It does feel super lame to claim to be fine. Someone accuses you of living a meaningless, frivolous life and owns you with philosophy and the correct, lame response is “no, I just like listening to books fast”
Fun fact: in the end everybody dies alone in a cold, uncaring universe. In the meantime, have some fun.
BTW, arguably magic tricks work on a similar basis to the setup/punchline pattern. Your brain predicts what is going to happen next based on assumptions and prior experience, and then something else entirely happens and your brain has to switch, etc. etc. So I guess what I'm saying here is that magicians are basically comedians who aren't very funny.
Least funny of all are clown magicians performing at kids' birthday parties, but that's enough about my childhood.
Is the core discussion not about whether listening to an audiobook at 1.5-2x speed = reading a book?
Do you retain more, the same, or less information? If you retain less information, how much less? And if you retain significantly less information, is the audiobook the same as listening to music or an entertainment podcast (not bad, but not equal to reading)?
I reckon that most people do retain less information listening at higher speeds, at least per word. But per minute I'd think it's usually higher? (Although for some topics listening at high speed might mean you're so lost you can't retain anything.)
I agree on per word and per minute. I was trying to take the initial claim literally: that people listening to audiobooks at 1.5-2x can claim "to read much more books".
Also to add that a major part of reading is processing the information, not just consuming it. Do most people listening to audiobooks at any speed stop and re-listen to sections they are puzzled over? I'm sure that people realize they weren't listening at all and functionally listen to the same section for the 'first time', but is there a second close listening following a first? I'd say that as the speed of the audiobook increases, the amount of processing decreases.
Yeah, I hate running on treadmills because it feels like the the treadmill is running me. I can't slow down or speed up as I like. The absolute speed of audiobooks is less an issue for me (I read pretty fast) than the fact that it all just rolls past at a uniform rate. You could imagine a different interface that made it easy to speed up / slow down / repeat / etc., but it seems like we don't have much now. (At least, not much that could be used while on a train or whatever.)
I that is very important: listening to audiobooks doesn’t seem to allow the same grappling with the material that reading does. For some material that is probably fine, fiction or biographies maybe. For denser material I think audiobooks don’t allow you to really grasp what it is as opposed to sort of skimming.
To dynomight's point: the common experience of reading books is at different speeds based on the section. It seems that narrative books can usually be read at the same rate straight through, but non-narrative books follow a different cadence especially books that rely on sequences of argumentation.
That’s just it though, I don’t think it is just a matter of speed but also non linearity. A denser book will require stopping to back up and read a section again, and maybe go back to an earlier section that now has new apparent meaning in light of what you just read, etc. I don’t think people do that with audiobooks. Now, maybe most people just don’t read closely in any case and that is what I am noticing, but it seems that there are big differences in comprehension and retention between the two methods of engaging with the material.
I think an additional point here is: is any book that can be well absorbed by listening to it at 1.5-2x speed as opposed to sitting down and reading it -- actually worth reading?
Agree. I listen to my robot voice read at stupid speeds, don't retain everything if I were reading "normally", generally are in some state of existential crisis, don't let anyone know about that, and and am a regular sleeper to Fall of Civilisations Podcast (first 20 min of "The Inca" is excellent. Have no idea about the rest.)
The first 20 minutes of all the episodes are excellent. I sometimes wonder if he's bluffing and the remaining hours are all blank. (Also can't help but wonder why hearing about the Sea Peoples is so relaxing.)
I wonder that as well. Maybe it was a tactic of the Sea Peoples - conquering by relaxing stories of their exploits read in by a soothing British voice. I don't think we will ever know - until it's too late...
In all seriousness, "occupy your mind with external stimulation* instead of laying on the couch wallowing in existential crises" is a pretty good life hack. You get to feel better AND other people are a lot more interested in hearing you talk about the time you got run off a trail by a moose than they are in hearing you talk about how life is worthless and nothing matters. Talking about angst directly is for bloggers and people who can sing in tune.
