it's WILD how much more I learn from a recorded lecture than a live one
- watch at 2x speed
- pause and think
- read the book and try problems as I go
- stop if i'm too tired, do it later
can cram tons of learning into 90 mins, vs. almost 0 retention with in person
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i simply do not understand the point of trying to transmit difficult material in a giant block of uninterrupted linear speech with no random access
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As I tried to read this article, I kept wondering if it’s intentionally ironic due to its almost book-like length.
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Only half-serious, but I'm struck. Many people have made this same comment about my essay. It's funny… this is a short essay—4,500 words! A non-fiction book is generally 50k-75k words. I think this illustrates how unpleasant digital reading is: short articles "feel" 10x as long!
Seems like style of the material may be a key variable? I find lectures and essays fine for certain kinds of ideas, just not detailed technical content
I think I got to high comprehension after a quick first read of Books Don't Work, very different for Quantum Country
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Perhaps it's that technical content is harder to compress? The tiny details matter, it's hard for a vague half-understanding to hold any value
Whereas for fuzzier discussions (like this one about media) maybe vague understanding from quick skimming is more useful?
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Or it could be about expectation and conditioning. Everyone already expects books to be long. This article is a lot longer than most articles.