33 ms·

Watching video twice at 2x can benefit learning better than once at normal speed

330 points by jvican 5y ago

ajuc 5y ago
I just wish people still wrote articles instead of making everything a video. You can read at whatever speed you need, you can ctrl+F, it's great.
synthc 5y ago
Completely off topic: i was watching an interview with Ozzy Osborne on youtube, and one of the comment said "if you watch it at 2x speed it sounds like a normal conversation", and it did!
pyreal 5y ago
I come from an English-speaking region where everyone speaks very fast. I watch most instructional videos at 1.5x to 2x just so I don't lose focus from enduring slow-talking "mainlanders". ;)
shinycode 5y ago
I noticed it as well. With real focus I’m learning the same way. And if the speaker is speaking slowly it’s even better. If the speaker has a foreign accent hard to understand speeding up can be harder if not listening in my main language.
OJFord 5y ago
Isn't this a straightforward corollary of 'more than 50% information can be gleaned when watching at 2x speed'?
- bopbeepboop 5y ago
- yccs27 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Watching a second time will usually give you less new information than the first time (obviously if you already know more than 50%, there is less to learn)
  - OJFord 5y ago
    But revisiting content is good and helps learning. So what I meant was that as long as you're not purely re-watching to catch what you missed the first time due to speed, any overlap is beneficial.
- jonsen 5y ago
  I'll buy that, if you mean 'more than 50% of the information, that can be gleaned when watching at 1x speed, can be gleaned when watching at 2x speed'.
commoner 5y ago
The most important sentence in the article: > The timing mattered, though: only those who’d watched the 2x video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than right after the first viewing, got this advantage.
- smiley1437 5y ago
  Sounds a lot like early spaced repetition effects (supermemo/anki) but without the extended repetitions?
  - laserlight 5y ago
    More like cramming before the exam in this case. Though, one can use rewatching as a spaced repetition session. The key would be to actively try to remember the narrative of the lecture. Otherwise, passive rewatching wouldn't help as much.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- vmception 5y ago
  What about watching a video at 1x twice
- unknownus3r 5y ago
  Another thing: what were the scores? If the 2x watchers got a 70 instead of a 50 does that really help? In college I was trying to get As not Cs
- rsanek 5y ago
  Given this huge caveat, the title of the article is at best extremely deceiving. It's bonkers to me that this was the comparison they chose (watched at 1x speed -> 1 week delay -> test) vs (watched at 2x speed -> 1 week delay -> watched 2x speed -> test). Full description of this is found on page 7 at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356194270_Learning_in_Double_Time_The_Effect_of_Lecture_Video_Speed_on_Immediate_and_Delayed_Comprehension https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356194270_Learning_...
jasode 5y ago
I'm guessing the submission might be in response to the recent "Against 3x" essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621642 Another variation on 2x is to listen to 2 different people at 2x on the same topic can convey concepts better than listening to only 1 at 1x. Different speakers use different vocabulary, different analogies, etc. As for listening to the same presentation twice at 2x, one reason it works better is that most narratives or lectures do not provide a "mental map" or "scaffolding" to hang all the sentences on. So the 1st pass feels like it's a bit random and incoherent but it lets listeners mentally build an outline structure in their head, and then the 2nd pass makes it easier to link the sentences to that structure and it feels more coherent. If speakers did a better job of explicitly providing that outline structure and constantly referring back to it during the narration so listeners don't get lost, the 2nd pass wouldn't be as necessary.
gsich 5y ago
No shit, with Youtube favoring longer videos content creators need to pan out the running time.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  At one time there was an incitation to make 10 minutes long videos but I don't think it is the case anymore. And while some videos are padded out as an attempt to increase watch time, most of the successful channels don't do it. For example, Lock Picking Lawyer is particularly successful for the niche topic it covers, and the author credit its short and to the point videos as a contributing factor. Speaking slowly is the norm in education in general. My parents are both teachers, I am not but I received basic training in education too, and "speak slowly" is always among the top advice. Maybe we need to review the rules for video you can control at will.
judahmeek 5y ago
If you really want to remember tips from a video, take notes.
- newswasboring 5y ago
  Agreed, the experiment had an odd setup. > They were told to watch the videos in full screen mode and not to pause them or take any notes.
  - hhmc 5y ago
    It sounds like the appropriate setup for the effect they were actually investigating.
    - newswasboring 5y ago
      If they are investigating retention then yes, but studying is more than that, right? You may recall a bunch of facts but have no understanding of what is happening.
tluyben2 5y ago
I would rather just read instead of wasting time watching a video. I take in far more, can reread stuff without messing around with sliders. I can read at my own speed. Is there a service yet which turns a video from YouTube or whatever into a ppt? In a smart way ofcourse (based on amount of change of the particular frames). Would pay for that.
- thathndude 5y ago
  I feel like one of those Reddit or Twitter bots, but: the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as you can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words per minute. I remember reading this my first day in a public speaking class in college. Just one of those factoids that’s stuck with me, and why I’ve always preferred reading articles versus seeking videos. Of course, speed of comprehension is just one consideration. I’m mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks resonate with visual/spoken word more than written. But this is why I love HN. It’s almost always a link to a written article, and I can pop open comments (which I often do first) for more written text on the subject.
  - saurik 5y ago
    I can only speed read for a couple hours at best, as staring so close at something and carefully moving my eyes so quickly is extremely exhausting. I can read at slow speeds for a lot longer, but I am pretty sure it is still horrible for my eyes :(. Either way, it is mentally taxing, as I have to convince my brain to not start talking to itself and begin ignoring the visual input. In contrast, I can spend an entire day listening to people; and, while I am listening, I can be looking into the distance, the way human eyes are supposed to mostly be used. I can walk around, cook and eat food, or even shower, all while listening to people talk. I would argue listening to other people is a much more "human" activity than staring at symbols (despite how much I do this for my passion: software development). I also have no clue where you got those numbers from: the iPad software I have finally found to read PDFs to me has me configure it in words per minute, and I find it reasonable to understand 400 words per minute for long stretches. I bet I could go faster (this software supports 500), but it would likely be mentally taxing. To put in context how preposterous 150 words per minute is, the average person supposedly speaks at 100-130 words per minute according to some random source I just found (which feels right as I took years of linguistics and was going to guess 110-120), and we know people routinely listen to videos at 2x (and so are hitting 200-260). (I think it is also worth noting that actual speed reading is a skill most people do not have. I actually think it quite likely that your average person can read only as fast as they can speak, as I bet that people who are not really really good at reading are subvocalizing. I feel like a lot of people don't consider this when saying everyone should read all the time.)
