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Against 3x Speed

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Re: Against 3x Speed

#181

Post by lifeisstillgood »

trees101 wrote: post #162
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #134

There are three kinds of learning - new contextual framework (There is no god, armies used to be retinues of retinues) - new skills (make fire from sticks, algebra and calculus) - new information (Henry V won at agincourt) The big important ones are the contextual frameworks. Without them humanity and individual humans are just floundering. And if there is any big political divide it's because people are not in same…

Im interested in your categorisation of learning. Can you elaborate on "contextual framework"? Are these your own concepts, if not where do you get them from?

The difference between Lucy (the putative earliest human found by Leakey (?)) and me is not that i am innately more intelligent, but that for decades my brain has been stuffed with the collective education of humankind. Lucy does not know about the sun revolving round the Earth, about germ theory and oral-fecal transmission, she does not know about writing or reading, about triangulation for surveying, or surveying, or maps.

But we do because you understood the above conceptual frameworks.

Germ theory is not a fact, like who won the battle of Crecy. It is a whole ever-expanding concept that with it in place in your head, can guide your future actions. Similarly atheism, or logistics, or factory method or steam power ...

Re: Against 3x Speed

#182

Post by HPsquared »

bsder wrote: post #174
culebron21 wrote: post #142

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. A personal example: I used to listen to a famous linguist, and everything seemed nice and clear, but then I decided to go in details on one particular question (I think accentuantion), and opened his book. It was like if you showed your programmin…

> Lectures are proved to be a bad way to learn things. This may be, but studies also show that you should review the material before the lecture so that you can engage the lecturer . I can count on a single hand and not use all the fingers the number of students I have taught who always reviewed the material before I lectured on it. Unsurprisingly, those students absolutely sailed through my class with very high grad…

That requires the material to be available in advance, which often isn't the case.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#183

Post by lifeisstillgood »

extrememacaroni wrote: post #149
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #134

There are three kinds of learning - new contextual framework (There is no god, armies used to be retinues of retinues) - new skills (make fire from sticks, algebra and calculus) - new information (Henry V won at agincourt) The big important ones are the contextual frameworks. Without them humanity and individual humans are just floundering. And if there is any big political divide it's because people are not in same…

You make a fire with algebra and calculus because your brain overheats, right?

Darn that transitive comma...

Re: Against 3x Speed

#184

Post by Aeolun »

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 could watch my work meetings at infinite speed, and the information density would still be zero.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#185

Post by HPsquared »

I'd love for all videos to have a "linked transcript" enabling the user to text search the transcript, then quickly seek the video to a particular statement.

That way, I'd be able to skim read and "dip into" long lecture-style videos to extract targeted information.

Since YouTube has captions on most videos, the data is available but I don't know of any apps that do this.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#186

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

bsder wrote: post #174
culebron21 wrote: post #142

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. A personal example: I used to listen to a famous linguist, and everything seemed nice and clear, but then I decided to go in details on one particular question (I think accentuantion), and opened his book. It was like if you showed your programmin…

> Lectures are proved to be a bad way to learn things. This may be, but studies also show that you should review the material before the lecture so that you can engage the lecturer . I can count on a single hand and not use all the fingers the number of students I have taught who always reviewed the material before I lectured on it. Unsurprisingly, those students absolutely sailed through my class with very high grad…

This is what I do when learning math and it works really well.

Lectures alone don't give you a deep understanding and a solid theoretical grasp of the concepts and their manipulations, books alone are very dense and often lack the intuition and human explanations of the concepts. But if you go book then lecture you get a double whammy of thick theory followed by an exposition of the intuition behind it and suddenly everything clicks together.

I imagine it's obvious to many, but I only realized it recently.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#187

Post by phgn »

someRandoJunk wrote: post #155
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 think some of the replies and likes to your reply are kinda hilarious. You went through the entire article, misunderstood the point (aka he's talking about people who are cramming information, not people who are using it to skip filler content and contemplate over the actual information like you do), and this misinterpretation is fair, it happens to all of us. Few people corrected you in the reply. But a lot of peo…

To be fair, the article is quite long so I for example gave up reading after a while. Which from my brief skimming seems like what the author advocates for -- reading less things but more deeply.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#188

Post by foerbert »

bsder wrote: post #174
culebron21 wrote: post #142

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. A personal example: I used to listen to a famous linguist, and everything seemed nice and clear, but then I decided to go in details on one particular question (I think accentuantion), and opened his book. It was like if you showed your programmin…

> Lectures are proved to be a bad way to learn things. This may be, but studies also show that you should review the material before the lecture so that you can engage the lecturer . I can count on a single hand and not use all the fingers the number of students I have taught who always reviewed the material before I lectured on it. Unsurprisingly, those students absolutely sailed through my class with very high grad…

I've always loved the concept, and yet was always the student that would scoff when lecturers mentioned reviewing. The problem is "active learning" doesn't work outside of small groups at a similar "level" so to speak (as in background knowledge, dedication, and interest).

Very few college classes meet these requirements. When they did, they were amazing. But otherwise, reviewing just makes it nearly impossible to pay attention as the lecturer slowly speaks the material you already know. And then any questions you may have require too much detail to actually answer in the lecture. It's really quite miserable. Why would you do that to yourself?

Re: Against 3x Speed

#189

Post by culebron21 »

bsder wrote: post #174
culebron21 wrote: post #142

I'm impressed more by the comments than the article itself. Some people insist they make progress and listen 3x, but nobody showed any practical measurements of own skills. A personal example: I used to listen to a famous linguist, and everything seemed nice and clear, but then I decided to go in details on one particular question (I think accentuantion), and opened his book. It was like if you showed your programmin…

> Lectures are proved to be a bad way to learn things. This may be, but studies also show that you should review the material before the lecture so that you can engage the lecturer . I can count on a single hand and not use all the fingers the number of students I have taught who always reviewed the material before I lectured on it. Unsurprisingly, those students absolutely sailed through my class with very high grad…

Also, confirming what you wrote: students who excelled at my courses, usually took some courses, like online, before that. Those who were great at maths in the university, said their parents were mathematicians, and they were exposed to advanced maths, like quadratic or trigonometric equations already at the age of 7-9.

Re: Against 3x Speed

#190

Post by Aromasin »

tempestn wrote: post #75
trabant00 wrote: post #67

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. 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…

At 3x, sure. But I regularly listen to podcasts at about 1.3-1.4x, depending on how quickly the hosts talk. When you actually are paying attention, 1x can just be really slow sometimes. I think of it more like bringing it to a comfortable speed where I don't feel like I have to wait for them to get on with it, than trying to speed through it as quickly as possible. I, too, will sometimes pause to think (or talk) abou…

This is my issue also. I'm guilty of being a 2x'er, not because I believe I'll absorb more information faster, but because I find most narrators/podcast hosts tend to slow down their speech significantly when recording something for consumption. Be it because their reading speed is worse than their talking speed, or that they think they need to for effect like some 1940's Trans-Atlantic radio host, I find it painful to listen to most of the time.
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