for I likely won't get along with them
| once they're my colleagues.
| klibertp wrote:
| Unfortunately that only works for a time - namely, until
| the "uneducated masses" decide to topple the tower down.
| Historically, they succeeded almost every single time. I
| might be getting carried away with the metaphor, but
| honestly, I'm afraid. Who's to guarantee to me that in 20
| years _I_ won 't be the one that the majority of his
| colleagues "can't get along with"?
|
| I won't retire fast enough to ignore the issue completely.
| As such, I think I'll try (in self-defense, basically)
| doing what people in my position have been doing since the
| dawn of time to stay relevant - that is, to try and become
| a mentor for the younger folks. But "the kids these days",
| they don't want to read my blog posts, they want to hear me
| (and I absolutely _hate_ hearing myself recorded!) and they
| want to look at my face (what for, for f... sake?! am I a
| model?) while I explain (and sing, and dance, for better
| effect?) things to them with a nice screencast.
|
| On top of that I don't even have a luxury of saying it's
| simply technically not possible, like people 30 (or even
| 20) could. Unfortunately for my poor heart, the authoring
| of videos is becoming easier (than it ever should, dammit!)
| and easier way faster than my retirement approaching.
|
| I'm sure situations like this played out many, many times
| in history. Last time I tried looking into this I learned
| the term "defenestration". That's how optimistic it feels
| at the moment :)
| nathias wrote:
| I agree, it can be a great hook, but we can have nouance, not
| everything has to be so dumb, right? We can teach people that
| look sure you can have this feeling of learning, but it can
| be very misleading people are watching edutainment and think
| they are learning which is probably even worse than if they
| were against learning in the first place. Edutainment is
| great fun for me at least, but I see so many people think
| they know something because they have been exposed by content
| on youtube and live in this self-deception that it's just
| sad.
| bmicraft wrote:
| Why do you think that?
| nathias wrote:
| It's removing critical thought from the world, bit by bit.
| People are (self)decieved that they are learning while they
| are merely having a very weak/superficial exposure to a
| domain of knowledge and they stick with that because it gets
| them the great feeling of knowledge without knowledge itself.
| exodust wrote:
| Is your comment satire, sarcasm or something like that?
|
| Wouldn't "epistemically toxic" be characterized by false,
| unsubstantiated or misleading content?
|
| A documentary is video, as are recorded lectures, or random
| experts explaining anything.
|
| A video allows us to learn and share knowledge without needing
| to be in the same room - the overhead of which detracts from
| the volume of material possible to teach or learn. The 1.5x is
| helpful when the speaker talks slowly, and makes sense that
| it's more effective, since your attention is more focused to
| keep up.
| nathias wrote:
| Can you in good faith tell me what sounded sarcastics there?
| I am completely serious, just ask a lecturer how do zoom
| lectures compare to live sessions. It isn't just about
| content, form and medium are very important, not just for
| greater memorization but also for deeper understanding. If
| all you do is watch videos you are watching someone else
| understand something instead of you and then think you have
| understood it yourself.
| projectileboy wrote:
| 2x is always a bit fast for my slow brain, but 1.5x works well
| for me.
| shinycode wrote:
| I noticed it as well. With real focus I'm learning the same way.
| And if the speaker is speaking slowly it's even better. If the
| speaker has a foreign accent hard to understand speeding up can
| be harder if not listening in my main language.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| Direct link to PDF of research article:
| https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.3899?cas...
| (obtained from PDF link on scholar.google.com)
| Borrible wrote:
| No, no, no.
|
| What you really need is a Nuremberg Funnel.[0]
|
| There is rare b/w footage of Jeff's first steps becoming Bezos
| with this method back in the 90's.[1]
|
| You know the drill when you see it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxaTAv-Dn7I
| ajuc wrote:
| I just wish people still wrote articles instead of making
| everything a video. You can read at whatever speed you need, you
| can ctrl+F, it's great.
| axpy906 wrote:
| The confounding factor in this study strikes me as reviewing
| before the test. That should improve results regardless of speed.