nickjj 5y ago
There's another benefit of watching something at 2x too which wasn't mentioned which is it can put you into a more receptive mental state. I don't know if anyone else is like this but inefficiencies tend to bug me. This is purely personal preference but folks who talk slow or use a lot of filler words can ruin a video for me to the point where I'm focusing on that instead of the material. I tend to listen to everything at 2x (instructional videos, podcasts, etc.) and I don't really see any downsides even if it's only watched once. If it's something deep or you're following along with code then you'll be pausing the video no matter what speed you listen to it to apply what you're watching. When you factor all of that together you can IMO absorb things just as well as 1x.
- medstrom 5y ago
  Exactly! It's possible you and I have ADHD, but it's worth giving out this tip. Watching at a sped up rate lets you filter out the crap and find the "real" content. In a simple world you'd just slow it back down to 1x when you get to this point, and you wouldn't need 2x, you could just skip forwards 10 seconds at a time like most people until you find it. Unfortunately there tends to be fillers throughout the video, even inside of the sentences people speak. The real lifehack is to keep the high speed and then pause when the video said something important, so you can digest what you just heard, and resume - rinse and repeat. A variant solution I prefer is to always be regulating the speed according to the load on your attention span. Videos change so much in info density from one minute to the next, it's nothing short of strange to watch at one set speed throughout. I think the fact it's so common to "give up" and "accept" a given video speed is an artifact of the fact that people have never had the experience of letting their subconscious finely control the speed with muscle-memory. Doing it keeps your attention at 100% usage all the time. Low info density, high speed. High info density, low speed. Use a browser addon that gives you hotkey control over the speed, or use ff2mpv to exploit mpv's native speed controls.
  - dougmwne 5y ago
    I have basically the same approach. I don't absorb information that well from video because of the fixed pacing. I would much rather read which lets me speed up and slow down automatically. When I need to absorb a video, I find speed controls to be incredibly useful. For low density information, I set the speed as high as I can and still understand the speaker. This is like skimming a text. If the speaker gets to something high density, I will slow down or even listen to the section multiple times. This is like reading slowly for maximum understanding. I am honestly a bit frustrated with how much information is getting locked up in videos as I find them a pretty poor format in comparison to text annotated with diagrams.
nathias 5y ago
It's epistemically toxic to promote video as a learning tool. Videos are great for entertainment, entertainment can boraden your horizons, but it isn't a good tool for learning anything except when learning a skill that requires mimicking body movements.
- bmicraft 5y ago
  Why do you think that?
  - nathias 5y ago
    It's removing critical thought from the world, bit by bit. People are (self)decieved that they are learning while they are merely having a very weak/superficial exposure to a domain of knowledge and they stick with that because it gets them the great feeling of knowledge without knowledge itself.
- klibertp 5y ago
  Well, there are people who would refuse to learn if not for the videos. What then? Are we going to sit in an increasingly sparsely-populated ivory tower and complain how nobody wants to learn, or are we going to try capturing the attention of such people in any way that works? To be honest, I agree with you. I like to read. I learn better when I read. Text is much more convenient in so many ways that I honestly don't understand why would anyone opt for a video instead. But the reality is that the average attention span and the kinds of concentration people are capable of changes with time, and recently started changing a lot in relatively short amounts of time (1 generation). That's reality, and we have to learn to cope with it - even if it's painful - or we won't be able to teach anyone anything!
  - nathias 5y ago
    I agree, it can be a great hook, but we can have nouance, not everything has to be so dumb, right? We can teach people that look sure you can have this feeling of learning, but it can be very misleading people are watching edutainment and think they are learning which is probably even worse than if they were against learning in the first place. Edutainment is great fun for me at least, but I see so many people think they know something because they have been exposed by content on youtube and live in this self-deception that it's just sad.
spodek 5y ago
> Watching lecture videos is now a major part of many students’ university experience. This sentence is the most important, describing a failure in education. Once I learned to teach through project-based learning, I'm never going back, largely because of student feedback, that they learn more and are more engaged. I'm not saying we don't learn from lecture at all, but a lot less relative to other ways. Maybe some subjects or professors work with lecturing, but not subjects that I studied in college.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
I’m a bit puzzled by the recurring apparition of articles about learning faster on HN. I don’t think I have suffered from the speed at which material covers a subject since I left school. Finding interesting material, properly structured with a good balance of introductory and in depth coverage and giving solid insight into a topic remains challenging — it already was when I was a student to be fair. Good teaching ressources are the exception rather than the norm. Finding the time to properly conceptualise and deeply think about what I’m trying to learn has been challenging. But the speed at which I can consume teaching material is not something I remember being bothered by this past decade. Thinking about it more often than not I wish I could actually go slower rather than faster. I’m curious about how the experience of others commenters differ here as it’s obviously a topic of interest to some in this community.
- ramraj07 5y ago
  After some level of learning the eloquence of the author (barring some minimum standards) is probably not as material, it’s more about the content itself. Talking about graduate level courses, presumably ones not too math heavy, I can see this working. Or for lectures and seminars on research by professors (though one rarely is trying to remember every detail).
- kristaps 5y ago
  Right up there with other techie superstitions such as "editor x makes me a better programmer, because typing faster".
  - strken 5y ago
    When I read this I immediately thought "typing faster makes me a less annoyed programmer, and better would be a happy accident", then realised it was the same for speeding up or pausing audio. Having control over the speed at which ideas are launched at me is more about not getting distracted or frustrated than learning faster.
    - aspaceman 5y ago
vmception 5y ago
I listen at 2.5x and fast forward a lot with the arrow keys Downsides: Videos with background music for something instructional is bad. Stick to just talking. Even the intros that many people make are unnecessary. People that actually talk at a good faster speed and still have a long video are now the worst.
unknownus3r 5y ago
On real estate and the Roman Empire. If i listened to a math or cs lecture at 1.5-2x id be finished
rahimnathwani 5y ago
"The researchers do also add a few caveats. While 2x viewing was fine for learning about the material in their studies — real estate appraisals and the Roman Empire — perhaps it might not work for more complex subject matter; again, only more research will tell."
guerrilla 5y ago
