[thenerdhead]

There's no shortcuts to anything in life. Thinking so is a fool's errand.

You get better at reading by reading and deliberately practicing it. Speed reading is a completely different skill than comprehension. Comprehension is a completely different skill than entertaining yourself. The fundamentals aren't going anywhere. They'll be here when you realize speedreading, bionic reading, and summaries are just distractions.

[bpodgursky]

This is trivially disprovable; it's easy to think of longcuts, ways to accomplish or learn something inefficiently.

There would be no difference between a great teacher and a terrible teacher otherwise. Or a great coach and a terrible coach.

[runevault]

The entire software industry is based on creating new efficiencies... On top of all the stuff you said I just... don't see how anyone could believe that.

[m463]

I've always thought research papers were a longcut to comprehension.

I don't know if this is because the subject matter is novel, or that the authors are better at math and science than writing.

I wonder if there could be a standard for grading a research paper on readability to raise the status quo.

[cedilla]

Unfortunately, readability is at odds with other, more important goals of the authors, like shoe-horning in references to all important papers in the field, especially if they're likely to be written by reviewers.

Also, a lot of work must be shown to demonstrate completeness and rigorousness, and that doesn't help comprehension either.

The trick is to read only the segments of the paper that are actually worth reading, which is often only the abstract, conclusion and maybe implementation details.

[drooby]

I use text to speech… it absolutely is a short cut and without and doubt it improves my reading comprehension, stamina, and speed..

I can even look away from the screen and still follow along.

It has changed my life and introduced me to so much more information that I would have otherwise not attained with manual reading.

Eye scanning and mental vocalization are really tiring on my brain. Text to speech has solved both of these problems.

I think there’s something about adding a new dimension (auditory) that also helps with memorizing and comprehension. It adds more data points for my Bayesian brain to use and associate with.

[NoGravitas]

It's the opposite for me. I can't listen to things at anything like my comfortable reading speed. The move of so much internet content from text to video has been a disaster for me.

[selfhifive]

Depends on your style of synthesis I think. I need to think and establish axioms in my head after every two paragraphs so I pause a lot. Going over something again on TTS puts me to sleep.

[painted-now]

For me, listening to audiobooks was a game changer. I guess TTS is even better because you can listen to pretty much everything.

Any app/software you can recommend?

[drooby]

I use NaturalReader paid subscription with high quality TTS voices for web browsing and the free iOS version of Voice Dream reader for ebooks and mobile browsing.

[300bps]

My retention from listening to text is a tiny fraction of my retention from seeing written words and numbers.

[drooby]

I follow along with written words and listen at the same time. The apps I use automatically scroll the page and keep the current text in focus.

[Oblitzitate]

What apps are you using?

[croes]

Pretty much all human inventions are short cuts.

Wheels, cars, computer etc.

[Barrin92]

the point of reading is to expand your mind, have new experiences, and have new thoughts. Shortcutting that is probably not what you want to do. In fact that applies also to computers and cars. James P. Carse:

"Morever, machinery is veiling. It is a way of hiding our inaction from ourselves under what appear to be actions of great effectiveness. We persuade ourselves that, comfortably seated behind the wheels of our autos, shielded from every unpleasant change of weather, and raising or lowering our foot an inch or two, we have actually traveled somewhere.[...] Therefore, the importance of reducing time in travel: by arriving as quickly as possible we need not feel as though we had left at all, that neither space nor time can affect us—as though they belong to us, and not we to them. We do not go somewhere in a car, but arrive somewhere in a car. Automobiles do not make travel possible, but make it possible for us to move locations without traveling. Such movement is but a change of scenes. If effective, the machinery will see to it that we remain untouched by the elements, by other travelers, by those whose towns or lives we are traveling through. We can see without being seen, move without being touched."

the platonic ideal of speedreading: spend 1 minute on each book, read 10k books per year. The shallower the better, complications might negatively impact reading speed.