| unknownus3r wrote:
| On real estate and the Roman Empire. If i listened to a math or
| cs lecture at 1.5-2x id be finished
| varelse wrote:
| I find a lot of lecture videos have a cadence that is
| intentionally slowed down and nearly unwatchable at 1X speed.
| I've been watching at 2x for a decade or so. When I'm really
| adjusted to 2x because I'm watching an hour or two of lectures
| daily sometimes I can crank it to 3x and still take it in.
|
| But I think this is more a function of the cadence of the speaker
| than anything else.
| questiondev wrote:
| i have add, watching slow videos makes me tune out pretty fast.
|
| i switched to 2x on certain videos and yeah i am able to learn
| because it's not super drawn out
| bsd44 wrote:
| Ah yes, "self-improvement":
|
| - watching videos as 2x the speed
|
| - speedreading
|
| - listening to audiobook while doing chores
|
| I'm sure there's plenty more I'm forgetting here.
| synthc wrote:
| Completely off topic: i was watching an interview with Ozzy
| Osborne on youtube, and one of the comment said "if you watch it
| at 2x speed it sounds like a normal conversation", and it did!
| beebeepka wrote:
| Quite a statement because there could be many factors at play.
| Type of content, density/complexity, the individual's abilities
| and mental state.
|
| It's certainly true for many popular tube channels, that's for
| sure. Then again, I sometimes try to follow physics lectures and
| those make my head spin beyond the intro. Same with biology, even
| computers. I am not able to absorb great amounts of new info at
| once. Could be my age, though
| pyreal wrote:
| I come from an English-speaking region where everyone speaks very
| fast. I watch most instructional videos at 1.5x to 2x just so I
| don't lose focus from enduring slow-talking "mainlanders". ;)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| "The researchers do also add a few caveats. While 2x viewing was
| fine for learning about the material in their studies -- real
| estate appraisals and the Roman Empire -- perhaps it might not
| work for more complex subject matter; again, only more research
| will tell."
| nottorp wrote:
| Of course if the same information were presented in written form
| you'd be able to go through it 5x as fast.
| notriskfree wrote:
| Reading is a great deal faster than watching videos. Presumably
| doubling the speed must also make the presenters sound like
| chipmunks or voles or something. Perhaps just fiddling with the
| sound frequency also works.
| edanm wrote:
| No, modern software makes doubling the speed work without
| giving people a higher voice.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| I would rather just read instead of wasting time watching a
| video. I take in far more, can reread stuff without messing
| around with sliders. I can read at my own speed.
|
| Is there a service yet which turns a video from YouTube or
| whatever into a ppt? In a smart way ofcourse (based on amount of
| change of the particular frames). Would pay for that.
| thathndude wrote:
| I feel like one of those Reddit or Twitter bots, but:
|
| the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as
| you can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words per minute.
|
| I remember reading this my first day in a public speaking class
| in college. Just one of those factoids that's stuck with me,
| and why I've always preferred reading articles versus seeking
| videos.
|
| Of course, speed of comprehension is just one consideration.
| I'm mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is
| necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks resonate
| with visual/spoken word more than written.
|
| But this is why I love HN. It's almost always a link to a
| written article, and I can pop open comments (which I often do
| first) for more written text on the subject.
| sabas123 wrote:
| With the exception of terse definitions, my comprehension
| speed of fast spoken word is MUCH better then reading. But
| I'm probably an outlier in this regard.
| saurik wrote:
| I can only speed read for a couple hours _at best_ , as
| staring so close at something and carefully moving my eyes so
| quickly is extremely exhausting. I can read at slow speeds
| for a lot longer, but I am pretty sure it is still horrible
| for my eyes :(. Either way, it is mentally taxing, as I have
| to convince my brain to not start talking to itself and begin
| ignoring the visual input.
|
| In contrast, I can spend an entire day listening to people;
| and, while I am listening, I can be looking into the
| distance, the way human eyes are supposed to mostly be used.
| I can walk around, cook and eat food, or even _shower_ , all
| while listening to people talk. I would argue listening to
| other people is a much more "human" activity than staring at
| symbols (despite how much I do this for my passion: software
| development).
