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
Conversation
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
3
3
43
3
1
21
As I tried to read this article, I kept wondering if it’s intentionally ironic due to its almost book-like length.
1
1
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!
2
7
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
1
1
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?
1
Yes, I find it useful to think about Kolmogorov complexity for such things. Much greater entropy-per-word in something like QC than in an informal essay like mine.
Another observation is that “compelling” “engaging” content online is often broken up by images and visuals (lol sometimes ads).
Straight text I enjoy reading more in a page by page mechanism like Kindle...over scrolling and scrolling. Medium is the message blah blah
1
Hmm. Maybe lower entropy for informal ideas makes it tempting to skip the work of learning?
Like, yes, active reading will help understand Gun Germs and Steel better, but a casual read still yields *something*
Whereas for math textbook, obvious that casual read yields nothing
4