[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

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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.

[btilly]

This technique will work for most text, but can be deliberately hacked in a bad way. I discovered this about 20 years ago from a cleverly written attack post on Perlmonks. Every paragraph started with a positive sentence whose tone slid into negative by the end of the paragraph. And then to positive for the next paragraph.

I was horrified at how an attack piece had so many positive votes, and asked people why they were voting for it. It turns out that a lot (probably most) had just skimmed it, felt good, voted for it, and moved on. They literally hadn't seen the nasty things said about a variety of people.

[ryzvonusef]

That's why I specified story books instead of online articles, because with story books, you build a rapport with the author and you have kinda narrowed down the options they will take, on a meta level.

But good point on hacking people's tendency to glide, I shall keep that in mind.

[quasarj]

Jeeze that is fast. More than twice the average reading speed. I wonder if bionic reading helps more for "speed readers"? Your results surely suggest it.

Also - It must be so painful for you to type, or heck even speak!

[ryzvonusef]

I dunno if I'm a "speed" reader, or just a fast glosser.

Also, I am not quite sure if I really understood the text... or used my knowledge of the views of the "tech" community, and just "guessed" which of the three mcq options paul graham probably meant?

It could be I just bullshitted my way into correct answers...Honestly, after a night's sleep, I don't recall much of what was said in those articles, so how much did I actually retain?

That said, I do find it painful to watch any content on less than 2x speed, but that maybe because I'm probably on the spectrum.... Things get complicated.