*Positive external stimulation. Audiobooks at 1.5x speed, not whiskey at 1.5x speed
To read, or to listen to a book [complementary activities at whatever speed using different parts of the brain] is to participate in someone else's existential crisis whether that's looking for an alternate instruction manual or solidarity in the darkness or to catch yourself powering up the wireheading machine. Also, why don't you have a "buy me coffee" button?
I've actually looked into the possibility of having paid subscriptions on substack and having the money sent directly to a charity rather than myself. Annoyingly, substack does not make that easy: https://faq.substack.com/p/donating-your-subscriptions-to-charity
I think your four examples are importantly different from the original. My understanding of people hating on audiobooks is that they are opposed to constantly having sensory input. If you are incapable of sitting and resting somewhere quiet, that's can be a sign that there's something you know you should be thinking about but you aren't. (But "existential crisis" may be a bit overblown.)
“Getting good sleep and regular exercise just means that your mind is full of happy chemicals and doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Getting good sleep and regular exercise requires that you are generally at peace - if you can lie down for bed before you are bone-tired, you will have to lie there and ponder your thoughts. If you are pushing down some thoughts, they have time to resurface there. Or while you are exercising. Particularly if you are exercising without listening to anything or watching anything.
“Having kids just means that your mind is busy taking care of new life and experiencing ‘joy’ and doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Ok, I'll grant this one in part. Having kids and keeping incredibly busy can also cause you to be unable to think the thoughts you know you ought to think. But it's importantly different to be throwing yourself at a big project rather than just occupying yourself. Also, you can imagine some sorts of helicopter parenting, like always stressing about what could be happening with your children, as more on the "audiobook at 2x" side of things, whereas bringing your kid to the beach and making sandcastles and staring at the ocean are all things where you can have internal thoughts.
“Hiking up to mountain vistas just means your mind is distracted by beauty and doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Ditto above. I know some people who can't hike alone without music, because they're too afraid to be alone in their minds with their thoughts. Seems obviously bad! Hiking is not distracting in the same way that listening to things and watching things are, if anything, it can help prevent distractions by occupying just enough of your mind that you have room to think+hike but not enough to hike+watch stuff.
“Having deep relationships just satisfies ancient instincts designed to help you access resources and trigger a feeling of ‘meaning’ in your mind so it doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Same as above. You can have deep relationships in a healthy way, or you can have social relationships such that you never have to be alone, something which is unfathomable to you, because you would have to decide what to do on your own or think about your life, which are scary. There are good ways and bad ways to have relationships.
I think the original commenter may have been trying to get at the downsides of constantly having inputs, particularly hyper-stimuli inputs like hearing other people's voices reading books at all times. Their tone was unnecessarily harsh and their point fell flat, but I am very sympathetic to the argument. Consuming content because you can't be alone with your mind is a highly worrying emergency. (Of course, the same could be said of reading regular books, rather than listening to audiobooks.)
Oh, I substantially agree with you. This is what I was trying to get at with the whole wireheading thing. While I don't think it's right to see audiobooks as wireheading, I think they are closER to wireheading than having kids or getting good sleep. The only thing I might (might!) disagree with you is the point that if you can't be along with your own mind then that's highly worrying. It is, I agree, a bit worrying. But if audiobooks help you, I figure they're probably fine?
of the many random things that people are interested in, could it not be enjoyable (individually or even as a community) to explore existential angst? and even if you don't enjoy it as an end in itself, could it not be a means to an end? we could think of it a state of mind to motivate the exploration of interesting ideas that could materialize into meaningful endeavors in life.
just because it doesn't feel good doesn't mean we should nip it at the bud, there might be good reason for it to be there.
Though I agree with your argument, I think you may be arguing against an interpretation of C's comment that isn't the main/intended interpretation. I think the point may have been (just may have - I'm not particularly sure of this!) that if your main goal is to fill up your head and keep it running at positive pressure so that existential thoughts can't get in, you may as well just keep listening to your podcasts because audiobooks at 2x speed don't really give you anything beyond what you can get from podcasts (for the same reason that the Brandenburg Concertos at 2x speed don't really give you anything you can't get from BBC Radio 1..) If, on the other hand, your main goal is to consume literature, you're better off listening to audiobooks at 1x speed, because that way you get to appreciate the novel (and possibly it still keeps your head at sufficient positive pressure to keep out those pesky existential thoughts in any case..)
