Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fastbook: Listen to audiobooks faster (2020)

davidbieber.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 129 posts

Re: Fastbook: Listen to audiobooks faster (2020)

#101

Post by throwanem »

isaacfrond wrote: post #47
loveparade wrote: post #27

I love listening to audiobooks at 1.5x-2x speed while I'm walking outside. I can get through 100 books a year this way. Of course I don't take notes or think deeply about the content. Who needs that? In fact, I have no idea which books I've read this year! Or last year! All I want is cross stuff off my vanity to-do list consisting of books collected from HN and get a feeling of accomplishment. And I can tell others a…

For a second I wasn't sure if you were sarcastic or not. Apparently the former. Audiobooks even when sped up are still a lot slower than reading. You wouldn't ridicule someone for reading fast, would you. Reading fast is usually seen as an advantage and a sign of reading maturity. But if you listen to a lot of audiobooks you easily learn to do it faster than normal speaking speed. I'm told that blind people, can comf…

> You wouldn't ridicule someone for reading fast, would you.

I might well, if it were evident they prioritized speed of completion over comprehension and retention of the content, and if they also insisted against all intuition and much evidence that speed of completion were the only figure of merit.

Re: Fastbook: Listen to audiobooks faster (2020)

#104

Post by throwanem »

benj111 wrote: post #26
nine_k wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that to have read a text is not the goal, it's a mere implementation detail. The goal is to understand ideas which the text tries to convey. Some texts, and usual human speech, are low-density, high-redundancy. If you can easily understand the ideas they carry, you can listen at a really high speed and still don't miss anything, and later be able to adequately recall the ideas. Some texts are either highe…

So. Assuming we are talking about non fiction. Why would you read a book that you don't really expect to learn anything new from? Further, your supposed use case of audio books is when you're driving, when most of your attention should be spent... Driving. As for fiction, efficiency totally misses the point. Efficiency isn't reading Harry potter as fast as possible. Efficiency is not reading it at all. My most charit…

> Why would you read a book that you don't really expect to learn anything new from?

Entertainment! A sufficiently wrongheaded idea advanced at length and with a measure of braggadocio can be funny as anything. Startup-culture biens-pensants are often good for this, I find.

That said, in the general case you're not wrong, and it should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with Goodhart's law that the gamification of reading produces perverse outcomes.

Re: Fastbook: Listen to audiobooks faster (2020)

#106

Post by elil17 »

loveparade wrote: post #27

I love listening to audiobooks at 1.5x-2x speed while I'm walking outside. I can get through 100 books a year this way. Of course I don't take notes or think deeply about the content. Who needs that? In fact, I have no idea which books I've read this year! Or last year! All I want is cross stuff off my vanity to-do list consisting of books collected from HN and get a feeling of accomplishment. And I can tell others a…

People read for different reasons. Some people hope to "take notes and think deeply" about a topic. Some people read for fun. Others hope to gain a broad overview of a subject but aren't hoping to remember everything they read. What's wrong with listening to an audio-book on high speed if you are reading for one of the latter two reasons?

Re: Fastbook: Listen to audiobooks faster (2020)

#109

Post by specialist »

My future perfect podcast player would

   - transcribe

   - automunge that transcription

       - remove "ah", "um" etc

       - remove repeated phrases [0]

       - optionally summarize [1]

   - stitch the surviving segments back into continuous audio

   - match words-per-minute between the speakers [2]

   - do all the "smartspeed" stuff that Fastbook and Overcast.app do
[0] Notable example: Scott Galloway of The Pivot adopted the affection of repeating phrases for emphasis. Drives me batty.

[1] No shade, because I understand it's a chat and not scripted, but Accidental Tech Podcast could benefit from summarization. I love that they're talking stuff out. But sometimes I just want the conclusions.

[2] Like when Lex Fridman interviews someone who talks faster than him.

Post reply on HN