Hacker News Reader

What if the kid is listening to white noise to block out the sound of the coffee shop? Or the audiobook?

As long as its not vocal it should not interfere with his ability to read and process information of said reading.

That’s incorrect, any kind of stimulus takes away some attention.

The brain is very good at ignoring some sounds. Personally I'm fond of "white noise" generators - I have my own perfect combination of rain, wind, flowing water and nature noises that cancels everything else.

Maybe compared to silence, but often not net if it's displacing other stimulus.

I'm not entirely sure it's even always true compared to silence. Sometimes I feel like other bits of my own brain can be competing for attention and that occupying them can be a win.

That's not true. Studies show that many pupils are better able to absorb information while doodling or by other repetitive actions. Many many famous authors have used long walks as a way to help themselves write.

Apparently there are studies where performing tasks was compared: in silence vs with music. Routine tasks were performed the same, but creative tasks suffered with music (i.e. a non-trivial solution to a problem was overlooked).

Dunno, however, if reading qualifies as such a task. Namely, the question is whether the same regions of the brain are engaged (and would be busy listening to music).

Wikipedia has a good summary of Adler's method:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

I disagree with you. People have very different styles when it comes to absorbing information. I fully understand why that kid would choose to listen to music instead of random coffee-shop noises. Music it's repetitive and easy to ignore whereas environmental noises might be more distracting. I often find myself able to concentrate easier with music than with random sounds or even silence in some cases. Silence makes my mind wander and stray away from what I'm trying to pay attention to.

I've also read Adler's "How to Read a Book" and I don't think it's as useful as you make it out to be. Annotating is good but nowadays you can take notes easily on your phone which I found myself doing for each book I read/listen to. Also one of the advice you find in your example is how truly reading a book means reading it more than once. He mentions that the first read should be superficial and fast in order to prepare you for the second, more thorough read.

It took me about 9 months to read "Thinking fast and slow". But that's because after every paragraph I spent at least 15 minutes pondering about the consequences of each of the new information. Best book I've ever read.

A good book that also touches on this subject is: "moonwalking with einstein the art and science of remembering everything". It also covers the subject of priming and why its important.

People used to memorize entire books by studying them for years. In a time before printing presses were a thing it was considered normal to spent long long hours learning the contents of a book by heart.

This practice continues in Islam. There's even a word for someone who's memorised the entire Quran: 'Hafiz'/'Hafiza'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafiz_(Quran)

> Reading “thinking fast thinking slow” should not take 8-9 hours... it could easily take 50 (after all, it represents many years and thousands of hours of work by the preeminent thinker on the subject).

but would it really? a good way to know is by letting the author teach you the book. do you think it will take 50 hours? think of university courses in which the teacher is teaching their own book. they will not go through every line and details although they must have found the details important enough to be put in the book; yet you will learn key ideas that will help you grasp the subject.Even if you learn the details in depth ,when they are not useful for you, you will eventually forget them.

As for divine comedy, It is a work of art that can be interpreted in many ways , it inspires many people in different ways that even the author would not have imagined.

so if you spend 50 hours reading a non-fiction do you enjoy all of those hours? do you remember all the details you went through? if you are only going to remember some of the key ideas then why bother spending 50 hours on it?

If I'm interested in the subject nothing breaks my hyperfocus (this is both my superpower and my kryptonite). Well, conversations around me or music with lyrics do disturb my reading but classic music or pos-rock are a very effective way to cancel environmental noise.

> but classic music or pos-rock are a very effective way to cancel environmental noise.

That might not be the case if you are an obsessive classical music listener. Personally, as a fan of the Baroque played on period instruments etc. (the "historically-informed performance" style), the muzak versions of Bach played in public places really grind my gears.

I use my noise cancelling headphones without any music to block out noise. Sometimes even with normal headphones, not plugged in - socially acceptable earplugs. Some places are so noisy my head hurts. A full Starbucks definitely being one of them.

What if the the kid is listening to the audio version of Sapiens while reading the book?