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Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

sciencemag.org

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Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#81

Post by 40acres »

knzhou wrote: post #49
ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…

In my experience the best books routinely stop me dead in my tracks. I just started Invisible Man and every paragraph is littered with really deep themes, I can normally finish a 500 page book in a few days (a majority of my reading is done during my commute) but this will definitely be a slow burn.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#82

Post by jacobolus »

knzhou wrote: post #49
ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…

People tend to enjoy genre fiction because it is full of predictable filler. Not all entertainment has to be surprising or life changing.

Just spending time in the moment with an enjoyable story is not wasting it.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#83

Post by saagarjha »

knzhou wrote: post #49
ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…

> I can read fast, and I typically go through fluffy NYT bestseller nonfiction at 600 WPM. But when I do this I constantly have a sneaking suspicion that I'm just wasting my time. When I read a good book full of new ideas, I barely go at 150 WPM, but the time always feels well-spent.

I do the same, but with Hacker News comments :)

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#84

Post by v64 »

daenz wrote: post #37
emilga wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a blind programmer using Visual Studio with a ridiculously fast TTS: https://youtu.be/94swlF55tVc

This makes me emotional.

Same. It really makes you realize what we take for granted as sighted developers. I can't imagine what the learning curve was like for him, as he lost his sight at age 7, long before many of these accessibility technologies existed. [1]

[1] https://news.microsoft.com/apac/features/saqib-shaikh-on-tec...

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#85

Post by saagarjha »

liability wrote: post #72
the_af wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the sibling comment mentioned, it seems verbosity hinders reading comprehension rather than writing. Many IDEs understand this and hide some of the boilerplate. This raises the question: if the IDE autocompletes the boilerplate for you, and also hides it, why is it needed in the first place?

Consider the verbosity of XML compared to s-expressions. ... vs (html ...) The latter can trivially be used to output the former. The conclusion is obvious; some of these formats are objectively more verbose that others while having equivalent expressive power.

Interestingly, depending on the context I find one or the other to be more readable. XML is great when you're got a lot of content, because it provides additional context of where you are in the closing tag, but it's not as great when you don't have a lot of data since the closing tag is just visual clutter.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#86

Post by knzhou »

saagarjha wrote: post #83
knzhou wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…

> I can read fast, and I typically go through fluffy NYT bestseller nonfiction at 600 WPM. But when I do this I constantly have a sneaking suspicion that I'm just wasting my time. When I read a good book full of new ideas, I barely go at 150 WPM, but the time always feels well-spent. I do the same, but with Hacker News comments :)

Hey, I never said my comment was a novel insight! I'm here to waste time too. ;-)

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#87

Post by [deleted] »

knzhou wrote: post #49
ilamont wrote: post #15

But, he says, instead of being limited by how quickly we can process information by listening, we’re likely limited by how quickly we can gather our thoughts. That’s because, he says, the average person can listen to audio recordings sped up to about 120%—and still have no problems with comprehension. Some years ago I worked on an accessibility project for an app and website designed for people with disabilities. One…

I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…

[deleted]

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#88

Post by mattr47 »

In my initial Army job I had to learn how to copy Morse code. I got up to a respectable 23 groups per minute (a group is 5 characters). If I remember right, beyond about 13-15 GPM, once the code stopped transmitting I would still write for another 20 seconds or so. It was not something I consciously did, it just backed up in my brain.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#89

Post by dredmorbius »

gonehome wrote: post #30
dual_basis wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can watch YouTube content at 3x without issue. I did this without much intentional effort - I simply downloaded an extension which allows me to speed up the video in increments of 0.1x using a keyboard shortcut. Whenever it felt slow I would speed it up, and whenever it felt too fast I would slow it down. Without paying much attention to the actual numbers I had reached over 3x within a month or so.

Is there a trick to get it above 2x (which is the cap in the UI). It'd be nice when watching videos of congress.

Streaming and download/playback tools can offer greater flexibility. I typically use mpv, though other options are mps-youtube, or for download + playback, youtube-dl and xine, mplayer, mpv, mps, or VLC.

I find I can typically listen at 1.25 - 1.75 readily. Exceptionally poor content I'll bump to 2x. I don't generally go much above that unless I'm fast-forward scanning video for specific content.

Re: Human speech may have a universal transmission rate: 39 bits per second

#90

Post by knzhou »

liability wrote: post #63
knzhou wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've known a lot of people that push podcasts, videos, and audiobooks to extreme speed. I knew a guy who'd turn video speed up to 8x so he could binge watch a season of generic anime in an hour flat. I knew a girl who'd get through paperback romance novels by scanning each page diagonally, in 10 seconds each. And here in this thread we have a lot of people bragging along the same lines. I just don't get the point. If…

> . If you can process content much faster than it was meant to be played, it doesn't mean you're learning much faster than you could, it means the novel information density is low. I 'read' your comment using TTS at 3x. What does that say about the information density of your comment? (Little to nothing. TTS at that speed is still marginally slower that I normally read with my eyes. Human speech is generally much sl…

That's a good point, 3x speaking speed is reading speed, so there's nothing unusual about using it on comments largely intended to be read. That makes perfect sense.

What doesn't make sense to me is consuming things that have a _set_ speed, such as video/TV or lectures, at a dramatically faster speed.

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