OK the link in "But don’t whine about it because I don’t want to be a lame edgelord." is funny! Either you fixed it or it's some crazy artifact of RSS but I got this link: http://127.0.0.1:4000/plans/#5
Seems good to me!
Lastly, I'm all in on simple and boring being good. It really hit me when someone once mentioned being a human 5,000 years ago. What were your worries? That you didn't get eaten like your uncle? Other than that, find some food, sit by the fire and look at the sky.
- The amount of tolerable speed up depends heavily on the author and their writing style; many are interminable below 2x, others incomprehensible above it.
- It’s common for voice actors slash people with media training to intentionally slow down their rate of speech, far below your natural reading speed.
- You shouldn’t be reading for deep understanding on your first pass of a book anyway, because most books suck.
This reminds me of when I found out a reviewer watched TV shows at 1.25-1.5x times speed. Their reasoning was because there was so many things to watch or review. Since then, I've essentially written them off. It just struck me as incredibly distasteful. How can you review or discuss media and your enjoyment if you have so little respect for it that you won't give it your proper attention? Mind you, I also do this to some extent, occasionally I'll eat food or check phone notifications, but speeding things up feels so much worse.
My guess as to why it feels so wrong is that you could just choose to consume media at its intended pace, and engage with it more deeply. Watching it at 1.25-1.5x has just done so much to rob you of the intended experience. I think 'Ccc' maybe getting at a similar thing. Consuming books as audio sped-up just converts the experience so much more into 'slop' that you don't need to actively think about. If you want that, why choose to disrespect a great book by retaining less information in a medium that wasn't intended by the author, instead of listening to a podcast? I guess its fine if you're reading trashy romance novels or YA dystopias. But, it feels so gross to consume a good book this way. I certainly wouldn't trust their opinions on it either.
I haven't read the other comments so maybe someone beat me to it, but:
I basically hold CCC's position to some degree, but let me elaborate:
Many different activities "reduce" existential angst. Some are durable, some are not. Put "meditation" on one end of the axis and "take a huge dose of heroin" on the other end. Both reduce existential angst.
Something I do to reduce existential angst is move around a lot and try to "get a lot done". This does in fact reduce my existential angst in the moment, but it's actually counterproductive: It would be much better for me if I could sit quietly, reflect on the fact that I don't in fact need to "do" anything, and emerge from my quiet reflection more at peace and able to move through the day.
It's possible that listening to an audiobook on high speed is kinda like the last paragraph. I don't know for sure, but I think that's the strong version of CCC's argument
Surely the question is, does listening to audiobooks at 1.5 or 2x speed actually lower your comprehension? The psychos have done some lab research on this, and apparently it doesn't:
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.
Very interesting—maybe now in late modernity we use parasocial relationships as a substitute for what we're used to having as normal social relationships? (It sounds kinds of dystopian phrased that way, but I basically agree with you that it isn't.)
I think you're absolutely right about all of this, and your points about modern solitude are really good points - but I'm not sure that anybody does actually oppose audiobooks!
I think Person C (and, if we're being charitable, possibly also Person A..) merely oppose listening to audiobooks specifically at 2x speed and specifically as a replacement for podcasts, on the grounds that when listened to this way they don't work so well as a mitigation for loneliness (or if you prefer, "existential solitude"..) and also don't really work as literature - and so overall the advice that people stop listening to podcasts which are free, ad-free, subscription-free, and which the person actually enjoys, in favour of 2x speed audiobooks which the person will have to pay for and/or commit to a long-term paid subscription to but probably won't get much enjoyment from as either a mitigation against loneliness or as an art form, is mostly bad advice. Nothing whatsoever against 1x speed audiobooks, nor against other forms of spoken word, to mitigate against loneliness!
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..)
I do agree that somehow a 1x audiobook feels somehow "healthier" than a 2x audiobook, although I think they're both fine as far as human activities go.
(I tried listening to a couple of the Boring Talks. They were, uhhh, really boring.)
