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Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

sciencemag.org

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Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#51

Post by bitexploder »

SXX wrote: post #38

So here is my own experience. I was avid audio book fan for last 3 years and while ago some guy on reddit told me about how he listen books on Audible using high-speed option like 2.x. I never tried that before last summer since at higher speed speech become incomprehensible for me. What this guy told me is that it's just take time to adjust to it. So I basically started to listen for books at slightly higher speed.…

Side question: I wonder if anyone has actually finished the entire Malazan series. It takes some serious dedication. I would be curious of the story still makes sense to you by the end when listening at that speed.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#52

Post by im3w1l »

dual_basis wrote: post #23
ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

I can watch YouTube content at 3x without issue. I did this without much intentional effort - I simply downloaded an extension which allows me to speed up the video in increments of 0.1x using a keyboard shortcut. Whenever it felt slow I would speed it up, and whenever it felt too fast I would slow it down. Without paying much attention to the actual numbers I had reached over 3x within a month or so.

I tried this right now with the trick below. 2x was no issue but 3x... that was a big step. It sounded like word salad. As if my brain was decoding the words out of order and was unable to assemble them into sentences.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#53

Post by usrusr »

the_af wrote: post #29
jefftk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you're writing java, you'll be putting out a lot more than that due to how stupidly verbose it is Being "verbose" means that each letter you type communicates fewer bits of information. If the bottleneck is putting ideas together then you would expect someone writing in a more verbose language to type more letters per minute but still take a similar amount of time to communicate the idea. In practice most Java p…

Like the sibling comment mentioned, it seems verbosity hinders reading comprehension rather than writing. Many IDEs understand this and hide some of the boilerplate. This raises the question: if the IDE autocompletes the boilerplate for you, and also hides it, why is it needed in the first place?

In an autocomplete + simplify situation you usually type a little more than the simplified version before autocompleting and then allow the hiding to apply a lossy simplification. E.g. when the simplification is substituting a localization ID with the English text there might be multiple IDs mapped to identical texts and then the difference between the IDs is lost in the simplified representation. Differences which might be important, for example if the IDs are for different semantic concepts that map to separate texts in other languages. These simplifications are valuable because they are allowed to be "leaky", they can make the easy case even more easy by leaving the tough ones to the underlying raw, unsimplified truth.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#54

Post by Swizec »

colechristensen wrote: post #48
ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

It depends on the speaker. Some speakers are particularly slow with lots of long pauses and others are faster. I think anyone can get to 3x but it takes some time to adjust to faster and faster speeds. It also depends on what you are doing while listening. Distractions or listening while doing something else (driving for example) lowers my ability to comprehend. For example on the interstate without much traffic I'll…

Overcast has a great feature where it cuts out pauses and otherwise leaves the speed intact. It easily speeds up podcasts by 30% and more

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#55

Post by colechristensen »

SXX wrote: post #38

So here is my own experience. I was avid audio book fan for last 3 years and while ago some guy on reddit told me about how he listen books on Audible using high-speed option like 2.x. I never tried that before last summer since at higher speed speech become incomprehensible for me. What this guy told me is that it's just take time to adjust to it. So I basically started to listen for books at slightly higher speed.…

One thing I'd also like to develop / wish was integrated into audible and the like is silence trimming. Some speakers leave outsized pauses in their narration which can be significantly shortened effectively increasing speed with less distortion.

I have the opposite problem where I have trouble paying attention to an audiobook at 1x. I get bored in between words and my mind wanders making it very difficult to keep track of what is being said (as in I hear individual words but have trouble keeping sentences in memory when everything comes too slow)

I wish I had realized this in university and had been able to somehow record and playback lectures at 2x. I always got so little out of lectures because the information wasn't coming in fast enough for me to process correctly.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#56

Post by bonoboTP »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #8

> instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. “It really seems that the bottleneck is in putting the ideas together.” Glad this paragraph was in the article, clears up their m…

Okay, but the experimental subjects didn't put any thoughts together but read out some text aloud...

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#57

Post by tfha »

ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

If you close your eyes listening comprehension goes way up. I top out around 2x if I have to look but with my eyes closed I can get full comprehension at 3x+

If it's a technical talk or something I'll still pause often too reflect on what was said, but I can hear full sentences just fine at >3x with my eyes closed.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#59

Post by SXX »

bitexploder wrote: post #51
SXX wrote: post #38

So here is my own experience. I was avid audio book fan for last 3 years and while ago some guy on reddit told me about how he listen books on Audible using high-speed option like 2.x. I never tried that before last summer since at higher speed speech become incomprehensible for me. What this guy told me is that it's just take time to adjust to it. So I basically started to listen for books at slightly higher speed.…

Side question: I wonder if anyone has actually finished the entire Malazan series. It takes some serious dedication. I would be curious of the story still makes sense to you by the end when listening at that speed.

> Side question: I wonder if anyone has actually finished the entire Malazan series. It takes some serious dedication.

I only finished Malazan Book of the Fallen, first two Tales books and all The Path to Ascendancy books. Also started Forge of Darkness, but was too preoccupied with my life to finish it.

Honestly Esselmont books are just weaker overall. The Path to Ascendancy was much better, but 3rd book is just too rushed.

> I would be curious of the story still makes sense to you by the end when listening at that speed.

Speed have no effect on story at all. Basically after you practice it for a bit you even get every emotion narrator trying to put into his speech.

As for the story in general it's make more and more sense closer you get the the end. It's masterfully crafted world with great theme of compassion and even though I finished it more than a year ago I still have flashback or two from time to time since I loved some of characters. Malazan is certainly one of my favorite book series.

Yet keep in mind there is abundance of information and events as well as unreliable narrators which can confuse your view of story lines.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#60

Post by thegranderson »

colechristensen wrote: post #55
SXX wrote: post #38

So here is my own experience. I was avid audio book fan for last 3 years and while ago some guy on reddit told me about how he listen books on Audible using high-speed option like 2.x. I never tried that before last summer since at higher speed speech become incomprehensible for me. What this guy told me is that it's just take time to adjust to it. So I basically started to listen for books at slightly higher speed.…

One thing I'd also like to develop / wish was integrated into audible and the like is silence trimming. Some speakers leave outsized pauses in their narration which can be significantly shortened effectively increasing speed with less distortion. I have the opposite problem where I have trouble paying attention to an audiobook at 1x. I get bored in between words and my mind wanders making it very difficult to keep tr…

Overcast (a podcasting app) has great features to optimize the high speed listening experience. They have variable speed, a great silence trimmer, and a voice boost that makes speech clearer.
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