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Comment by Yenrabbit | Hacker News Reader

I've always found this interesting. Think+transmit seems more likely to be the bottleneck vs receive, given that we can easily parse most podcasts etc at 3-4X speed. If being understood by everyone wasn't required, I wonder if one could learn to boost both send and receive rates?

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I usually listen at 1.5x passively.

But what you said made me curious. I listened to this podcast at 3x. I was able to understand all the words, but my conceptual understanding decreased. I also have to listen actively -- not passively.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SFkwdm0PP0

At 4x, I could only understand the shape of the sentences but could no longer make out the words. But I turned on the captions and found I could keep up. Turns out reading at 4x works, listening at 4x doesn't.

English is also spoken with different prosodies and cadences. For instance, I can understand Singaporean English perfectly, but it's less amenable to being sped up. I tried listening to this lecture in Singaporean English in 3x and found that I could barely understand it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LA1dnUYzRWU

Blind people often go upto 600 words per minute and more with text-to-speech, which is, I think, would be an equivalent to 5x and more.

In fairness, they cannibalize their visual cortex to do that:)

There's the cue for my biennial reread of Peter Watts' Blindsight.

Went into my list. Appreciated :)

Did you read his followup Echopraxia? How would you say it compared to Blindsight?

I'm pretty sure you can train yourself to do the same, but the effort probably doesn't seem worth it for most people.

But its robotic and predictable, human speech is not.

1.7x here as a matter of course.-

PS. I wonder if, even peripheralally, having one of 'em newfangled AI glasses teleprompting you at the same time, could get one up to 2.0x or higher.-

> I usually listen at 1.5x passively.

Eminem's song "Rap God" has a segment where he goes at about 6 words per second (@4m23s):

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbGs_qK2PQA

i can catch a single fastball. sometimes. i cant catch 1 per second

Racine sings the english translation of the Disappearance of Hatsune Miku much faster:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tohDycgc-H8

However, there is a difference between a rehearsed and practiced performance and communication that makes these things more a feat of acrobatics.

For a time in the 1980s John Moschitta was well-known for making fast-talking commercials:

* FedEx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeK5ZjtpO-M

* Micro Machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzd11GMBONg

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Moschitta_Jr.

This suggest that maybe human minds are able to form ideas at a certain speed, and language has evolved to convey these ideas and not be a bottleneck, but there is no reason to improve language beyond this.

Hm, I’ve always struggled with the other bottleneck - speaking. I tend to slur my words because my brain is forming the thoughts faster than I can speak. I could perhaps speed up my speech to match my brain but I’d sound like a maniac.

Don’t get me started on writing. My letters will often transition halfway into a letter thats 3 words ahead.

Typing speed is a good thing to develop.

Likely so. I've noticed that those whose first language is one of those with fewer vowels - and thus must have more syllables per second to convey the same information rate- sometimes speak English much faster than I (as a monolingual native speaker) find normal.

3-4x! Are you the flash? I usually run things about 1.5x when I am commuting. 3x would require laser focus without distractions. Or you mean more a “can technically absorb the language being spoken” sense?

Not OP but listen to podcasts at highly accelerated settings:

The information density of ‘two dudes talking’ or any unscripted format is very low, so it time-compresses well. Specific podcasts, typically scripted monologues with technical content, such as Causality [0] (recommended!), I need to listen to much slower. Ditto if it is in an accent which isn’t mine, which slows my comprehension. I also slow the speed if I’m driving. So, yes, it takes mental overhead, but is doable. Go one click at a time and it will feel natural.

[0]: https://engineered.network/causality/

I suppose the format is a huge differentiator. I exclusively listen to highly produced content which has essentially no dead time. The content is already a compressed transmission of information.

I would say that the ability and speed to receive and process information in a timely manner also greatly depends on the density and complexity of the material.

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