What on earth makes 1x the "correct" speed? The people I know who have a habit of listening to sped-up audiobooks say it's because they consistently find 1x unpleasantly slow, much slower than the rate at which they would naturally read the book. I also find 1x unpleasantly slow though it doesn't matter because I find audiobooks at any speed too unpleasant to ever listen to them in the first place. Very weird to assume that everyone should always absorb a book at exactly the speed at which it was recorded, whatever that happened to be.
Not sure if that's a rhetorical question or directed at me specifically. But if the latter, I must point out that I'm the person who wrote a whole blog post defending the idea of sped up audiobook.
(Actually, to build on your point, I suspect many people naturally read faster than a typical audiobook is recorded. I certainly do. Although I couldn't absorb an audiobook at the same average speed, I can believe others could.)
Rhetorical, but also you did say you had the intuition that 1x “feels healthier”, even if you don’t stand by it rationally. So I wanted to protest this intuition. I don’t disagree with any of your actual arguments :P
I'm not sure I'd have described 2x audiobooks as "less healthy"; merely that you're going to somewhat more trouble and expense to experience something that does the exact same job but with somewhat less appreciation/enjoyment - though I suppose, now you mention it, the underlying idea that "volume of consumption per unit time" is the right way to think about literature (or most things we care about, for that matter..) could probably be described as unhealthy, in maybe a consumerist-society or in a wireheading sorta way..
"Fine" in the sense that it's harmless so if that's what you enjoy, have at it? Sure. "Fine" in the sense that advising people they should do other stuff less, in order to do this instead, is generally good advice? 'fraid I'm with Persons A & C on that one..
(Sorry for my bad recommendation regarding the Boring Talks!)
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.
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?
Yeah, I guess each person has to figure out where to draw their personal threshold on the sleeping/wireheading spectrum. Personally, when I am uncomfortable with silence, such that I need constant accompaniment, it's usually been a sign of something else wrong in my life that I need to deal with!
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
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
OK the link in "But don’t whine about it because I don’t want to be a lame edgelord." is funny! Either you fixed it or it's some crazy artifact of RSS but I got this link: http://127.0.0.1:4000/plans/#5
Seems good to me!
Lastly, I'm all in on simple and boring being good. It really hit me when someone once mentioned being a human 5,000 years ago. What were your worries? That you didn't get eaten like your uncle? Other than that, find some food, sit by the fire and look at the sky.
Tangent:
- The amount of tolerable speed up depends heavily on the author and their writing style; many are interminable below 2x, others incomprehensible above it.
- It’s common for voice actors slash people with media training to intentionally slow down their rate of speech, far below your natural reading speed.
- You shouldn’t be reading for deep understanding on your first pass of a book anyway, because most books suck.
This reminds me of when I found out a reviewer watched TV shows at 1.25-1.5x times speed. Their reasoning was because there was so many things to watch or review. Since then, I've essentially written them off. It just struck me as incredibly distasteful. How can you review or discuss media and your enjoyment if you have so little respect for it that you won't give it your proper attention? Mind you, I also do this to some extent, occasionally I'll eat food or check phone notifications, but speeding things up feels so much worse.
My guess as to why it feels so wrong is that you could just choose to consume media at its intended pace, and engage with it more deeply. Watching it at 1.25-1.5x has just done so much to rob you of the intended experience. I think 'Ccc' maybe getting at a similar thing. Consuming books as audio sped-up just converts the experience so much more into 'slop' that you don't need to actively think about. If you want that, why choose to disrespect a great book by retaining less information in a medium that wasn't intended by the author, instead of listening to a podcast? I guess its fine if you're reading trashy romance novels or YA dystopias. But, it feels so gross to consume a good book this way. I certainly wouldn't trust their opinions on it either.
On how a joke works;; I think Jimmy Carr did it best during one of his gigs - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV5K3v0u1J8
It's sad when one of your favorite unhinged writers stops drinking 17 cups of coffee a day.
If you think I'm unhinged now...
I haven't read the other comments so maybe someone beat me to it, but:
I basically hold CCC's position to some degree, but let me elaborate:
Many different activities "reduce" existential angst. Some are durable, some are not. Put "meditation" on one end of the axis and "take a huge dose of heroin" on the other end. Both reduce existential angst.
