OT: Speed reading

[Charles Hixson]

On 08/30/2012 06:09 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 03:04:58 +0200
> "bearophile"<bearophileHUGS at lycos.com>  wrote:
>
>> Walter Bright:
>>
>>> Speed reading works fine when reading a bestseller novel. It's
>>> a complete failure at reading intellectually dense material.
>>
>> But if the novel you have speed read was very good you have
>> missed most of the enjoyment. It's like eating a very good
>> traditional handmade ice cream: if you gulp it down in few
>> seconds you miss most of the point of eating it :)
>
> Mostly because the headache you'll inevitably endure will divert all
> your attention away from the taste! :)
>
If speed reading gives you a headache, either you're doing it wrong, or 
you need your eyes checked.  Probably the latter.

OTOH, it isn't pleasurable.  The only use I ever had for it was reading 
text in classes I didn't want to take, where I couldn't have forced 
myself to read the text while thinking about it.  (So it had better NOT 
be information dense.)  Note that good speed reading requires sufficient 
concentration, that one gets neither pleasure nor "disgust" from it.  (I 
don't know what the correct antonym for pleasure is in this context, but 
it isn't pain.)  I believe that if one were to do it for very long that 
it would cease to be any more stressful than other things requiring 
intense concentration.  I don't believe that it would ever be pleasurable.

FWIW, it's been decades since I've speed read for more than a page or 
two.  I like to understand what I'm reading, not just absorb it as raw 
sensory input.