Funny, this is exactly what I've been doing lately and it did help a lot actually. I felt kind of guilty or stupid for not having figured it out earlier.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Is it due to repetition ?
  - m_st 5y ago
    Absolutely! There's a great online course out there called "Learning to learn". I recommend you to start with this one ASAP.
    - lampe3 5y ago
      Link?
      - jinto36 5y ago
        Going to guess that they're referencing this MOOC: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
  - guerrilla 5y ago
    Yes, the only reason I had it 2x was because the guy talked so slowly. I've started using that feature a lot for other lecturers though. It's easy to slow it down if you get to a sticky part.
m_st 5y ago
Great idea and I can relate to that. However, I still prefer text and reading. I'm always missing CTRL+F / CMD+F with video bookmarks.
agumonkey 5y ago
I wonder if khan academy noticed this too.
mindvirus 5y ago
I did the Georgia Tech OMSCS, and this was similar to my study strategy. I'd watch the lecture videos 4 times total: - Once at normal speed, without taking notes. - Once at 1.5 or 2x speed (depending on lecturer) to take notes. - Then I'd do a 2x speed run of all of the content before midterms and finals. I felt like it worked really well, and even years later I feel I've retained a ton of what I learned.
- deleted 5y ago
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binkHN 5y ago
I watch most of my videos at 2x. Well, 1.75x as 2x sometimes makes it too difficult to understand someone, particularly if that person has a strong accent. I find this allows me to digest more content in less time, especially if the person is a slow speaker. If I miss something or can't grok something well enough, I'll rewind or, well, slow it down a bit for that piece. What do I not watch at 2x? Movie trailers. I want to appreciate the theatrical efforts.
leobg 5y ago
Was it Donny Deutsch who said "I'd rather read 10 books 10 times than 100 books once"?
notriskfree 5y ago
Reading is a great deal faster than watching videos. Presumably doubling the speed must also make the presenters sound like chipmunks or voles or something. Perhaps just fiddling with the sound frequency also works.
- edanm 5y ago
  No, modern software makes doubling the speed work without giving people a higher voice.
beebeepka 5y ago
Quite a statement because there could be many factors at play. Type of content, density/complexity, the individual's abilities and mental state. It's certainly true for many popular tube channels, that's for sure. Then again, I sometimes try to follow physics lectures and those make my head spin beyond the intro. Same with biology, even computers. I am not able to absorb great amounts of new info at once. Could be my age, though
nottorp 5y ago
Of course if the same information were presented in written form you’d be able to go through it 5x as fast.
e0a74c 5y ago
Is the average person's short-term memory and/or attention span getting worse?
- dorchadas 5y ago
  I would wager 'yes' to both of those answers, but I would also somewhat attribute this to the Cult of Productivity, where people want to 'learn' more while spending less time on it. Which, depending on the subject (and I'd wager for most of them), isn't really how you learn at all, and you need to put thought and go slow in things. It's basically another symptom of our culture's ever-increasing rush for things going faster/easier.
  - e0a74c 5y ago
    I never looked into this Cult of Productivity but I wholeheartedly agree with your take on learning in general. Deep understanding of complex topics can't be rushed.
sureklix 5y ago
"The more actively you try to learn the better you learn" category conclusion. Any tools/frontends for ultimate youtube-based learning? Some things I miss: - highlight code screencasts (so I can copy and paste) - 3x (not all have 2x in youtube) - transcript extract and keyword search and jump to that location in the video => there must be someone doing this PS: Not trying to promote any project by asking this, genuinely curious.
axpy906 5y ago
The confounding factor in this study strikes me as reviewing before the test. That should improve results regardless of speed.
ahdh8f4hf4h8 5y ago
(Note: full study PDF is on researchgate) I would take this with a giant grain of salt: 1.) N is in the hundreds of students, all with similar backgrounds - likely a highly specific population. It may not generalize well. 2.) The videos were pretty short: 3-15 minutes long. 3.) The overall effect size is pretty miniscule - it would make little practical difference. 4.) The video topics were roman history and real estate appraisals. It will be interesting to see if this generalizes (to longer durations, more technical topics, more diverse population, etc.), but given the above I wouldn't change any personal habits based on this study.
- gr__or 5y ago
  I'm seeing d = .54 which afaik is considered a medium effect size?
- rocqua 5y ago
  Would be interesting if e.g. watching twice at 3x speed would yield the same result as just watching once.
- calf 5y ago
  My problem is that they're studying retention, not mastery. Like how would this work for math or science lecture at the senior or graduate level? In a more radical way I almost think playing a video in any nonlinear, noncontinuous fashion would have learning advantages because what matters isn't what you passively remember from the lecture but the amount of work you spend actively thinking about the material.
- silexia 5y ago
  5) Retention is vastly different than comprehension and integration with other knowledge. I often am thinking about the applications of knowledge during a lecture. I am currently listening to an economic history course and the last lecture I compared the foolish inefficiencies of 16th century mercantilism tarrifs to the new modern ones of the last few years.
cblconfederate 5y ago
Would be interesting to know the duration of the videos used. Spaced learning is known to work, but the timings used are important.
zarzavat 5y ago
I can vouch for this technique. Most native speakers can listen much faster than they can talk. Blind users often turn their screen reader speed up to 11. When you listen to a video at a fast speed, it allows you to fit more information into your working memory than you would have been able to .. if .. the .. speaker .. um ... was ... talking .. er ... like ... ... sorry what were we talking about? Oh yes listening at a fast wpm aids understanding of the content. Listen at a speed that is on the border of intelligibility and when you notice that something doesn't make sense, pause the video and go back and listen to it again immediately. This active engagement with the content is key instead of passively sitting back and watching a video. It doesn't work for all content. Some people just speak really fast and accurately. But for the average online lecture it works super well.
- 14 5y ago
  I forgot I turned up my Netflix speed to 1.25x and ended up watching many shows at that speed when I realized it it was very foreign to go back to normal speed and they sounded very slow and annoying. But 11x speed sounds difficult, though I believe what you say so probably just difficult for me.
paunthony 5y ago
I do think that this depends on how the information is presented and on you can take and digest information on the learning modules.
calibas 5y ago
From the actual study: >We also compared learning outcomes after watching videos once at 1x or twice at 2x speed. There was not an advantage to watching twice at 2x speed but if participants watched the video again at 2x speed immediately before the test, compared with watching once at 1x a week before the test, comprehension improved. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3899?af=R https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3899?af=R Seems like an odd comparison to make, watching a video one week before a test versus twice immediately before the test.
geocrasher 5y ago
If anybody can watch the following video at 2x and get anything out of it, you're a better man than I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_7Y33AoagY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_7Y33AoagY
Nux 5y ago
