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We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

blog.readwise.io

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Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#131

Post by Llamamoe »

hoodwink wrote: post #2

Hey everyone, this is the follow up post to the experiment posted here on Hacker News a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31826204 . I'll be hanging out in the replies today if there are any questions I can answer :)

I've said this via Twitter and I'll say it now: I'd expect there to be huge learning effect sizes for anything that alters the way we parse information, even in such "minor" ways as BR.

I'd like to see what the difference would be like after a day, four, and a week of reading articles with BR, if that's viable to enlist people for at all.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#132

Post by dalmo3 »

Terr_ wrote: post #107
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A related rant I've had over the years: the redundancy present in human language is not a flaw to be optimized away. Evolution went there because it acts as a form of forward error correction.

Except when the complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. :P

That's not redundancy, that's multiplexing!

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#133

Post by O__________O »

jms wrote: post #100
O__________O wrote: post #23

Here’s what appears to be an independent review of Spritz: https://www.tsw.it/wp-content/uploads/Rapid-serial-visual-pr... One of the issues with tests like these is that the companies sponsor the research and they are one-off vs long exposure studies; that is as with most interfaces with high-throughput, takes time for the mind to adjust. My guess that given human speech appears to have a universal transmission rate…

Blind people who use screen readers usually turn up the speed to something unintelligible to the rest of us. Maybe reading a computer screen is a simpler task than talking person to person, but it's an interesting datapoint!

While I agree both the blind and others, including myself, listen to screen readers and audio at a higher rate, that’s not actually research that’s reviewable and shareable. Speaking for myself, 100% sure the noise-to-signal ratio increases when I do, but if needed, I just go back X-seconds in time to relisten to prior audio. I for sure never literally test my comprehension systematically when doing so relative to when I am not. The speakers, vocabulary, topic familiarity, etc — also make a huge difference; aka prior familiarity in general with the input.

On the flip side, I provided research on transmission rates, which to me seems reasonable, but another user shared research on reception rates, which to me is unreasonable:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32160095

To me, I am interested in notable, reviewable progress in understanding the topic — not chatting about it around an internet campfire.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#135

Post by hoodwink »

gnicholas wrote: post #31
hoodwink wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i got that feedback a lot after initially posting the experiment: > Since posting this experiment, I've received a lot of side comments along the lines of, "Well, of course I don't expect Bionic Reading to work for most people, but for [my subpopulation], it really works." If that were the case, we might expect to see disproportionate benefits for those participants who read faster with Bionic Reading than for those…

It would be interesting to ask people after the test: Have you been diagnosed with, or do you believe you have, dyslexia, ADHD, visual impairment, or other reading challenges? It would also be interesting to ask people if they felt it was easier to read with the new tech or the old way. Speed is one metric, but subjective impressions of reading ease are also relevant.

we were testing bionic reading’s claim. they make no claims to only working when reading challenges are present.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#136

Post by tablespoon »

chmod775 wrote: post #130
tablespoon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "no impact" was overstating it a little bit, but I think the point still stands. They often have far less impact when they're not reinforced by the right story or example, but that story or example won't be the same for everyone.

How could an author who knows nothing about you possibly be better than yourself at construing an example applicable to you? It then seems to me these kinds of books must be made for people who want others to think for them. So maybe all these books should say is: "Think. Your problem is a lack of aforementioned activity. If you need some food for thought here's a list of ten pithy principles. Flip to page two for an…

> How could an author who knows nothing about you possibly be better than yourself at construing an example applicable to you?

He can't. The author can't predict which story or example will connect with you, so he includes many that connected with someone, with the hope that some fraction will connect with any given person. That's why people complain about "fluff": they're annoyed but the stuff that doesn't connect with them, but they haven't thought about it beyond their own personal experience. Maybe they could redact the book down to 10 pages, but so can everyone else, and all the redactions would be different.

> It then seems to me these kinds of books must be made for people who want others to think for them.

You're being uncharitable and kind of conceited. Would you say Calculus textbooks are for people who want others to think for them? Do Real Men take a short primer on mathematical logic and the axioms of ZFC set theory, and go derive Calculus for themselves?

