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Comment by nashequilibrium | Hacker News Reader

HN always likes the faster is better, I am a genius absorbing this much information quicker than you. Its been proven over and over that comprehension is way more important than speed of consumption. You guys fool yourselves into believing you can comprehend while reading at breakneck speeds, its way more fun & time saving to be able to imagine, driftaway in thought and understand what you are reading.

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Not to mention that 1 word at a time makes it hard to:

    Repeat that word
    Scan back a few words
    Quickly see your position in the article
    Look at any sidenotes, footnotes, or relevant pictures
    Read with flow and not drum like rhythm
    Skip large sections of non-relevant material
    Back reference

There isn't that much substance in most blog posts / articles I read online. Of course, I wouldn't use this to read "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach".

Agreed. The signal density in many news articles is lower than what you would expect in a journal article or even a novel. This could be a very useful tool there.

meh, I think you generalize a lot here. There are people who are very comfortably reading at 1000wpm and beyond and keep all of the story in the mind. Some people can even accurately repeat the sped read texts. There are more people who can do that, than you may think.

Personally I would NOT YET read a real book this way, for one reason: I cannot keep a person's name in memory well enough and would mix up roles and who said what. Even though I very rarely read romans (mostly publications) you can imagine how often you hear names in a text. But that's maybe just me, idk.

I guess you would feel embarrassed, if you couldn't like me keep persons names in association with their faces well enough. Example: 100-200 persons you meet every day and you remember 50names at most and that's only because you know them very well. You have to say 'hi' to all the others you just can't remember the name of. Luckily I don't mix up faces that much up anymore. Recently I met a girl whose name I simply couldn't recall although I've seen her 100s of times. Anyway she reminded me that I already have her in my phone-book, so yeah I'll try to keep it memorized.

Also, in novels there is metadata in positioning of the text (eg scene change, speaker change etc) which i believe would be lost in such readers. So it's not a good way to read a novel, but pretty cool for reading blog posts and articles

OP here. Totally agree. I would not use this to read a novel, but rather in the way that we already read articles on the web--skimming them.

I think there is a huge value to giving the reader a tradeoff between speed and comprehension, so long as the reader is conscious that they're making a choice and does so appropriately.

Spritz is supposed to improve comprehension too. That's how it was pitched in the original article I read.

How is it going to that, serious question?

You practice, thats how. You practice eliminating subvocalization and regression. You practice focusing on multiple words at a time rather than a single word. And - once you get a hang of those skills- you practice moving your eyes across a page at a faster pace.

I have been practicing for a little under a year with the help of a speed reading app (not Spritz). It was frustrating at first; I won't pretend that I internalized even 50% of what I was reading when I started learning how to speed read. But as my eyes assimilated to reading larger chunks of words at faster speeds, I incrementally increased the speed of the text. Eventually, I was able to increase my reading speed AND understand what I was reading.

I can't attest to the effectiveness of this specific app, since I have never used it. But when you write "its way more fun & time saving to be able to imagine, drift-away in thought and understand what you are reading...", you suggest that one can only understand (and enjoy) what he is reading by reading the way you do.

Honestly I don't have time to read, so I'm going to use this heavily. Long as I get the gist. If I miss a few things, I'll go back and quickly scan those few things I missed. I can finish like 10 articles on my commute no problem with this, versus just a few.

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