In other words, repetition is the mother of all learning. Turns out my father was right. ;-)
aj7 5y ago
The entire concept of listening to lectures at all is under fire. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-lecturing-me/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-lecturing-me...
nimbius 5y ago
Charlatans begone. 2x is a fashion statement and Ive been learning at a much faster rate for quite some time. The real answer to speed learning, is to watch the video at 200x, in a concrete room buried ten meters deep, with your nose pressed pensively to a 50" flatscreen surrounded by a frigid black ocean of PA speakers and amplifiers. Ive found that in five to seven hours, Ive fully comprehended the video as it "repeats twice", ad infinitum. now, the volume is critical as it is not to concede 110db at any time. this promotes learning at 200x the volume of the original video. At the end of your learning session it is important to remain unclothed, as this promotes the knowledge to absorb into your body fastest whilst the room leaves you in inscrutable darkness, to succor a distant memory of the learning materials interdisciplinary themes and objectives. Once youve climbed from the pit --and washed the learning jelly from yourself-- then you will have attained full and complete knowledge of how to properly tie a tie, or water a houseplant, or whatever you should need to learn. The pit will remain there for you should you ever dare to utter another question in wonderment.
- soperj 5y ago
  I've found that you can cut your time in half by using 2 computers and watching both videos @ 200x, simultaneously.
  - amelius 5y ago
    And save even more time by playing the videos while you sleep.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Personally I tile VMs[1] playing the video at 16x at full resolution scaled down to fit all 16 on the screen. It's really eye opening. 1. Obviously required for technical reasons - I assume everyone is fully aware of why.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  My only regret is that I have only one upvote to give
- 5y ago
varelse 5y ago
I find a lot of lecture videos have a cadence that is intentionally slowed down and nearly unwatchable at 1X speed. I've been watching at 2x for a decade or so. When I'm really adjusted to 2x because I'm watching an hour or two of lectures daily sometimes I can crank it to 3x and still take it in. But I think this is more a function of the cadence of the speaker than anything else.
Eliezer 5y ago
Okay but is that still true if you use batch normalization and does it beat SOTA
temporalparts 5y ago
I want to see the study: > Watching video twice at normal speed can benefit learning better than once at 0.5x speed You need reasonable baselines, otherwise this just says: "going through a material twice improves learning outcomes".
ivansavz 5y ago
Direct link to PDF of research article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.3899?casa_token=1tdA2eq474sAAAAA:Wrwr0KSIZViGm--eEzlRKp2Kdku-dP2d4UQuaPNCjoUratRBFyviM-CO-RfKWV7qWXaOy-pen46B4bw https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.3899?cas... (obtained from PDF link on scholar.google.com)
projectileboy 5y ago
2x is always a bit fast for my slow brain, but 1.5x works well for me.
Borrible 5y ago
No, no, no. What you really need is a Nuremberg Funnel.[0] There is rare b/w footage of Jeff's first steps becoming Bezos with this method back in the 90's.[1] You know the drill when you see it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxaTAv-Dn7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxaTAv-Dn7I
questiondev 5y ago
i have add, watching slow videos makes me tune out pretty fast. i switched to 2x on certain videos and yeah i am able to learn because it’s not super drawn out
gnicholas 5y ago
For those who didn't read the full article, a couple tidbits not covered in the headline: > The timing mattered, though: only those who’d watched the 2x video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than right after the first viewing, got this advantage. Also, if subjects watched only once, there was no downside vis a vis 1x watching, until reaching 2.5x: > the 1.5x and 2x groups did just as well on the tests as those who’d watched the videos at normal speed, both immediately afterwards and one week on. Only at 2.5x was learning impaired.
asdffdsa 5y ago
For technical subjects (the "most important subjects" with respect to the future career I was planning), I never came out of lectures feeling like I understood the material. Only after reading the textbook, doing exercises, and re-reading the textbook (or looking up a concept online for an alternate explanation if the textbook's writing was ambiguous) did I feel any sort of confidence or perform well on exams. Watching the lecture helped cement the material after already having a degree of knowledge, but they served best as optional, supplementary material. Since it served mainly to connect concepts together, I can see how watching it at 2x speed would serve the same purpose, but faster. Most people in university would spend the bare minimum amount of time on both reading, exercises, and lecture in order to get a good grade, where good was defined as "the grade required in order to land a high-paying job". Since I was a non-conformist, I specifically made a point to read all the material assigned (and probably achieved ~80 - 90%), and one of my favorite activities when I was (rarely) ahead of schedule was to spend an hour reading a couple pages or a chapter of literature from an elective course. Every word, phrase, and sentence I would ponder about the meaning the author conveyed through multiple lenses (e.g. how did it affect the characters, the theme, the scenery, the world of the author, the culture he/she wrote them in, as well as the relation/history of the words used throughout the novel -- was this a motif? Did the phrase relate to any motifs?). My professor mentioned "these books were meant to be enjoyed over many afternoons, to be read at leisure and to relate it to life with all its silly impossible circumstances and happenings". What was the end result of all this slow reading? In one narrow sense, it led to me getting worse grades than perhaps I would have if I allocated all my time towards getting the best career possible. It also led to depression -- self-inflicted -- and existentialist contemplation as my outcomes were incredibly poor relatively speaking. What were some of the positives? Sometimes I can look at the brick walkway beneath me and make some quirky, half-sensical remark like "ah, the herringbone structure. The same one Brunelleschi used in the Duomo in Florence", to which any unfortunate souls try their best to follow socially as if that remark makes any sense in our conversation. Who knows, maybe Sartre would approve.
bsd44 5y ago
Ah yes, "self-improvement": - watching videos as 2x the speed - speedreading - listening to audiobook while doing chores I'm sure there's plenty more I'm forgetting here.
adenadel 5y ago
In case anyone is interested, you can get 3x or 4x on YouTube by opening the console and using this one-liner document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 3
firexcy 5y ago
I think a wrinkle often got lost in the discussion is that the outcome of the learning is less affected by the playback speed but the effort and attention you devote to the learning process. Speedify for the purpose of speedifying may result in a net negative efficiency, but can be used to enable other learning methods, e.g., the "play at 2x so as to study twice" method in the study. When I was studying for the bar exam, we had handouts and lecture videos in which the lecturer basically read the content out of the handouts ad verbatim. Therefore, technically I won't get anything more by playing the lecture than just reading the handouts. But the handouts are too dry and dull for me to keep focussed in a session, so I played the video at 2x in parallel with my reading. AFAICT the "dual input" did make me learn and remember better. But had I just zoom through the video without the additional efforts of reading, I don't think the result would have been as good.
kanakka 5y ago
It’s obvious, because you spend more energy within the same duration.

