So did you have anything to say about the article?
It seemed wrong. It took the observation that most people read at about the same speed, stretched it way too far, and treated it as a given rather than as something to improve on. Then juxtaposed a probably-real example (JFK reading at 1200wpm) with an obviously-fake one (a person who claimed to read 17k wpm), in order to discredit the real example. Then it pulled a definition trick, redefining “reading quickly” as “skimming”, and failing to notice that the distinction between reading and skimming is whether or not you skip things.
The more subtle mistake was that it only acknowledged speed-reading software as a training method, rather than as a tool to use for ordinary reading. I don’t blame the author for that, since at the time it was written the only tools available were too impractical to use all the time. But fixing that is the whole point of Textcelerator.
But I’m wary of using a tool that might hurt comprehension, which seems harder to measure. … If you want to optimize your reading, making spaced repetition cards seems like the obvious thing. … Shouldn’t we be optimizing for facts/habits/models acquired instead of words consumed?
Yes, one hour of studying a topic won’t give as deep an understanding as two hours of studying that topic, no matter what reading techniques you use; and what we really care about is understanding gained. The thing is, time is usually a limiting factor, and if you’re reading faster, then you can use the extra time to read something twice, or read it and reflect, or read it and make flashcards, or read it and also read some related material. Increasing speed by 2x (and that is the sort of speedup we’re talking about) is not as good as spending twice as much time reading, but it’s worth a hell of a lot.
My own experience—and yes, this is hard to measure and therefore somewhat subjective—is that Textcelerator doesn’t significantly reduce my comprehension until I get over 900wpm, but that when reading unaided, if I try to read that fast it degenerates into skimming and I retain very little.
It seemed wrong. It took the observation that most people read at about the same speed, stretched it way too far, and treated it as a given rather than as something to improve on. Then juxtaposed a probably-real example (JFK reading at 1200wpm) with an obviously-fake one (a person who claimed to read 17k wpm), in order to discredit the real example. Then it pulled a definition trick, redefining “reading quickly” as “skimming”, and failing to notice that the distinction between reading and skimming is whether or not you skip things.
The more subtle mistake was that it only acknowledged speed-reading software as a training method, rather than as a tool to use for ordinary reading. I don’t blame the author for that, since at the time it was written the only tools available were too impractical to use all the time. But fixing that is the whole point of Textcelerator.
Yes, one hour of studying a topic won’t give as deep an understanding as two hours of studying that topic, no matter what reading techniques you use; and what we really care about is understanding gained. The thing is, time is usually a limiting factor, and if you’re reading faster, then you can use the extra time to read something twice, or read it and reflect, or read it and make flashcards, or read it and also read some related material. Increasing speed by 2x (and that is the sort of speedup we’re talking about) is not as good as spending twice as much time reading, but it’s worth a hell of a lot.
My own experience—and yes, this is hard to measure and therefore somewhat subjective—is that Textcelerator doesn’t significantly reduce my comprehension until I get over 900wpm, but that when reading unaided, if I try to read that fast it degenerates into skimming and I retain very little.