Also, I can recommend the Boring Talks (on BBC Radio 4 but also available as a podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05t3gr2/episodes/guide ) as something relaxing and decompressive and a bit hypnotic. I don't listen to audio at bedtime myself (I tend to read when sleeping alone) but I think they might potentially be the sort of thing you're looking for? (My own favourite episodes are Gasometers and Asterix Puns..)
Sometimes I wonder about how abnormal it is how much time most people spend by themselves. People often listen to audiobooks while doing chores, exercise, or commutes, which would all have been historically have been much more social activities. Unless you were a literal hermit, in most societies you would just spend way more time around people while doing menial tasks, even if that just meant overhearing conversation.
There's a temptation to want to toughen up and spend all that time in silence, rather than trying to fill the air with recordings of voices that aren't really there. Listening to audiobooks, or most async communication, is kind of a strange activity if we look at the long stretch of human history. But even if recordings are not as real as real life, there's *something* social about reading someone's carefully chosen prose.
So if someone opposes audiobooks, why be so ascetic? If the decision to doing chores alone is doing them with a group of friends, the choice is pretty clearly the latter. But usually the choice is do chores alone in silence or with a book playing, and the insisting on the former seems kind of bent on maximizing aloneness.
Your "lame edgelord" link doesn't work for me.
Thanks, should be fixed now.
the link in the email still goes to localhost:4000 - wish you could redirect redirects
yeah, sadly email can't be fixed after it's downrange. that link goes to port 4000 on your device, so... best if I don't try to redirect that
It does feel super lame to claim to be fine. Someone accuses you of living a meaningless, frivolous life and owns you with philosophy and the correct, lame response is “no, I just like listening to books fast”
Fun fact: in the end everybody dies alone in a cold, uncaring universe. In the meantime, have some fun.
BTW, arguably magic tricks work on a similar basis to the setup/punchline pattern. Your brain predicts what is going to happen next based on assumptions and prior experience, and then something else entirely happens and your brain has to switch, etc. etc. So I guess what I'm saying here is that magicians are basically comedians who aren't very funny.
Least funny of all are clown magicians performing at kids' birthday parties, but that's enough about my childhood.
Is the core discussion not about whether listening to an audiobook at 1.5-2x speed = reading a book?
Do you retain more, the same, or less information? If you retain less information, how much less? And if you retain significantly less information, is the audiobook the same as listening to music or an entertainment podcast (not bad, but not equal to reading)?
I reckon that most people do retain less information listening at higher speeds, at least per word. But per minute I'd think it's usually higher? (Although for some topics listening at high speed might mean you're so lost you can't retain anything.)
I agree on per word and per minute. I was trying to take the initial claim literally: that people listening to audiobooks at 1.5-2x can claim "to read much more books".
Also to add that a major part of reading is processing the information, not just consuming it. Do most people listening to audiobooks at any speed stop and re-listen to sections they are puzzled over? I'm sure that people realize they weren't listening at all and functionally listen to the same section for the 'first time', but is there a second close listening following a first? I'd say that as the speed of the audiobook increases, the amount of processing decreases.
Yeah, I hate running on treadmills because it feels like the the treadmill is running me. I can't slow down or speed up as I like. The absolute speed of audiobooks is less an issue for me (I read pretty fast) than the fact that it all just rolls past at a uniform rate. You could imagine a different interface that made it easy to speed up / slow down / repeat / etc., but it seems like we don't have much now. (At least, not much that could be used while on a train or whatever.)
Eventually your meta smart glasses will determine how furrowed your brow is and slow the speed accordingly.
I that is very important: listening to audiobooks doesn’t seem to allow the same grappling with the material that reading does. For some material that is probably fine, fiction or biographies maybe. For denser material I think audiobooks don’t allow you to really grasp what it is as opposed to sort of skimming.