|
| I also have no clue where you got those numbers from: the
| iPad software I have finally found to read PDFs to me has me
| configure it in words per minute, and I find it reasonable to
| understand 400 words per minute for long stretches. I bet I
| could go faster (this software supports 500), but it would
| likely be mentally taxing.
|
| To put in context how preposterous 150 words per minute is,
| the average person supposedly speaks at 100-130 words per
| minute according to some random source I just found (which
| feels right as I took years of linguistics and was going to
| guess 110-120), and we know people routinely listen to videos
| at 2x (and so are hitting 200-260).
|
| (I think it is also worth noting that actual speed reading is
| a skill most people do not have. I actually think it quite
| likely that your average person can read only as fast as they
| can speak, as I bet that people who are not really really
| good at reading are subvocalizing. I feel like a lot of
| people don't consider this when saying everyone should read
| all the time.)
| ghufran_syed wrote:
| What is the name of the ipad reading software you use? I
| tried using the basic text to speech but can't figure out
| how to tell it how to start reading at a point and keep
| going. Being able to tap to rewind 10 seconds would also be
| useful
| saurik wrote:
| Voice Dream Reader. Given the issues you cite this will
| be perfect. I really appreciated that it models your
| progress through the document as "time" as it knows how
| long it would take to read the whole thing. The only
| thing I am disliking is that the act of highlight text
| for something like bookmarking is extremely slow and
| fidgety (it has word issue like trying to highlight the
| last character on a line is extremely difficult as the
| hit test only verifies you are on the right edge of a
| character, but if you go past the character there is no
| hit box so it doesn't recognize anything, causing you to
| have to wiggle your finger on the last character trying
| to intersect that narrow hit box; it mostly seems to rely
| on you touching through the character after the character
| you want to highlight, but there isn't one at the end of
| a line... they need to like, scan left and see if there
| is a character to the left of your finger to make this
| easier).
| dotancohen wrote:
| > the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast
| as you > can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words
| per minute.
|
| In my experience the limiting factor is the speed at which
| one speaks, not the speed at which one listens. I can listen
| to a 1.5x Youtube video from any speaker comfortable, and 2x
| for really good speakers such as Marcus House, Scott Manley,
| or Destin.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| This might be different per person? When people talk, I lose
| concentration after a few minutes, when I read I hold
| concentration for hours. For me videos and podcasts are _the
| worst_ for information transfer. Sure I can probably process
| more, but it stops after minutes for me.
|
| Like someone else said; it depends on the subject of course:
| fixing an issue with a washing machine (not operation, but
| with the internal electrics or something), a video is faster
| but otherwise...
| thathndude wrote:
| Agreed. That's why I thought I'd give a shout out to the
| fact that these are all generalizations:
|
| "I'm mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is
| necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks
| resonate with visual/spoken word more than written."
|
| Strangely, I was never a reader as a child, but took to it
| as an adult.
| jacquesm wrote:
| To me the big advantage of reading is that I can easily re-
| read a section without having to hunt-and-peck 30 times to
| find the beginning of the section that I want to repeat.
| Especially with difficult material I tend to go over it many
| times before I really grok it and doing this with video is
| absolutely infuriating to the point that I'll usually
| transcribe the video and then read the transcription, that's
| still faster and during the transcription process I usually
| learn quite a bit as well.
| dicknuckle wrote:
| For some subjects it's not possible to read everything. For
| example: woodworking safety for a particular machine, or
| adjusting the carburetor by ear on a vintage motorcycle.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Even a searchable transcript for future reference would be
| great. Bonus points if clicking on a sentence seeks the video
| to that timestamp.
| jrmylow wrote:
| edX videos/lectures have this feature exactly, with a
| transcript of links next to the video.
| jasode wrote:
| _> Even a searchable transcript [...] Bonus points if
| clicking on a sentence seeks the video to that timestamp_
|
| The Youtube auto-generated transcripts work that way. On
| most videos, you click on the "..." (3 dots) to access it.
| Then click on the text fragment and it instantly seeks to
| that part of the video.
|
| Since it uses AI algorithms, there will be misspelled names
| or technical terms but it's still useful.