330 points by jvican 5y ago

ajuc 5y ago

I just wish people still wrote articles instead of making everything a video. You can read at whatever speed you need, you can ctrl+F, it's great.

synthc 5y ago

Completely off topic: i was watching an interview with Ozzy Osborne on youtube, and one of the comment said "if you watch it at 2x speed it sounds like a normal conversation", and it did!

pyreal 5y ago

I come from an English-speaking region where everyone speaks very fast. I watch most instructional videos at 1.5x to 2x just so I don't lose focus from enduring slow-talking "mainlanders". ;)

shinycode 5y ago

I noticed it as well. With real focus I’m learning the same way. And if the speaker is speaking slowly it’s even better. If the speaker has a foreign accent hard to understand speeding up can be harder if not listening in my main language.

OJFord 5y ago

Isn't this a straightforward corollary of 'more than 50% information can be gleaned when watching at 2x speed'?

bopbeepboop 5y ago
yccs27 5y ago
Not necessarily. Watching a second time will usually give you less new information than the first time (obviously if you already know more than 50%, there is less to learn)
- OJFord 5y ago
  But revisiting content is good and helps learning. So what I meant was that as long as you're not purely re-watching to catch what you missed the first time due to speed, any overlap is beneficial.
jonsen 5y ago
I'll buy that, if you mean 'more than 50% of the information, that can be gleaned when watching at 1x speed, can be gleaned when watching at 2x speed'.

commoner 5y ago

The most important sentence in the article: > The timing mattered, though: only those who’d watched the 2x video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than right after the first viewing, got this advantage.

smiley1437 5y ago
Sounds a lot like early spaced repetition effects (supermemo/anki) but without the extended repetitions?
- laserlight 5y ago
  More like cramming before the exam in this case. Though, one can use rewatching as a spaced repetition session. The key would be to actively try to remember the narrative of the lecture. Otherwise, passive rewatching wouldn't help as much.
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vmception 5y ago
What about watching a video at 1x twice
unknownus3r 5y ago
Another thing: what were the scores? If the 2x watchers got a 70 instead of a 50 does that really help? In college I was trying to get As not Cs
rsanek 5y ago
Given this huge caveat, the title of the article is at best extremely deceiving. It's bonkers to me that this was the comparison they chose (watched at 1x speed -> 1 week delay -> test) vs (watched at 2x speed -> 1 week delay -> watched 2x speed -> test). Full description of this is found on page 7 at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356194270_Learning_in_Double_Time_The_Effect_of_Lecture_Video_Speed_on_Immediate_and_Delayed_Comprehension https://www.researchgate.net/publication/356194270_Learning_...

jasode 5y ago

I'm guessing the submission might be in response to the recent "Against 3x" essay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621642 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29621642 Another variation on 2x is to listen to 2 different people at 2x on the same topic can convey concepts better than listening to only 1 at 1x. Different speakers use different vocabulary, different analogies, etc. As for listening to the same presentation twice at 2x, one reason it works better is that most narratives or lectures do not provide a "mental map" or "scaffolding" to hang all the sentences on. So the 1st pass feels like it's a bit random and incoherent but it lets listeners mentally build an outline structure in their head, and then the 2nd pass makes it easier to link the sentences to that structure and it feels more coherent. If speakers did a better job of explicitly providing that outline structure and constantly referring back to it during the narration so listeners don't get lost, the 2nd pass wouldn't be as necessary.

gsich 5y ago

No shit, with Youtube favoring longer videos content creators need to pan out the running time.

GuB-42 5y ago
At one time there was an incitation to make 10 minutes long videos but I don't think it is the case anymore. And while some videos are padded out as an attempt to increase watch time, most of the successful channels don't do it. For example, Lock Picking Lawyer is particularly successful for the niche topic it covers, and the author credit its short and to the point videos as a contributing factor. Speaking slowly is the norm in education in general. My parents are both teachers, I am not but I received basic training in education too, and "speak slowly" is always among the top advice. Maybe we need to review the rules for video you can control at will.

judahmeek 5y ago

If you really want to remember tips from a video, take notes.

newswasboring 5y ago
Agreed, the experiment had an odd setup. > They were told to watch the videos in full screen mode and not to pause them or take any notes.
- hhmc 5y ago
  It sounds like the appropriate setup for the effect they were actually investigating.
  - newswasboring 5y ago
    If they are investigating retention then yes, but studying is more than that, right? You may recall a bunch of facts but have no understanding of what is happening.

tluyben2 5y ago

I would rather just read instead of wasting time watching a video. I take in far more, can reread stuff without messing around with sliders. I can read at my own speed. Is there a service yet which turns a video from YouTube or whatever into a ppt? In a smart way ofcourse (based on amount of change of the particular frames). Would pay for that.

thathndude 5y ago
I feel like one of those Reddit or Twitter bots, but: the general rule is that you can read about twice as fast as you can understand spoken word - 300 vs 150 words per minute. I remember reading this my first day in a public speaking class in college. Just one of those factoids that’s stuck with me, and why I’ve always preferred reading articles versus seeking videos. Of course, speed of comprehension is just one consideration. I’m mindful that there are some contexts where a visual is necessary or particularly helpful, and that some folks resonate with visual/spoken word more than written. But this is why I love HN. It’s almost always a link to a written article, and I can pop open comments (which I often do first) for more written text on the subject.
- saurik 5y ago
  I can only speed read for a couple hours at best, as staring so close at something and carefully moving my eyes so quickly is extremely exhausting. I can read at slow speeds for a lot longer, but I am pretty sure it is still horrible for my eyes :(. Either way, it is mentally taxing, as I have to convince my brain to not start talking to itself and begin ignoring the visual input. In contrast, I can spend an entire day listening to people; and, while I am listening, I can be looking into the distance, the way human eyes are supposed to mostly be used. I can walk around, cook and eat food, or even shower, all while listening to people talk. I would argue listening to other people is a much more "human" activity than staring at symbols (despite how much I do this for my passion: software development). I also have no clue where you got those numbers from: the iPad software I have finally found to read PDFs to me has me configure it in words per minute, and I find it reasonable to understand 400 words per minute for long stretches. I bet I could go faster (this software supports 500), but it would likely be mentally taxing. To put in context how preposterous 150 words per minute is, the average person supposedly speaks at 100-130 words per minute according to some random source I just found (which feels right as I took years of linguistics and was going to guess 110-120), and we know people routinely listen to videos at 2x (and so are hitting 200-260). (I think it is also worth noting that actual speed reading is a skill most people do not have. I actually think it quite likely that your average person can read only as fast as they can speak, as I bet that people who are not really really good at reading are subvocalizing. I feel like a lot of people don't consider this when saying everyone should read all the time.)