To dynomight's point: the common experience of reading books is at different speeds based on the section. It seems that narrative books can usually be read at the same rate straight through, but non-narrative books follow a different cadence especially books that rely on sequences of argumentation.
That’s just it though, I don’t think it is just a matter of speed but also non linearity. A denser book will require stopping to back up and read a section again, and maybe go back to an earlier section that now has new apparent meaning in light of what you just read, etc. I don’t think people do that with audiobooks. Now, maybe most people just don’t read closely in any case and that is what I am noticing, but it seems that there are big differences in comprehension and retention between the two methods of engaging with the material.
I think an additional point here is: is any book that can be well absorbed by listening to it at 1.5-2x speed as opposed to sitting down and reading it -- actually worth reading?
Agree. I listen to my robot voice read at stupid speeds, don't retain everything if I were reading "normally", generally are in some state of existential crisis, don't let anyone know about that, and and am a regular sleeper to Fall of Civilisations Podcast (first 20 min of "The Inca" is excellent. Have no idea about the rest.)
The first 20 minutes of all the episodes are excellent. I sometimes wonder if he's bluffing and the remaining hours are all blank. (Also can't help but wonder why hearing about the Sea Peoples is so relaxing.)
I wonder that as well. Maybe it was a tactic of the Sea Peoples - conquering by relaxing stories of their exploits read in by a soothing British voice. I don't think we will ever know - until it's too late...
it's only sad and desperate if you go to 3x
Itwasthebestoftimesitwastheoworstoftimes lol
THIS: "Feeling like you understand the meaning of life is downstream of existential peace, not upstream." ought to have this put on a T-shirt.
In all seriousness, "occupy your mind with external stimulation* instead of laying on the couch wallowing in existential crises" is a pretty good life hack. You get to feel better AND other people are a lot more interested in hearing you talk about the time you got run off a trail by a moose than they are in hearing you talk about how life is worthless and nothing matters. Talking about angst directly is for bloggers and people who can sing in tune.
*Positive external stimulation. Audiobooks at 1.5x speed, not whiskey at 1.5x speed
To read, or to listen to a book [complementary activities at whatever speed using different parts of the brain] is to participate in someone else's existential crisis whether that's looking for an alternate instruction manual or solidarity in the darkness or to catch yourself powering up the wireheading machine. Also, why don't you have a "buy me coffee" button?
money bad
Okay. How about a "buy my favorite animal shelter coffee" button then?
I've actually looked into the possibility of having paid subscriptions on substack and having the money sent directly to a charity rather than myself. Annoyingly, substack does not make that easy: https://faq.substack.com/p/donating-your-subscriptions-to-charity
thank you for this content! very distracting from my current crisis. :>
I think your four examples are importantly different from the original. My understanding of people hating on audiobooks is that they are opposed to constantly having sensory input. If you are incapable of sitting and resting somewhere quiet, that's can be a sign that there's something you know you should be thinking about but you aren't. (But "existential crisis" may be a bit overblown.)
“Getting good sleep and regular exercise just means that your mind is full of happy chemicals and doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Getting good sleep and regular exercise requires that you are generally at peace - if you can lie down for bed before you are bone-tired, you will have to lie there and ponder your thoughts. If you are pushing down some thoughts, they have time to resurface there. Or while you are exercising. Particularly if you are exercising without listening to anything or watching anything.
“Having kids just means that your mind is busy taking care of new life and experiencing ‘joy’ and doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Ok, I'll grant this one in part. Having kids and keeping incredibly busy can also cause you to be unable to think the thoughts you know you ought to think. But it's importantly different to be throwing yourself at a big project rather than just occupying yourself. Also, you can imagine some sorts of helicopter parenting, like always stressing about what could be happening with your children, as more on the "audiobook at 2x" side of things, whereas bringing your kid to the beach and making sandcastles and staring at the ocean are all things where you can have internal thoughts.
“Hiking up to mountain vistas just means your mind is distracted by beauty and doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Ditto above. I know some people who can't hike alone without music, because they're too afraid to be alone in their minds with their thoughts. Seems obviously bad! Hiking is not distracting in the same way that listening to things and watching things are, if anything, it can help prevent distractions by occupying just enough of your mind that you have room to think+hike but not enough to hike+watch stuff.
