I use the same youtube plugin mentioned in the article, and watch many videos at 2.5x-3.0x speed, for the exact reason that you state. There is a lot of "filler" content that I either a) already know or b) is not relevant to what I'm trying to learn. I'm really just trying to get through that content quickly. When I get to some really dense portion though, I will turn the speed down to 1x to learn it.
> When I get to some really dense portion though, I will turn the speed down to 1x to learn it.
An alternative that often works is to open the transcript and simply read it. If you find something unclear you can click to jump to that point. Coursera classes have this feature too.
Obviously doesn't work for everything, but it's especially useful when you want to know more about a subject you already know about (say a programming language you've used but never formally learnt).
If I can't do this I usually just close the tab -- the information rate of a video is typically quite low.
I've noticed that I'm fairly unusual in my generation (late millennial) in that I strongly prefer to consume information through reading compared to listening or watching. My brothers and friends and girlfriend all love stuff like podcasts or casual YouTube watching, but I find that the increased effort needed to arbitrarily change speed or skip around always makes me end up not retaining or enjoying the content I consume as much.
It depends on the type of information, for me. I love podcasts (history, policy, some news) but when I'm trying to research a topic or find instructions on something, or that kind of thing, I also vastly prefer text. Kind of drives me crazy when the most relevant source I can find is a 15 minute youtube video explaining something that could be distilled into a paragraph of text.
I particularly miss the feeling of being in control: with text I can skip scan, reread and so on with just an eye motion.
The first time I encountered the concept of a 3xer was in the context of political radicalization, people infusing their mind with YouTube self-radicalization content on 3x (or higher) every day. My mind conjured up images of Malcolm McDowell in that A Clockwork Orange scene, only that it's self-inflicted and with content aiming at the exact opposite.
Same. Especially Youtube videos explaining and showing something really simple that takes like 5 seconds but they go on for 10-15 minutes. I suspect it has something to do with Youtubes algorithms that encourages creators to make long videos.
In part. There was definitely a 10 min target time for a long while.
However, a lot of TV shows - particularly USA ones seem to needlessly repeat everything like there running a lecture for amnesiacs. Here's what we're going to say in the first part, here's the first part, we say what we said we would, now a recap, then a break so we review the whole first part ... now we're 10 minutes into the show and we've seen about two minutes of unique footage. It's harrowing -- I'll take overdrawn explanations in preference to that.
I'm familiar with the technique, and if the TV shows were educational it might be reasonable - but the content is inane trash (or to be more charitable, not things anyone has need to remember). It's like "we have 5 minutes of footage of Dave and Julie flipping this house; here's a 45 minute show".
I would add for practical skills (including some research!) videos and podcasts seem to offer more feedback. Nobody in a book ever tells me what a flange or spline or baulk ring actually is, nobody in a video does either, but in the latter I get to see it and make my own, usually fit-for-current-purpose, inferences.
Closer personal example: I spent weeks trying to bully a supervised machine learning approach into a reinforcement learning one, because the 800-page reference book I used (that claims to cover all machine learning, and is well regarded!) in no way acknowledges the existence of this sub field. For whatever reason, and across multiple fields, I've never found static text to be good at "here's what you should be looking for", and I don't think it's reasonable to discount that knowledge as being valuable.
I've long since come the the conclusion that most 800-page texts are terrible.
Nearly all very-large-texts I've read on technical subjects are poorly written. The early and later sections seem to have little relation to each other; Some parts will be too general and other parts too vague. It's like the author totally loses perspective.
There's a sweet spot of around 250 A5 pages where a subject can maintain consistent scope and have meaningful relationships between chapters.
Are you ? After all, YouTube is a recent phenomenon for us, and we've even known a time without widespread Internet when knowledge was still overwhelmingly in books...
In addition to what you're saying, it can also be _harder_ to watch something at 1x speed. I've found that at 1.25x-1.5x my mind is more engaged. If it's too slow, I start thinking about other things and end up getting less from the video.
I find this true on podcasts; I'm normally a 1.3-1.5x person listening to podcasts, except "No Such Thing as a Fish". That one I go slower on, just because they seem to talk quite quickly, comparatively.
I think the slowness of the videos is for non-english speakers. Meaning people who can understand english to a point, but aren't using english every day.
Some years ago when I used to play games there was these awesome guides to some hard challenges a guy made where he was speaking pretty fast because there was a lot to cover and it was narrated over live footage. It was perfectly understandable to me, but the comment section was full of complains about the speed and how it was too hard to follow. This to me suggests that most of people would prefer if you paused the action to make your point slowly and after that continued with the footage.
yes, but that's an option you need to select. Normal people aren't going to even try searching for an option like that. Also it was 8 years ago, so I don't know if that was an option back then and in any case that would slowdown the footage as well.
I also have this problem (it might be related to my ADHD). 2x speed (with occasional pauses/rewinds) works much better for my retention; I've often explicitly noticed myself not paying attention and learning nothing at 1x.
I agree with this, though it depends on what you're learning and what you already know.
For example, I do not care for videos about code. I'm experienced in that domain and I want to get right into the meat of things: scroll to the appropriate paragraph, see the example I'm looking for, and move one.
I could see why a beginner would need a slower pace with more "filler" explanation and background information. Videos are a nice format for this, because they allow one to just sit back like we did at school and take in the information.
But that's only considering programming. Other domains are better suited to videos. For example, visual arts in general: painting, photography, filmmaking... I couldn't imagine explaining a picture with words only, or a human interaction with pictures only. Perhaps when I have more experience, but for now, I like videos.
> I could see why a beginner would need a slower pace with more "filler" explanation and background information.
But that's what links are for - allowing you to deduplicate information by merely providing a link to some other content instead of replicating it entirely.
Moreover, you don't know each beginner's background or desired pace. "Fixing" a certain set of information into the video is worse than providing the appropriate links that allow the beginner to read exactly what they're unfamiliar with, and videos hard-code the pace in a way that written material is not - they're the opposite of what a beginner needs.
> Videos are a nice format for this, because they allow one to just sit back like we did at school and take in the information.
The article specifically addresses this - passive consumption (which better describes videos than reading) is scientifically shown to be less effective for learning than active consumption:
> One study[1] found that active learning makes students think they’re learning less even when they’re actually learning more. That’s one reason why, even though they’re less effective, lectures have persisted for so long.
> Other domains are better suited to videos.
The parent comment ("It is more that these days everything is a video.") wasn't taking any issue with the fact that some things are represented as videos, but that everything is. Of course most filmmaking education (modulo some stuff like maybe an introduction to optics) is best done by video - but nobody is complaining about that.
Also, in terms of education, these subjects, while they exist, are a minority. The majority of stuff you learn in school is better done in a non-video format. Not a text format - diagrams and interactive simulation are incredibly valuable for understanding. But, specifically, video is almost exactly the opposite of a good format for learning most things.
It is just sad when I you search for "how to do X in Linux" you get a video in search results first and only second some article where you can actually copy-paste the commands