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#137

Post by chmod775 »

tablespoon wrote: post #136
chmod775 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could an author who knows nothing about you possibly be better than yourself at construing an example applicable to you? It then seems to me these kinds of books must be made for people who want others to think for them. So maybe all these books should say is: "Think. Your problem is a lack of aforementioned activity. If you need some food for thought here's a list of ten pithy principles. Flip to page two for an…

> How could an author who knows nothing about you possibly be better than yourself at construing an example applicable to you? He can't. The author can't predict which story or example will connect with you , so he includes many that connected with someone , with the hope that some fraction will connect with any given person. That's why people complain about "fluff": they're annoyed but the stuff that doesn't connect…

> they're annoyed but the stuff that doesn't connect with them, but they haven't thought about it beyond their own personal experience.

Emphasis mine.

> Would you say Calculus textbooks are for people who want others to think for them? Do Real Men take a short primer on mathematical logic and the axioms of ZFC set theory, and go derive Calculus for themselves?

My response was argumentum ad absurdum, so I gain nothing from defending the position, but still:

Walter Rudin's Principles Of Mathematical Analysis would be a terrible book if it tried to relate the matter's purpose at every step. Nobody expects a mathematical textbook to do that.

In fact Principles Of Mathematical Analysis is a great book for being extremely concise and containing just what is necessary for a reasonably intelligent reader to understand the material.

To be more clear, I don't believe that your explanation could possibly be a good reason for these stories being included in a self help book, but without precluding they may serve another purpose.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#138

Post by tablespoon »

chmod775 wrote: post #137
tablespoon wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How could an author who knows nothing about you possibly be better than yourself at construing an example applicable to you? He can't. The author can't predict which story or example will connect with you , so he includes many that connected with someone , with the hope that some fraction will connect with any given person. That's why people complain about "fluff": they're annoyed but the stuff that doesn't connect…

> they're annoyed but the stuff that doesn't connect with them, but they haven't thought about it beyond their own personal experience. Emphasis mine. > Would you say Calculus textbooks are for people who want others to think for them? Do Real Men take a short primer on mathematical logic and the axioms of ZFC set theory, and go derive Calculus for themselves? My response was argumentum ad absurdum, so I gain nothing…

> ...just what is necessary for a reasonably intelligent reader to understand the material.

What about readers who aren't "reasonably intelligent" (which often means "quite a bit more intelligent than the typical person")?

> To be more clear, I don't believe that your explanation could possibly be a good reason for these stories being included in a self help book, but without precluding they may serve another purpose.

What's the reason for your emphasis there? Are you reading the "self" part too literally or idiosyncratically? IIRC, the "self" just means the book is meant to help the reader with his problem without personal guidance from some professional. It doesn't mean the reader is supposed to figure it out on his own.

As I've gotten older, I've gotten more wary of certain biases that engineer-types often tend to indulge in. One of them is along the lines of "I'm so smart, I think I can figure it out on my own, therefore everything I think I don't need is unnecessary." Another is temptation to confirm one's intelligence by seeing the "real" reason as some cynical ploy that works on lesser people.

Also, I'm not saying every self-help book is good, or that it never happens that examples are truly just padding. It's just that there's good, non-cynical reasons to not to reduce everything down to some pithy list of axioms, and I know for a fact that at least one well-regarded one is structured that way, and it was a bit of a slog because of all the examples and stuff that didn't connect with my particular circumstance (but there's no way for someone I never met writing a couple years before my birth to tailor anything to me).

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#139

Post by solarmist »

chmod775 wrote: post #130
tablespoon wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe "no impact" was overstating it a little bit, but I think the point still stands. They often have far less impact when they're not reinforced by the right story or example, but that story or example won't be the same for everyone.

How could an author who knows nothing about you possibly be better than yourself at construing an example applicable to you? It then seems to me these kinds of books must be made for people who want others to think for them. So maybe all these books should say is: "Think. Your problem is a lack of aforementioned activity. If you need some food for thought here's a list of ten pithy principles. Flip to page two for an…

People can’t think deeply about everything they do.

Examples are shortcuts find relevance. Once I’ve decided a topic is relevant to me then I think deeply about it.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#140

Post by kbelder »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #43
O__________O wrote: post #23

Here’s what appears to be an independent review of Spritz: https://www.tsw.it/wp-content/uploads/Rapid-serial-visual-pr... One of the issues with tests like these is that the companies sponsor the research and they are one-off vs long exposure studies; that is as with most interfaces with high-throughput, takes time for the mind to adjust. My guess that given human speech appears to have a universal transmission rate…

> human speech appears to have a universal transmission rate of around 39-bits per second This is unacceptable, we need a modern language that packs information tighter!

I wonder if the bottleneck is in speaking or listening.
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