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Against 3x Speed

perell.com

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Re: Against 3x Speed

#111

Post by khariel »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #91
daenz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the same youtube plugin mentioned in the article, and watch many videos at 2.5x-3.0x speed, for the exact reason that you state. There is a lot of "filler" content that I either a) already know or b) is not relevant to what I'm trying to learn. I'm really just trying to get through that content quickly. When I get to some really dense portion though, I will turn the speed down to 1x to learn it.

In addition to what you're saying, it can also be _harder_ to watch something at 1x speed. I've found that at 1.25x-1.5x my mind is more engaged. If it's too slow, I start thinking about other things and end up getting less from the video.

To me this is fairly dependent on how fast the speaker speaks. Most of the times 1.25x works well. Sometimes 1.5x is too fast.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#112

Post by dredmorbius »

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.

I'll often seek out both the written and lectures on material I'm particularly interested in.

I can read far, far faster than I can listen (and at what seems to be 4-5x the projected reading time in most article guides ... I'd really prefer a simple word count).

But ...

... listening to the spoken lecture can result in a very different understanding of material, hearing the lecturer's intonation, emphasis, humour, and more. This applies both where the reader is the original author and, at least in cases, where not, if the reader knows the material and its author well.

This of course depends on the material and ones level of interest in it. Multiple exposures for high-quality and complex material, or particularly compelling dramatisations, are worth this in my view.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#113

Post by Thlom »

dgellow wrote: post #99
sschueller wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer a plugin that could remove "ehm"s and pauses from speakers that are new to the game.

I believe that’s what Overcast “Smart speed” does for podcasts. Would be nice to have for videos.

Pocketcast can remove silence at least. Not sure about filler sounds like ehm.

According to Pocketcast I've "saved" over 3 days by trimming silence and over a month by speeding up. I've listened to a lot of podcasts it seems ...

Re: Against 3x Speed

#115

Post by dredmorbius »

sschueller wrote: post #92
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.

I would prefer a plugin that could remove "ehm"s and pauses from speakers that are new to the game.

I have quite literally gone through long lectures and edited out such filler words (Audacity is good for this), where the material is sufficiently compelling (an extreme rarity).

It's really a telling level of contempt for an audience to allow unedited material containing excessive fillers to be released. I'm not at all a fan of the "one take, FI/SI" school of podcasts, and will bail out of virtually anything that features this.

For vapid voiceovers, I'll often just watch the video with sound off. My response is similar to how Douglas Adams described Marvin the Android hearing people count.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#116

Post by Joker_vD »

rsanheim wrote: post #85
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.

This ignores the point (that Perell makes in the essay) that learning via lecture is a horrible way to learn much of anything to begin with. Now I could see a counter point where you speed up a lecture, find the new information that interests you, and then use that as a jumping off point for repetition. For example, dive deeper into other sources, take notes, use flash cards, try applying what you've learned, and so…

Off-tangent: modern lectures are still a better way to learn something than original lectiones were ― the lecturer would read the book by some prominent author, and students would listen to it and take notes... and that's it. That's what lectio literally means: "[an act of] reading". And before the invention and spread of the printing press, it absolutely made sense ― books were rare and expensive.

Today, of course, lectures during which the lecturer simply reads the textbook and does nothing more, are rightfully considered to be the worst: a student too can read the textbook himself just fine!

Re: Against 3x Speed

#117

Post by khariel »

Reason077 wrote: post #16

> "He ... stopped taking the subway to work because the train noise made it impossible to hear the audiobook narrators. " He should try noise cancelling headphones! Surely one of the greatest inventions of the early 21st century.

It was when riding the subway with my noise-cancelling headphones that I realized how good an investment it was. Oh, the bliss.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#118

Post by nextlevelwizard »

elil17 wrote: post #71
daenz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the same youtube plugin mentioned in the article, and watch many videos at 2.5x-3.0x speed, for the exact reason that you state. There is a lot of "filler" content that I either a) already know or b) is not relevant to what I'm trying to learn. I'm really just trying to get through that content quickly. When I get to some really dense portion though, I will turn the speed down to 1x to learn it.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/ This lets you skip filler content automatically for many popular videos.

It is more that these days everything is a video. Even things that should be two to three paragraphs of text or maybe a picture or two.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#119

Post by cthor »

sb057 wrote: post #50
Nursie wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Blogs are perfectly capable of embedding media as appropriate, including videos.

On the contrary to your suggestion, blogs (or more specifically, webpages) are what can do more than anything else, since they can also feature interactive media. See https://ncase.me/trust/> for an example.

Whether or not this is expected, standard, or the author thinks it's worth the effort is another thing.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#120

Post by nextlevelwizard »

bajsejohannes wrote: post #91
daenz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use the same youtube plugin mentioned in the article, and watch many videos at 2.5x-3.0x speed, for the exact reason that you state. There is a lot of "filler" content that I either a) already know or b) is not relevant to what I'm trying to learn. I'm really just trying to get through that content quickly. When I get to some really dense portion though, I will turn the speed down to 1x to learn it.

In addition to what you're saying, it can also be _harder_ to watch something at 1x speed. I've found that at 1.25x-1.5x my mind is more engaged. If it's too slow, I start thinking about other things and end up getting less from the video.

I think the slowness of the videos is for non-english speakers. Meaning people who can understand english to a point, but aren't using english every day.

Some years ago when I used to play games there was these awesome guides to some hard challenges a guy made where he was speaking pretty fast because there was a lot to cover and it was narrated over live footage. It was perfectly understandable to me, but the comment section was full of complains about the speed and how it was too hard to follow. This to me suggests that most of people would prefer if you paused the action to make your point slowly and after that continued with the footage.

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