| edanm wrote:
| > I would rather just read instead of wasting time watching a
| video. I take in far more, can reread stuff without messing
| around with sliders. I can read at my own speed.
|
| Have you watched many educational YouTube videos lately?
|
| I used to also prefer reading for most things, but YouTube and
| advances in technology have just made educational/edutainment
| videos _so much better_ than they used to be. There are some
| incredible videos out there.
|
| Of course this depends on the subject, if I want to deep-dive
| on e.g. maths, of course only a Textbook will suffice.
| anon2020dot00 wrote:
| Otter.ai for video to text transcription
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Now that you mention it, basic implementation is rather
| trivial: isolate keyframes (which is in the video data1),
| aggregate the transcripts chunks (e.g. .vtt should be
| available) within those keyframes according to the timestamps.
|
| Issues: first of all, transcript quality: those of TED (Chris
| Anderson's "Technology Entertainment Design" conferences) are
| curated, those of YT are oftentimes not. Then, discriminating
| significant and less significant keyframes, but if one only
| needs "decent" instead of "perfect", good compromises for
| heuristic algorithms (more "parametrized procedures" or
| "recipes") can surely be found.
|
| You are tempting me... In an evening one should get something
| already usable. Better than a presentation, I see the
| transcript text with aside thumbnails linking to the full-sized
| images. As someone who sometimes studies material from video,
| when I am listening or watching I am not in the strict need for
| text analysis, and when I am working on the text itself I do
| not need the video. On the other hand, if I think of the MIT
| OpenCourseware material and similar (Yale etc.), the
| "blackboard" shots can be precious to have alongside the text.
|
| -- 1 ffmpeg -i video.mkv -vf
| "select=eq(pict_type\,I)" -vsync vfr -frame_pts true
| keyframes-%02d.jpg
| savingsPossible wrote:
| please, do create this and notify us!
| jasode wrote:
| _> I would rather just read instead of wasting time watching a
| video. I take in far more, _
|
| But sometimes the more efficient _reading text_ instead of
| listening to a video is negated by not being able to multitask.
| E.g. The "dead" time of driving, walking a treadmill, raking
| leaves in the yard, etc can be filled by listening to text.
| Can't do that with a book.
|
| That's why productivity can be helped with both complementary
| technologies:
|
| - audio-to-text: auto-generated transcripts from video for max
| speed and random seeking
|
| - text-to-audio: auto-generated TTS (text-to-speech) from text
| to multitask while performing a mindless physical activity.
| This helps get through backlog of books and articles without
| having to block out dedicated reading time while nothing else
| is getting done.
| tluyben2 wrote:
| Agreed, but when I really want to learn something (which is
| always, for me, math, physics andor CS), then I want to read
| as it focuses me far better. But I agree; if it is not
| something I want to practice but just learn about, it does
| work.
| e0a74c wrote:
| Is the average person's short-term memory and/or attention span
| getting worse?
| dorchadas wrote:
| I would wager 'yes' to both of those answers, but I would also
| somewhat attribute this to the Cult of Productivity, where
| people want to 'learn' more while spending less time on it.
| Which, depending on the subject (and I'd wager for most of
| them), isn't really how you learn at all, and you need to put
| thought and go slow in things.
|
| It's basically another symptom of our culture's ever-increasing
| rush for things going faster/easier.
| e0a74c wrote:
| I never looked into this Cult of Productivity but I
| wholeheartedly agree with your take on learning in general.
| Deep understanding of complex topics can't be rushed.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Funny, this is exactly what I've been doing lately and it did
| help a lot actually. I felt kind of guilty or stupid for not
| having figured it out earlier.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Is it due to repetition ?
| m_st wrote:
| Absolutely! There's a great online course out there called
| "Learning to learn". I recommend you to start with this one
| ASAP.
| lampe3 wrote:
| Link?
| jinto36 wrote:
| Going to guess that they're referencing this MOOC:
| https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yes, the only reason I had it 2x was because the guy talked
| so slowly. I've started using that feature a lot for other
| lecturers though. It's easy to slow it down if you get to a
| sticky part.
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