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Against 3x Speed

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Re: Against 3x Speed

#41

Post by pha392 »

Nursie wrote: post #17

> If we embraced the benefits of active learning, our classrooms would look nothing like they do today. The average classroom is set up for passive listening. It’s geared towards consuming knowledge, not integrating it. Desks are lined up in punitive rows To play devil's advocate, I learned actively in classrooms that looked very much like that. Mathematics, for instance, can be taught in such a way that kids at desk…

There's nothing wrong with passive listening, but it's awful if it's the only way to teach

Re: Against 3x Speed

#42

Post by albert_e »

Nursie wrote: post #23
saivan wrote: post #4

I get the point you're making - but honestly I have to raise the counter argument, which I think is equally valid. Take for example, the average lecture video. The information density is so low, that I'd imagine that a 60 minute video could be compressed into 10-12 minutes without any loss of information. It really depends on what you're listening to/watching.

Honestly, maybe I'm just some old, out-of-touch luddite, but I think that using videos to pass information is sub-optimal all around. Unless we're actually showing audio-visual phenomena, a page of text is almost always more useful to me. I can absorb it at my speed. I can go back and forth within it easily. I can search it. I can copy bits out if I need to. It's just better.

you are not wrong or outdated

different people prefer different methods of learning

they may or may not be more effective -- just that they are more preferred -- even if for no other reason than ease

sitting down with a page of text and focusing on it to learn new information is becoming harder and harder for me personally ...with the bad habits of constant smartphone and social media use

I fall back to have someone do the reading and explain it to me

videos let us pause / rewind / skip / slowdown as needed ..so I am noticing that I am depending on his control also and sometimes zoning out of videos too ...

...which sometimes bites me when I am watching a live stream that has no rewind or worse ..attending a real meeting and hear someone explain something at length

Re: Against 3x Speed

#43

Post by emodendroket »

Who says the 1x is the optimal speed to consume any information? Why stop there? Perhaps half, or even a quarter, would be better? Of course blowing through information as fast as possible doesn't do any good if you can't retain it, but I find it hard to believe that all the information out there is ideally paced for every listener.

I've actually found that sometimes I will be watching a lecture at 2x for a lot of it and then want to drop down to regular speed for certain trickier parts.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#45

Post by web007 »

The argument against 3x seems to be a false dichotomy. I'd like to see a comparison of the author's recommendation of spaced repetition combined with "Mike's" 3x speed-listening. Increase your intake density and still get the superpowers of retention that SR proffers.

Per the author's charts you can increase the information density by either switching languages or speeding up the current language, so find the maxima of the information density-vs-syllabic-speed graph and make your chosen language match either / both parameters. That may not end up at 3x, but human perception and understanding is certainly greater than 2x common speed for English speech. I don't have a citable reference at hand, but a motivational speaker from my youth made this point. He said he speaks at about double the standard rate because nearly everyone can still understand him, and it lets him give twice as much detail in a story, or tell a story twice as long as he otherwise could.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#46

Post by legulere »

JimTheMan wrote: post #14

I'd argue that 95% of all learning, is learnt by doing. Merely listening to something without properly interrogating your understanding of it.. you will end up with a bunch of shallow and untested knowledge. At best, a boffin. It's imperative to build, discuss, interrogate, trial and fail.

I disagree, if you are just doing you won’t be learning new things. I work at a place where there a lot of of long-timers are there and at that time there were only people that can from different fields. Those people work since 10, 20 years without even mastering what they do.

If they have to do something new they either give up or just try to come up with something on their own. Most of the time people have done things like that before and you can just read about them or look at their code.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#47

Post by Barrin92 »

emodendroket wrote: post #43

Who says the 1x is the optimal speed to consume any information? Why stop there? Perhaps half, or even a quarter, would be better? Of course blowing through information as fast as possible doesn't do any good if you can't retain it, but I find it hard to believe that all the information out there is ideally paced for every listener. I've actually found that sometimes I will be watching a lecture at 2x for a lot of it…

that obviously isn't the authors point. The gist of the article is that treating the human mind like a hard-drive and trying to shove as much information into it, sort of like binge drinking, isn't a replacement for creativity, originality and contemplation, which is what genuine learning entails.

And as far as speed goes, "1x" is the normal conversational speed we've been interacting at for many millennia, and regardless how fast you tune the podcast app, your brain likely hasn't evolved to follow a lecture at sonic speed.

I actually think deliberately slowing down, if not in literal speed but at least by re-reading or re-listening is a skill more people should practice. More attention to what's already there and less attention scattered on novelty is an underrated ability. Think of it like this, if you want to be a great classical musician, you could study the same few Bach pieces for decades and you wouldn't stop learning. How bizarre is it to think you actually need to ingest hours of new information every week?

Re: Against 3x Speed

#48

Post by habeebtc »

JimTheMan wrote: post #14

I'd argue that 95% of all learning, is learnt by doing. Merely listening to something without properly interrogating your understanding of it.. you will end up with a bunch of shallow and untested knowledge. At best, a boffin. It's imperative to build, discuss, interrogate, trial and fail.

Strongly agree. I would always fall asleep in class in college.

Once I got into the workforce I would avoid this learning gap by creating side projects or taking extra work which was aimed at learning specific new things.

If I sat through talks or presentations I would just information dump into a text file which I would data mine later. The taking of the notes helped some with retention, but organizing it according to my own thought process helped make it more navigable later when I was stuck on something.

Works pretty well for me in my career. YMMV if you try the same thing.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#50

Post by sb057 »

Nursie wrote: post #23
saivan wrote: post #4

I get the point you're making - but honestly I have to raise the counter argument, which I think is equally valid. Take for example, the average lecture video. The information density is so low, that I'd imagine that a 60 minute video could be compressed into 10-12 minutes without any loss of information. It really depends on what you're listening to/watching.

Honestly, maybe I'm just some old, out-of-touch luddite, but I think that using videos to pass information is sub-optimal all around. Unless we're actually showing audio-visual phenomena, a page of text is almost always more useful to me. I can absorb it at my speed. I can go back and forth within it easily. I can search it. I can copy bits out if I need to. It's just better.

They key advantage to video (and the reason why YouTube seems to keep expanding to encompass more and more subcultures) is that video formatting is also inclusive to text, audio, and still image formatting. You can only upload text to a blog, and you can only upload audio to SoundCloud, but you can upload everything to YouTube.
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