nickjj 5y ago

There's another benefit of watching something at 2x too which wasn't mentioned which is it can put you into a more receptive mental state. I don't know if anyone else is like this but inefficiencies tend to bug me. This is purely personal preference but folks who talk slow or use a lot of filler words can ruin a video for me to the point where I'm focusing on that instead of the material. I tend to listen to everything at 2x (instructional videos, podcasts, etc.) and I don't really see any downsides even if it's only watched once. If it's something deep or you're following along with code then you'll be pausing the video no matter what speed you listen to it to apply what you're watching. When you factor all of that together you can IMO absorb things just as well as 1x.

medstrom 5y ago
Exactly! It's possible you and I have ADHD, but it's worth giving out this tip. Watching at a sped up rate lets you filter out the crap and find the "real" content. In a simple world you'd just slow it back down to 1x when you get to this point, and you wouldn't need 2x, you could just skip forwards 10 seconds at a time like most people until you find it. Unfortunately there tends to be fillers throughout the video, even inside of the sentences people speak. The real lifehack is to keep the high speed and then pause when the video said something important, so you can digest what you just heard, and resume - rinse and repeat. A variant solution I prefer is to always be regulating the speed according to the load on your attention span. Videos change so much in info density from one minute to the next, it's nothing short of strange to watch at one set speed throughout. I think the fact it's so common to "give up" and "accept" a given video speed is an artifact of the fact that people have never had the experience of letting their subconscious finely control the speed with muscle-memory. Doing it keeps your attention at 100% usage all the time. Low info density, high speed. High info density, low speed. Use a browser addon that gives you hotkey control over the speed, or use ff2mpv to exploit mpv's native speed controls.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  I have basically the same approach. I don't absorb information that well from video because of the fixed pacing. I would much rather read which lets me speed up and slow down automatically. When I need to absorb a video, I find speed controls to be incredibly useful. For low density information, I set the speed as high as I can and still understand the speaker. This is like skimming a text. If the speaker gets to something high density, I will slow down or even listen to the section multiple times. This is like reading slowly for maximum understanding. I am honestly a bit frustrated with how much information is getting locked up in videos as I find them a pretty poor format in comparison to text annotated with diagrams.

nathias 5y ago

It's epistemically toxic to promote video as a learning tool. Videos are great for entertainment, entertainment can boraden your horizons, but it isn't a good tool for learning anything except when learning a skill that requires mimicking body movements.

bmicraft 5y ago
Why do you think that?
- nathias 5y ago
  It's removing critical thought from the world, bit by bit. People are (self)decieved that they are learning while they are merely having a very weak/superficial exposure to a domain of knowledge and they stick with that because it gets them the great feeling of knowledge without knowledge itself.
klibertp 5y ago
Well, there are people who would refuse to learn if not for the videos. What then? Are we going to sit in an increasingly sparsely-populated ivory tower and complain how nobody wants to learn, or are we going to try capturing the attention of such people in any way that works? To be honest, I agree with you. I like to read. I learn better when I read. Text is much more convenient in so many ways that I honestly don't understand why would anyone opt for a video instead. But the reality is that the average attention span and the kinds of concentration people are capable of changes with time, and recently started changing a lot in relatively short amounts of time (1 generation). That's reality, and we have to learn to cope with it - even if it's painful - or we won't be able to teach anyone anything!
- nathias 5y ago
  I agree, it can be a great hook, but we can have nouance, not everything has to be so dumb, right? We can teach people that look sure you can have this feeling of learning, but it can be very misleading people are watching edutainment and think they are learning which is probably even worse than if they were against learning in the first place. Edutainment is great fun for me at least, but I see so many people think they know something because they have been exposed by content on youtube and live in this self-deception that it's just sad.

spodek 5y ago

> Watching lecture videos is now a major part of many students’ university experience. This sentence is the most important, describing a failure in education. Once I learned to teach through project-based learning, I'm never going back, largely because of student feedback, that they learn more and are more engaged. I'm not saying we don't learn from lecture at all, but a lot less relative to other ways. Maybe some subjects or professors work with lecturing, but not subjects that I studied in college.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

I’m a bit puzzled by the recurring apparition of articles about learning faster on HN. I don’t think I have suffered from the speed at which material covers a subject since I left school. Finding interesting material, properly structured with a good balance of introductory and in depth coverage and giving solid insight into a topic remains challenging — it already was when I was a student to be fair. Good teaching ressources are the exception rather than the norm. Finding the time to properly conceptualise and deeply think about what I’m trying to learn has been challenging. But the speed at which I can consume teaching material is not something I remember being bothered by this past decade. Thinking about it more often than not I wish I could actually go slower rather than faster. I’m curious about how the experience of others commenters differ here as it’s obviously a topic of interest to some in this community.

ramraj07 5y ago
After some level of learning the eloquence of the author (barring some minimum standards) is probably not as material, it’s more about the content itself. Talking about graduate level courses, presumably ones not too math heavy, I can see this working. Or for lectures and seminars on research by professors (though one rarely is trying to remember every detail).
kristaps 5y ago
Right up there with other techie superstitions such as "editor x makes me a better programmer, because typing faster".
- strken 5y ago
  When I read this I immediately thought "typing faster makes me a less annoyed programmer, and better would be a happy accident", then realised it was the same for speeding up or pausing audio. Having control over the speed at which ideas are launched at me is more about not getting distracted or frustrated than learning faster.
  - aspaceman 5y ago

vmception 5y ago

I listen at 2.5x and fast forward a lot with the arrow keys Downsides: Videos with background music for something instructional is bad. Stick to just talking. Even the intros that many people make are unnecessary. People that actually talk at a good faster speed and still have a long video are now the worst.

unknownus3r 5y ago

On real estate and the Roman Empire. If i listened to a math or cs lecture at 1.5-2x id be finished

rahimnathwani 5y ago

"The researchers do also add a few caveats. While 2x viewing was fine for learning about the material in their studies — real estate appraisals and the Roman Empire — perhaps it might not work for more complex subject matter; again, only more research will tell."

guerrilla 5y ago

Funny, this is exactly what I've been doing lately and it did help a lot actually. I felt kind of guilty or stupid for not having figured it out earlier.

agumonkey 5y ago
Is it due to repetition ?
- m_st 5y ago
  Absolutely! There's a great online course out there called "Learning to learn". I recommend you to start with this one ASAP.
  - lampe3 5y ago
    Link?
    - jinto36 5y ago
      Going to guess that they're referencing this MOOC: https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
- guerrilla 5y ago
  Yes, the only reason I had it 2x was because the guy talked so slowly. I've started using that feature a lot for other lecturers though. It's easy to slow it down if you get to a sticky part.

m_st 5y ago

Great idea and I can relate to that. However, I still prefer text and reading. I'm always missing CTRL+F / CMD+F with video bookmarks.

agumonkey 5y ago

I wonder if khan academy noticed this too.

mindvirus 5y ago

I did the Georgia Tech OMSCS, and this was similar to my study strategy. I'd watch the lecture videos 4 times total: - Once at normal speed, without taking notes. - Once at 1.5 or 2x speed (depending on lecturer) to take notes. - Then I'd do a 2x speed run of all of the content before midterms and finals. I felt like it worked really well, and even years later I feel I've retained a ton of what I learned.

