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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

Unrelated question: does every single reading time estimate lie to us in attempt to entice us to stay or am I just slow?

There is no way I can read this in 10 minutes.

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Good question. I tested it. 5 minutes to read it for me. Was expecting longer than the 10 but I was in "fast mode" where I selectively skipped placenames, small details I know I'd never retain without masses of unwarranted effort. I read fiction slowly, but when browsing for information I plough through texts. Do you skim read ever?

Retention-wise it still feels like I could tell you a rough outline of the article. It might help I'm a radio amateur/ham so have a strong interest in the subject anyway. Let me see, it was something like this, you'll have to take my word I'm not switching tabs (too fiddly on mobile anyway);

- invention of radio

- mass enthusiasm

- mass hysteria

- mass education (Wisconsin? I'm not American so my mental map of midwest is weak - Ohio though)

- rebroadcasts via larger station for wider reach

- I'm blanking on the outro, but now at least I know radio education was a thing over large tracts of land in the US and Australia too, but isn't this how China and Korea are making superstar teachers online now?

If the "final event" ever comes, I'll maybe find a way to keep powering the radios to entertain and educate the willing.

You're not slow, you're probably just taking it too seriously :)

I don't really consider myself a fast reader, but I was able to get the broad strokes in about 1 and half minutes (timed it). Articles like these are 80% filler and the first sentence of two can generally tell you what the rest is about. If you can find the keywords in those first couple sentences, hint, they're typically the long ones, you can get the gist of everything very quickly. It's typically an idea or group of ideas that is interesting, not a specific line or word, and if I find something curious, it's at that time I'll choose to go slow or even stop to think about it.

If an article only merits that form of "reading" I'd rather spend my time with something else.

Which is why I don't read the articles the vast majority of the time. It's rare that I find an article worth reading slowly, but when I do, I slow down and read it. I come to this forum for the comments, not for poorly written articles with low amount of substance. Certain blogs or websites I'll read at a slow pace, because of historic experiences showing the quality is high or will spur interesting comments. Pg is a good example, I'll read those slowly as I find the writing to have a large amount of interesting ideas. Contrasted to the article in this thread, the idea isn't very new or interesting to me, and the signal to noise ratio isn't exactly good. When the signal to noise is bad so often, I want to spend my time with something else as well, and why I choose not to waste 10 minutes reading it when only a couple will suffice.

Might be a little slower than the estimate they're calculating. I timed myself at nine minutes, but others were faster than me. You should time it, though.

I wouldn't worry about the time so much as the comprehension and retention.

I generally find estimated reading times to be significantly longer than it actually takes me to read an article.

Anecdatapoint: It took me a little under 3.

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