3 ms·

I feel the opposite way, at least from the point of view of absorbing information. I often have a hard time with podcasts and often youtube videos because I fee

by inasio 2y ago

I feel the opposite way, at least from the point of view of absorbing information. I often have a hard time with podcasts and often youtube videos because I feel I could have read the info there in a few minutes vs watching/listening to something for much longer

chankstein38 2y ago
I agree but think that's different. That's probably a 10min-read kind of article versus a couple-hour-long book. I agree with the parent comment that reading is just slower. All of the blabbering people do in podcasts and in youtube videos to draw out the length feels like it ends up in books too but it's harder to skip because you don't really know when the important stuff happens. I just turn youtube videos and podcasts up to 2x speed then I don't really have to worry about it.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  If you crank the speed up 2x you’ll also be speeding through the important parts. I feel like all of this drive towards AI “summarization” is really framing the problem incorrectly. I want all of the filler removed, and just keep the necessary bits.
janalsncm 2y ago
We live in an attention economy but the content that demands our attention is increasingly low value. Often the vast majority of podcast content and YouTube video content could be simplified to maybe 10% of what is there. I have unfortunately seen this in some of the nonfiction books I read as well, which tend to spend way too much time on filler and fluff than actually advancing the main points. This wastes my time and irritates me. (Stuart Russell’s most recent book is majority garbage.)
- theshrike79 2y ago
  Kagi's summariser has been a life-saver for me. I can just feed any Youtube URL to it and it gives me bullet points about the content. Then I can decide if I know enough or whether I want to listen to the full video.
saghm 2y ago
Not only that, but reading lets you easily jump around to refresh yourself on other parts if you see something reference it much more easily, and you can choose your exact comfortable pace without having to stretch or squeeze the source material unnaturally. I have a recurring habit of glossing over names I don't recognize when first reading them in a news article and then will frequently need to jump back to find where they were initially referenced when they get mentioned again only with their last name. While this can be a little annoying when reading, it would be far worse in a video; I can't imagine trying to scrub back to the point where someone first was mentioned. At best, the video might have captions (which I'll always have turned on), but it's a lot harder to look at a caption and remember exactly which information came before it and which came after because the text isn't all visible at once.
Detrytus 2y ago
On the other hand, reading a novel can take you a few days, but watching a movie based on the same novel takes 90 minutes.
- AndrewDucker 2y ago
  And contains vastly less information while doing so.
- theshrike79 2y ago
  On the other hand, reading a tutorial on how to do something is faster than watching a video of someone doing it. It's a lot easier to skip over the bits you already know in written form, with video you need to seek forward, listen a bit, seek forward, listen, whoops too far, seek back a bit etc.

by inasio 2y ago

chankstein38 2y ago

I agree but think that's different. That's probably a 10min-read kind of article versus a couple-hour-long book. I agree with the parent comment that reading is just slower. All of the blabbering people do in podcasts and in youtube videos to draw out the length feels like it ends up in books too but it's harder to skip because you don't really know when the important stuff happens. I just turn youtube videos and podcasts up to 2x speed then I don't really have to worry about it.

janalsncm 2y ago
If you crank the speed up 2x you’ll also be speeding through the important parts. I feel like all of this drive towards AI “summarization” is really framing the problem incorrectly. I want all of the filler removed, and just keep the necessary bits.

janalsncm 2y ago

We live in an attention economy but the content that demands our attention is increasingly low value. Often the vast majority of podcast content and YouTube video content could be simplified to maybe 10% of what is there. I have unfortunately seen this in some of the nonfiction books I read as well, which tend to spend way too much time on filler and fluff than actually advancing the main points. This wastes my time and irritates me. (Stuart Russell’s most recent book is majority garbage.)

theshrike79 2y ago
Kagi's summariser has been a life-saver for me. I can just feed any Youtube URL to it and it gives me bullet points about the content. Then I can decide if I know enough or whether I want to listen to the full video.

saghm 2y ago

Not only that, but reading lets you easily jump around to refresh yourself on other parts if you see something reference it much more easily, and you can choose your exact comfortable pace without having to stretch or squeeze the source material unnaturally. I have a recurring habit of glossing over names I don't recognize when first reading them in a news article and then will frequently need to jump back to find where they were initially referenced when they get mentioned again only with their last name. While this can be a little annoying when reading, it would be far worse in a video; I can't imagine trying to scrub back to the point where someone first was mentioned. At best, the video might have captions (which I'll always have turned on), but it's a lot harder to look at a caption and remember exactly which information came before it and which came after because the text isn't all visible at once.

Detrytus 2y ago

On the other hand, reading a novel can take you a few days, but watching a movie based on the same novel takes 90 minutes.

AndrewDucker 2y ago
And contains vastly less information while doing so.
theshrike79 2y ago
On the other hand, reading a tutorial on how to do something is faster than watching a video of someone doing it. It's a lot easier to skip over the bits you already know in written form, with video you need to seek forward, listen a bit, seek forward, listen, whoops too far, seek back a bit etc.