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An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

blog.readwise.io

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Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#31

Post by ziddoap »

btilly wrote: post #17
saurik wrote: post #10

I find it really difficult and annoying -- and thereby slow -- to read with these "fixation" points as that's just not how I feel eyes work... I want my eyes to scan across the text rather than ratcheting from one word to the next word, which is both slow and exhausting. The words and "fixation" is thereby just a massive distraction. Hell: if I really really need to read quickly I try to do this thing where I scan my…

Personal anecdote. When I try to read fast, I notice fixation points as my eyes skip across the text. But it will be whole chunks of words. And anything that tries to draw my attention to one letter as opposed to another, will slow me down. Note that my natural reading speed is ~950 wpm, so I tend to ignore these fads. I read fast enough already. The main barrier to reading faster is that it gets exhausting having my…

Note that my natural reading speed is ~950 wpm, so I tend to ignore these fads.

Were you just born with 4-5x the average reading speed? Or did you employ some other 'fads'? This seems pretty astonishing. Particularly in light of the following sentence on the "Speed Reading" entry on Wikipedia:

>Cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene says that claims of reading up to 1,000 words per minute "must be viewed with skepticism"

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#32

Post by malshe »

karaterobot wrote: post #26

In my experience, more people need to work on reading comprehension than reading speed. Comprehension is what actually matters, and is what seems to be in short supply. If Bionic Reading promised increased reading speed with no loss of comprehension, and provided it, all it would mean is that people would misunderstand things at a faster rate.

I agree 100%. I think the fundamental flaw in seeking methods to speed read is the inherent assumption that there is an equal tradeoff between higher speed and lower comprehension. Alas, bad comprehension is probably many times more harmful than lower reading speed. So the tradeoff is highly imbalanced due to the highly dissimilar importance weights attached to comprehension and speed.

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#33

Post by ryzvonusef »

https://speed.readwise.io

   Your results

    Typeface         Bionic Reading     Literata

    Article 1        591 WPM            352 WPM
    Article 2        657 WPM            457 WPM
    Average Speed    624 WPM            405 WPM

    You read 43% faster with Bionic Reading
Guess gotta give this a try for storybooks...

maybe some enterprising and bored HN nerd can make a Calibre plugin that converts regular epubs to bionic reading enabled epub files

----

but the truth is, for the aforementioned storybooks, often I just LOOK at a whole paragraph or even the whole page and just pick out the relevant word of two in a story.

Unlike actual educational content, where the exact text matters, in fiction, after having developed a hobby to read for entertainment for so long and having gotten used to so many tropes, I just often just breeze through and look for the word that confirms which direction the author is taking that paragraph in, and often just glide over the paragraph and go to the next one.

It's like learning how to drive, I guess. At some point you are not supposed to look at every thing, you just take the overall picture and just go.

Not sure what is achieved by making every road sign and billboard flashing neon is supposed to achieve in such a scenario. Not all words are worthy of equal attention, most are meant to be glossed over.

____

but for actual educational purposes, the best test IMHO is to use it for the boring but important texts, like training manuals. See if it actually helps people learn and retain more import information about the new tool or procedure they are learning about.

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#34

Post by gcheong »

kminehart wrote: post #6

Linked at the end of the article is the short (15 minutes maybe) self-test: https://speed.readwise.io/ . Curious what results people here got. I got 23% faster with BR but I couldn't tell if I was just trying harder.

12% faster with Literata.
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