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It takes some getting used to and requires more focus but it's very efficient in terms of information dump. I've been able to increase the speed over time. My wife thinks I'm crazy. I use headphones.
Obviously, YMMV. This can lead to issues (for example, ideological hegemony in a lot of the fields I'm researching in) and it's by no means the only method I use to pick works. But it has been really helpful for me!
A trick I use to "read" books much faster is to feed them through Google's TTS but set a much higher than normal read speed. I call it robotting a book. It takes some getting used to and requires more focus but it's very efficient in terms of information dump. I've been able to increase the speed over time. My wife thinks I'm crazy. I use headphones.
A trick I use to "read" books much faster is to feed them through Google's TTS but set a much higher than normal read speed. I call it robotting a book. It takes some getting used to and requires more focus but it's very efficient in terms of information dump. I've been able to increase the speed over time. My wife thinks I'm crazy. I use headphones.
I don't think these are very good rules.
I thought it was especially amusing that this person doesn't trust journalists to write about anything but journalism. If you believe that, why are you interested in reading about journalism in the first place?
HN has an unfortunate fixation on Michael Crichton's supposed Gell-Mann amnesia effect (wherein you read something in the news that pertains to your field, spot errors, get angry, and then forget that happened when you go on to read the next story). I propose the countervailing Djikstra amnesia effect, wherein a technical professional produces workmanlike output with all the attendant errors and omissions that attach to any work produced by humans (Christ knows our field is intimately acquainted with errors and omissions), then forgets they did that, and expects every other professional to measure up to the standard they themselves failed to meet.
A trick I use to "read" books much faster is to feed them through Google's TTS but set a much higher than normal read speed. I call it robotting a book. It takes some getting used to and requires more focus but it's very efficient in terms of information dump. I've been able to increase the speed over time. My wife thinks I'm crazy. I use headphones.
How do you do this? How fast is the speech? 800wpm? Faster?
The idea that only 4+ star rating books are worth reading is laughable. Reading only very popular books is a recipe to read only books that fit into your own preconceived worldview.
Quality assessment is not necessarily the same as popularity, surely.
Interesting post, but i would say you can easily read more than 3000 books if you retire at 65 and live to be 90+. Also there are great non-fiction books by journalists that are not about journalism, a few that come to mind are Bad Blood, The Chickenshit Club, Angler, All The President's Men, books by Matt Taibbi, etc.