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binkHN 5y ago

I watch most of my videos at 2x. Well, 1.75x as 2x sometimes makes it too difficult to understand someone, particularly if that person has a strong accent. I find this allows me to digest more content in less time, especially if the person is a slow speaker. If I miss something or can't grok something well enough, I'll rewind or, well, slow it down a bit for that piece. What do I not watch at 2x? Movie trailers. I want to appreciate the theatrical efforts.

leobg 5y ago

Was it Donny Deutsch who said "I'd rather read 10 books 10 times than 100 books once"?

notriskfree 5y ago

Reading is a great deal faster than watching videos. Presumably doubling the speed must also make the presenters sound like chipmunks or voles or something. Perhaps just fiddling with the sound frequency also works.

edanm 5y ago
No, modern software makes doubling the speed work without giving people a higher voice.

beebeepka 5y ago

Quite a statement because there could be many factors at play. Type of content, density/complexity, the individual's abilities and mental state. It's certainly true for many popular tube channels, that's for sure. Then again, I sometimes try to follow physics lectures and those make my head spin beyond the intro. Same with biology, even computers. I am not able to absorb great amounts of new info at once. Could be my age, though

nottorp 5y ago

Of course if the same information were presented in written form you’d be able to go through it 5x as fast.

e0a74c 5y ago

Is the average person's short-term memory and/or attention span getting worse?

dorchadas 5y ago
I would wager 'yes' to both of those answers, but I would also somewhat attribute this to the Cult of Productivity, where people want to 'learn' more while spending less time on it. Which, depending on the subject (and I'd wager for most of them), isn't really how you learn at all, and you need to put thought and go slow in things. It's basically another symptom of our culture's ever-increasing rush for things going faster/easier.
- e0a74c 5y ago
  I never looked into this Cult of Productivity but I wholeheartedly agree with your take on learning in general. Deep understanding of complex topics can't be rushed.

sureklix 5y ago

"The more actively you try to learn the better you learn" category conclusion. Any tools/frontends for ultimate youtube-based learning? Some things I miss: - highlight code screencasts (so I can copy and paste) - 3x (not all have 2x in youtube) - transcript extract and keyword search and jump to that location in the video => there must be someone doing this PS: Not trying to promote any project by asking this, genuinely curious.

axpy906 5y ago

The confounding factor in this study strikes me as reviewing before the test. That should improve results regardless of speed.

ahdh8f4hf4h8 5y ago

(Note: full study PDF is on researchgate) I would take this with a giant grain of salt: 1.) N is in the hundreds of students, all with similar backgrounds - likely a highly specific population. It may not generalize well. 2.) The videos were pretty short: 3-15 minutes long. 3.) The overall effect size is pretty miniscule - it would make little practical difference. 4.) The video topics were roman history and real estate appraisals. It will be interesting to see if this generalizes (to longer durations, more technical topics, more diverse population, etc.), but given the above I wouldn't change any personal habits based on this study.

gr__or 5y ago
I'm seeing d = .54 which afaik is considered a medium effect size?
rocqua 5y ago
Would be interesting if e.g. watching twice at 3x speed would yield the same result as just watching once.
calf 5y ago
My problem is that they're studying retention, not mastery. Like how would this work for math or science lecture at the senior or graduate level? In a more radical way I almost think playing a video in any nonlinear, noncontinuous fashion would have learning advantages because what matters isn't what you passively remember from the lecture but the amount of work you spend actively thinking about the material.
silexia 5y ago
5) Retention is vastly different than comprehension and integration with other knowledge. I often am thinking about the applications of knowledge during a lecture. I am currently listening to an economic history course and the last lecture I compared the foolish inefficiencies of 16th century mercantilism tarrifs to the new modern ones of the last few years.

cblconfederate 5y ago

Would be interesting to know the duration of the videos used. Spaced learning is known to work, but the timings used are important.

zarzavat 5y ago

I can vouch for this technique. Most native speakers can listen much faster than they can talk. Blind users often turn their screen reader speed up to 11. When you listen to a video at a fast speed, it allows you to fit more information into your working memory than you would have been able to .. if .. the .. speaker .. um ... was ... talking .. er ... like ... ... sorry what were we talking about? Oh yes listening at a fast wpm aids understanding of the content. Listen at a speed that is on the border of intelligibility and when you notice that something doesn't make sense, pause the video and go back and listen to it again immediately. This active engagement with the content is key instead of passively sitting back and watching a video. It doesn't work for all content. Some people just speak really fast and accurately. But for the average online lecture it works super well.

14 5y ago
I forgot I turned up my Netflix speed to 1.25x and ended up watching many shows at that speed when I realized it it was very foreign to go back to normal speed and they sounded very slow and annoying. But 11x speed sounds difficult, though I believe what you say so probably just difficult for me.

paunthony 5y ago

I do think that this depends on how the information is presented and on you can take and digest information on the learning modules.

calibas 5y ago

From the actual study: >We also compared learning outcomes after watching videos once at 1x or twice at 2x speed. There was not an advantage to watching twice at 2x speed but if participants watched the video again at 2x speed immediately before the test, compared with watching once at 1x a week before the test, comprehension improved. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3899?af=R https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.3899?af=R Seems like an odd comparison to make, watching a video one week before a test versus twice immediately before the test.

geocrasher 5y ago

If anybody can watch the following video at 2x and get anything out of it, you're a better man than I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_7Y33AoagY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_7Y33AoagY

Nux 5y ago

In other words, repetition is the mother of all learning. Turns out my father was right. ;-)

aj7 5y ago

The entire concept of listening to lectures at all is under fire. See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-lecturing-me/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stop-lecturing-me...