Something I do to reduce existential angst is move around a lot and try to "get a lot done". This does in fact reduce my existential angst in the moment, but it's actually counterproductive: It would be much better for me if I could sit quietly, reflect on the fact that I don't in fact need to "do" anything, and emerge from my quiet reflection more at peace and able to move through the day.
It's possible that listening to an audiobook on high speed is kinda like the last paragraph. I don't know for sure, but I think that's the strong version of CCC's argument
EDIT I am noticing that someone made a similar argument below so mine is redundant
Redundancy is overrated! It's often helpful to hear similar arguments made in different ways.
Edit: Or do I mean underrated?
Surely the question is, does listening to audiobooks at 1.5 or 2x speed actually lower your comprehension? The psychos have done some lab research on this, and apparently it doesn't:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10648-024-09917-7
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.
Very interesting—maybe now in late modernity we use parasocial relationships as a substitute for what we're used to having as normal social relationships? (It sounds kinds of dystopian phrased that way, but I basically agree with you that it isn't.)
I think you're absolutely right about all of this, and your points about modern solitude are really good points - but I'm not sure that anybody does actually oppose audiobooks!
I think Person C (and, if we're being charitable, possibly also Person A..) merely oppose listening to audiobooks specifically at 2x speed and specifically as a replacement for podcasts, on the grounds that when listened to this way they don't work so well as a mitigation for loneliness (or if you prefer, "existential solitude"..) and also don't really work as literature - and so overall the advice that people stop listening to podcasts which are free, ad-free, subscription-free, and which the person actually enjoys, in favour of 2x speed audiobooks which the person will have to pay for and/or commit to a long-term paid subscription to but probably won't get much enjoyment from as either a mitigation against loneliness or as an art form, is mostly bad advice. Nothing whatsoever against 1x speed audiobooks, nor against other forms of spoken word, to mitigate against loneliness!
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!
I do agree that somehow a 1x audiobook feels somehow "healthier" than a 2x audiobook, although I think they're both fine as far as human activities go.
(I tried listening to a couple of the Boring Talks. They were, uhhh, really boring.)
What on earth makes 1x the "correct" speed? The people I know who have a habit of listening to sped-up audiobooks say it's because they consistently find 1x unpleasantly slow, much slower than the rate at which they would naturally read the book. I also find 1x unpleasantly slow though it doesn't matter because I find audiobooks at any speed too unpleasant to ever listen to them in the first place. Very weird to assume that everyone should always absorb a book at exactly the speed at which it was recorded, whatever that happened to be.
Not sure if that's a rhetorical question or directed at me specifically. But if the latter, I must point out that I'm the person who wrote a whole blog post defending the idea of sped up audiobook.
(Actually, to build on your point, I suspect many people naturally read faster than a typical audiobook is recorded. I certainly do. Although I couldn't absorb an audiobook at the same average speed, I can believe others could.)
Rhetorical, but also you did say you had the intuition that 1x “feels healthier”, even if you don’t stand by it rationally. So I wanted to protest this intuition. I don’t disagree with any of your actual arguments :P
I'm not sure I'd have described 2x audiobooks as "less healthy"; merely that you're going to somewhat more trouble and expense to experience something that does the exact same job but with somewhat less appreciation/enjoyment - though I suppose, now you mention it, the underlying idea that "volume of consumption per unit time" is the right way to think about literature (or most things we care about, for that matter..) could probably be described as unhealthy, in maybe a consumerist-society or in a wireheading sorta way..
"Fine" in the sense that it's harmless so if that's what you enjoy, have at it? Sure. "Fine" in the sense that advising people they should do other stuff less, in order to do this instead, is generally good advice? 'fraid I'm with Persons A & C on that one..
(Sorry for my bad recommendation regarding the Boring Talks!)
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.
Fall of Civilizations is good, but astrophysics lectures from YouTube are even better.
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
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?
Yeah, I guess each person has to figure out where to draw their personal threshold on the sleeping/wireheading spectrum. Personally, when I am uncomfortable with silence, such that I need constant accompaniment, it's usually been a sign of something else wrong in my life that I need to deal with!
thank you for this content! very distracting from my current crisis. :>
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
money good, actually
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
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