> Listening to audiobooks at 3x speed is born out of a flawed model of learning
Also out of a flawed model of writing books which mostly are bloat and take hundreds of pages for what could be explained in a page or two.
Against 3x Speed
121–130 of 353 posts
Re: Against 3x Speed
#122I'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.
Not quite sure. Many things clicked while I was either idle or doing something completely unrelated.
But then applying that insight and playing with it in various dimensions is what built an intuition.
Re: Against 3x Speed
#123> 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
Sure, but I don't think that classroom layout dictates that passive listening is the teaching method in use, personally. One can have the kids facing forward but still be engaging them with exercises and active learning.
Re: Against 3x Speed
#124I think I've spent too much time on learning and also too much time in planning earlier in my career and life. I think it's a blind spot if you're an analytical type. It ends up being an excuse to not complete things. There's always something else that you "need to know" that blocks you. Nowadays, I realize that it feels good to learn new things, but if it's not in service of an actual "deliverable" of some sort, I d…
Anyone can choose to learn new things or not
Until the management starts asking what are the pros and cons of new tools to be introduced into the stack and nobody can answer them, they will hire new experts to join the company and who knows who else is going to be obsolete anyway
Re: Against 3x Speed
#125Earlier 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.
> video formatting is also inclusive to text
Are we talking slide shows on a youtube video here? Because to me those are probably the worst of all worlds. Low information density and not searchable.
Re: Against 3x Speed
#126>Despite all the information he’s sped through his ear, he’s never actually built anything. “Someday,” he insists. “Right now, I’m still learning.”
It's similar to political hobbyism, by consuming politics as if it’s a sport or a hobby. Following politics obsessively without ever engaging. Being well informed and knowing details but never using them in action except voting.
Re: Against 3x Speed
#127Perhaps if you didn't worry about reading so much, you could write more. Than you would have more essays about how you write so much, eh David?
Re: Against 3x Speed
#128The few podcasts I listen to, I do so in 0.2x speed or even less. Not by slowing the playback speed, obviously, but by pausing and rewinding very often to think about what has been said and even take notes if I find something that resonates with me. Most podcasts though I listen to at infinite speed, meaning I don't listen to them at all. You can go through them 2-3x speed because there's really nothing there. It's l…
> The few podcasts I listen to, I do so in 0.2x speed or even less. Not by slowing the playback speed, obviously, but by pausing and rewinding very often to think about what has been said and even take notes if I find something that resonates with me Which podcasts have you found that contain thought provoking information? I've tried to get into podcasts but haven't found the ones to keep my interest yet.
Sean Carrol’s mindscape sometimes can be very good.
Re: Against 3x Speed
#129The few podcasts I listen to, I do so in 0.2x speed or even less. Not by slowing the playback speed, obviously, but by pausing and rewinding very often to think about what has been said and even take notes if I find something that resonates with me. Most podcasts though I listen to at infinite speed, meaning I don't listen to them at all. You can go through them 2-3x speed because there's really nothing there. It's l…
> The few podcasts I listen to, I do so in 0.2x speed or even less. Not by slowing the playback speed, obviously, but by pausing and rewinding very often to think about what has been said and even take notes if I find something that resonates with me Which podcasts have you found that contain thought provoking information? I've tried to get into podcasts but haven't found the ones to keep my interest yet.
"The History of Rome" and "Philosophize This". I finished them both in a superficial way, while driving on my daily commute. Now I listen to them in my spare time and try to really dig deep, take notes and read the original material on topics that resonate to me. After I finish them again this way I will search for something of similar quality. "Revolutions" seems to be it.
Re: Against 3x Speed
#130> The smartest people I’ve met reject the “Water in a Cup” theory. They focus less on consuming as much information as possible and more on cultivating the deepest possible understanding of the ideas that resonate with them most.
There's a letter by Seneca that I think about a lot, called "On discursiveness in reading" (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...):
> Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady. You must linger among a limited number of master-thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind. Everywhere means nowhere. When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner.
> Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong. There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about. And in reading of many books is distraction. Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read.
I've personally found that when I spend more time with something, I get more out of it. For example, rereading books or rewatching movies. That's also a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff: if after the first time something starts feeling shallow, it's probably not worth keeping around.