nimbius 5y ago

Charlatans begone. 2x is a fashion statement and Ive been learning at a much faster rate for quite some time. The real answer to speed learning, is to watch the video at 200x, in a concrete room buried ten meters deep, with your nose pressed pensively to a 50" flatscreen surrounded by a frigid black ocean of PA speakers and amplifiers. Ive found that in five to seven hours, Ive fully comprehended the video as it "repeats twice", ad infinitum. now, the volume is critical as it is not to concede 110db at any time. this promotes learning at 200x the volume of the original video. At the end of your learning session it is important to remain unclothed, as this promotes the knowledge to absorb into your body fastest whilst the room leaves you in inscrutable darkness, to succor a distant memory of the learning materials interdisciplinary themes and objectives. Once youve climbed from the pit --and washed the learning jelly from yourself-- then you will have attained full and complete knowledge of how to properly tie a tie, or water a houseplant, or whatever you should need to learn. The pit will remain there for you should you ever dare to utter another question in wonderment.

soperj 5y ago
I've found that you can cut your time in half by using 2 computers and watching both videos @ 200x, simultaneously.
- amelius 5y ago
  And save even more time by playing the videos while you sleep.
- munk-a 5y ago
  Personally I tile VMs[1] playing the video at 16x at full resolution scaled down to fit all 16 on the screen. It's really eye opening. 1. Obviously required for technical reasons - I assume everyone is fully aware of why.
imwillofficial 5y ago
My only regret is that I have only one upvote to give
5y ago

varelse 5y ago

I find a lot of lecture videos have a cadence that is intentionally slowed down and nearly unwatchable at 1X speed. I've been watching at 2x for a decade or so. When I'm really adjusted to 2x because I'm watching an hour or two of lectures daily sometimes I can crank it to 3x and still take it in. But I think this is more a function of the cadence of the speaker than anything else.

Eliezer 5y ago

Okay but is that still true if you use batch normalization and does it beat SOTA

temporalparts 5y ago

I want to see the study: > Watching video twice at normal speed can benefit learning better than once at 0.5x speed You need reasonable baselines, otherwise this just says: "going through a material twice improves learning outcomes".

ivansavz 5y ago

Direct link to PDF of research article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.3899?casa_token=1tdA2eq474sAAAAA:Wrwr0KSIZViGm--eEzlRKp2Kdku-dP2d4UQuaPNCjoUratRBFyviM-CO-RfKWV7qWXaOy-pen46B4bw https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/acp.3899?cas... (obtained from PDF link on scholar.google.com)

projectileboy 5y ago

2x is always a bit fast for my slow brain, but 1.5x works well for me.

Borrible 5y ago

No, no, no. What you really need is a Nuremberg Funnel.[0] There is rare b/w footage of Jeff's first steps becoming Bezos with this method back in the 90's.[1] You know the drill when you see it. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Funnel [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxaTAv-Dn7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxaTAv-Dn7I

questiondev 5y ago

i have add, watching slow videos makes me tune out pretty fast. i switched to 2x on certain videos and yeah i am able to learn because it’s not super drawn out

gnicholas 5y ago

For those who didn't read the full article, a couple tidbits not covered in the headline: > The timing mattered, though: only those who’d watched the 2x video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than right after the first viewing, got this advantage. Also, if subjects watched only once, there was no downside vis a vis 1x watching, until reaching 2.5x: > the 1.5x and 2x groups did just as well on the tests as those who’d watched the videos at normal speed, both immediately afterwards and one week on. Only at 2.5x was learning impaired.

asdffdsa 5y ago

For technical subjects (the "most important subjects" with respect to the future career I was planning), I never came out of lectures feeling like I understood the material. Only after reading the textbook, doing exercises, and re-reading the textbook (or looking up a concept online for an alternate explanation if the textbook's writing was ambiguous) did I feel any sort of confidence or perform well on exams. Watching the lecture helped cement the material after already having a degree of knowledge, but they served best as optional, supplementary material. Since it served mainly to connect concepts together, I can see how watching it at 2x speed would serve the same purpose, but faster. Most people in university would spend the bare minimum amount of time on both reading, exercises, and lecture in order to get a good grade, where good was defined as "the grade required in order to land a high-paying job". Since I was a non-conformist, I specifically made a point to read all the material assigned (and probably achieved ~80 - 90%), and one of my favorite activities when I was (rarely) ahead of schedule was to spend an hour reading a couple pages or a chapter of literature from an elective course. Every word, phrase, and sentence I would ponder about the meaning the author conveyed through multiple lenses (e.g. how did it affect the characters, the theme, the scenery, the world of the author, the culture he/she wrote them in, as well as the relation/history of the words used throughout the novel -- was this a motif? Did the phrase relate to any motifs?). My professor mentioned "these books were meant to be enjoyed over many afternoons, to be read at leisure and to relate it to life with all its silly impossible circumstances and happenings". What was the end result of all this slow reading? In one narrow sense, it led to me getting worse grades than perhaps I would have if I allocated all my time towards getting the best career possible. It also led to depression -- self-inflicted -- and existentialist contemplation as my outcomes were incredibly poor relatively speaking. What were some of the positives? Sometimes I can look at the brick walkway beneath me and make some quirky, half-sensical remark like "ah, the herringbone structure. The same one Brunelleschi used in the Duomo in Florence", to which any unfortunate souls try their best to follow socially as if that remark makes any sense in our conversation. Who knows, maybe Sartre would approve.

bsd44 5y ago

Ah yes, "self-improvement": - watching videos as 2x the speed - speedreading - listening to audiobook while doing chores I'm sure there's plenty more I'm forgetting here.

adenadel 5y ago

In case anyone is interested, you can get 3x or 4x on YouTube by opening the console and using this one-liner document.getElementsByTagName("video")[0].playbackRate = 3

firexcy 5y ago

I think a wrinkle often got lost in the discussion is that the outcome of the learning is less affected by the playback speed but the effort and attention you devote to the learning process. Speedify for the purpose of speedifying may result in a net negative efficiency, but can be used to enable other learning methods, e.g., the "play at 2x so as to study twice" method in the study. When I was studying for the bar exam, we had handouts and lecture videos in which the lecturer basically read the content out of the handouts ad verbatim. Therefore, technically I won't get anything more by playing the lecture than just reading the handouts. But the handouts are too dry and dull for me to keep focussed in a session, so I played the video at 2x in parallel with my reading. AFAICT the "dual input" did make me learn and remember better. But had I just zoom through the video without the additional efforts of reading, I don't think the result would have been as good.

kanakka 5y ago

It’s obvious, because you spend more energy within the same duration.