“Having deep relationships just satisfies ancient instincts designed to help you access resources and trigger a feeling of ‘meaning’ in your mind so it doesn’t have to deal with existential crisis.”
Same as above. You can have deep relationships in a healthy way, or you can have social relationships such that you never have to be alone, something which is unfathomable to you, because you would have to decide what to do on your own or think about your life, which are scary. There are good ways and bad ways to have relationships.
I think the original commenter may have been trying to get at the downsides of constantly having inputs, particularly hyper-stimuli inputs like hearing other people's voices reading books at all times. Their tone was unnecessarily harsh and their point fell flat, but I am very sympathetic to the argument. Consuming content because you can't be alone with your mind is a highly worrying emergency. (Of course, the same could be said of reading regular books, rather than listening to audiobooks.)
Oh, I substantially agree with you. This is what I was trying to get at with the whole wireheading thing. While I don't think it's right to see audiobooks as wireheading, I think they are closER to wireheading than having kids or getting good sleep. The only thing I might (might!) disagree with you is the point that if you can't be along with your own mind then that's highly worrying. It is, I agree, a bit worrying. But if audiobooks help you, I figure they're probably fine?
That's not wireheading. It's Nozak's experience machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine
They are somewhat similar, but in wireheading, it's just a meaningless signal that gives you the valence of hedonic reward. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
It's interesting to me that it is considered "science fiction" when it's actually pretty thoroughly established scientific fact. Control-F B-19 in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_stimulation_reward
Fall of Civilizations is good, but astrophysics lectures from YouTube are even better.
of the many random things that people are interested in, could it not be enjoyable (individually or even as a community) to explore existential angst? and even if you don't enjoy it as an end in itself, could it not be a means to an end? we could think of it a state of mind to motivate the exploration of interesting ideas that could materialize into meaningful endeavors in life.
just because it doesn't feel good doesn't mean we should nip it at the bud, there might be good reason for it to be there.
Though I agree with your argument, I think you may be arguing against an interpretation of C's comment that isn't the main/intended interpretation. I think the point may have been (just may have - I'm not particularly sure of this!) that if your main goal is to fill up your head and keep it running at positive pressure so that existential thoughts can't get in, you may as well just keep listening to your podcasts because audiobooks at 2x speed don't really give you anything beyond what you can get from podcasts (for the same reason that the Brandenburg Concertos at 2x speed don't really give you anything you can't get from BBC Radio 1..) If, on the other hand, your main goal is to consume literature, you're better off listening to audiobooks at 1x speed, because that way you get to appreciate the novel (and possibly it still keeps your head at sufficient positive pressure to keep out those pesky existential thoughts in any case..)
Also, I can recommend the Boring Talks (on BBC Radio 4 but also available as a podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05t3gr2/episodes/guide ) as something relaxing and decompressive and a bit hypnotic. I don't listen to audio at bedtime myself (I tend to read when sleeping alone) but I think they might potentially be the sort of thing you're looking for? (My own favourite episodes are Gasometers and Asterix Puns..)
...Sleep tight!
Sometimes I wonder about how abnormal it is how much time most people spend by themselves. People often listen to audiobooks while doing chores, exercise, or commutes, which would all have been historically have been much more social activities. Unless you were a literal hermit, in most societies you would just spend way more time around people while doing menial tasks, even if that just meant overhearing conversation.
There's a temptation to want to toughen up and spend all that time in silence, rather than trying to fill the air with recordings of voices that aren't really there. Listening to audiobooks, or most async communication, is kind of a strange activity if we look at the long stretch of human history. But even if recordings are not as real as real life, there's *something* social about reading someone's carefully chosen prose.
So if someone opposes audiobooks, why be so ascetic? If the decision to doing chores alone is doing them with a group of friends, the choice is pretty clearly the latter. But usually the choice is do chores alone in silence or with a book playing, and the insisting on the former seems kind of bent on maximizing aloneness.