Re: speed reading

On May 4, 7:20 am, Sea Wasp <seawaspObvi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
dwight.thi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On May 3, 5:43 pm, Sea Wasp <seawaspObvi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

dwight.thi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On May 3, 11:07 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

<dwight.thi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1178197392.223350.46640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

On May 3, 12:39 am, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

<dwight.thi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

news:1178161975.323286.124500@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And further (I've asked for this several times now) why don't you
provide some citations of your own? That would shut this discussion
down real quick. Could it be that you are unable to find any
citations?

Citations about how *I* read? Sure, read my previous posts, and pretend
they were published in a journal.

Mike, you're usually pretty reasonable; why are you doing this? I've
asked several times now and I'll ask again: why should I trust your
reported subjective experiences over real research?

Because the resarch wasn't done on *me*.

So you're saying you're the one guy they missed? You're the exception
that proves the rule?

No, he's certainly not alone.

Their research is simply not covering the way everyone reads. Simple
as that.

Given that they've tested I don't know how many thousands or tens of
thousands of people over the years, you're trying to tell me it just
so happens that all these extraordinary readers just happen to
participate in rec.arts.sf.written?

Don't you think that's a bit . . . implausible?

I don't care. Implausibility does not matter when it runs into facts.

The speed -- and comprehension -- capabilities I have displayed are
not in doubt. I have demonstrated them to other people on dozens of
occasions. In school I demonstrated them constantly. I took reading
comprehension tests which many people needed an hour for and finished
them in 10 minutes -- with perfect scores. In school I never needed
more than 20 minutes to finish any test that didn't require a lot of
longhand writing, because I could read the questions and know the
answer essentially instantaneously; the limiting factor was how fast I
could mark the right box or circle the right answer or scribble a
quick answer on the fill-in line.

Further, you are leaving out the most obvious explanation: you may
subjectively feel as if you understand everything you've read, but how
do you know that this is in fact the case? The answer is, you don't.

The answer is, I do. I can't show YOU at this point, but there have
been dozens of times I've demonstrated my recall to other people --
correcting them about plot details, accurately quoting passages, and
so on.

So, iow, you don't have anything to show me. And you want me to
believe you in spite of some rather implausibly high odds against it.

Care to put a few numbers on those odds? 1,000,000 to 1?
1,000,000,000 to 1?


Your arguments will get nowhere with me because I have had objective
outside verification of my capabilities. I therefore have no
particular reason to doubt these other people who claim similar
capabilities.

This is part of what I mean by a serious deficiency in how science is
done. _You_ made the claim. _You_ have to defend it.

Why do you think there is any burden of proof running in the other
direction?

As I said, bizarre.

Why should you be different? Do you think these other tested readers
had different reasons for believing they were comprehending all of the
material?

They may have been told that they'd be tested on comprehension, and
therefore slowed down.

I don't do that, but most people would.


Oh. So then, if you were tested, and it was found out that in cold
hard fact that you didn't perform nearly as well as you thought you
did, that would be because of the test?

Well, that's what those ESP dudes said, to.


I don't know the reason -- though since all you give is the AVERAGE,
it doesn't mean much without a standard deviation. I'm four standard
deviations above the mean in IQ tests (which means, of course, I'm
very good at taking such tests, and not much else) -- so what's four
standard deviations faster than the average in their tests?

If you don't have THAT answer, then you simply have absolutely NO WAY
of saying whether my reading speed is improbable or commonplace.

I would guess that, like you, they 'knew' that they had

retained most everything, it was just that obvious, that they could
recall details even many months or years later that other people
couldn't, etc.

It is pretty obvious when you are tested on it in school, or by
someone else who knows the material, and finds you also know it as
well as they do -- better in some places.

Notice, btw, that I don't question in the slightest that anyones'
purported reading speed. Why is that? Well, it's because I'm
assuming that when most people report their figures, they use a clock,
they note the time when they start, when they stop, and the
difference. Iow, an _objective_ measure.

Put the shoe on the other foot - suppose that you timed yourself, came
back with a figure of 800 wpm, based upon reading two pages of
material in 58 seconds and a careful word count. Suppose then I said
that couldn't possibly be true, that you must have misread the clock.

I would imagine that your response would be quite a bit different than
it is now; that, in fact, you would (quite rightly) be ridiculing me
for refusing to accept an _objective_ measurement.

No, because in both cases you're in the same position; you didn't see
me do it and I have no one there to verify that I did it as I stated.
You also have no one objectively verifying that after I read at that
speed, I then also demonstrated comprehensive knowledge of the book.

Sigh. For about the thousandth time, this is about the quality of
subjective vs objective measurements. Let me try another example.

We know that by objective clock measurements that no one so far has
been timed running 100 meters in less than 9.5 seconds. Suppose you
claimed that you ran 100 meters in 7.5 seconds. I would be
skeptical. I would ask did you run a measured 100 meters, you didn't
just pace it out or eyeball it. Yes you reply, I actually took a 10-
meter tape and very precisely measured it out, in fact, measured it
out 20 times and took the average of those measurements. Maybe
they're off by a half-centimeter, but certainly by not as much as a
full centimeter. That's pretty good, I say. Now, what sort of clock
did you use to time yourself? Clock, you reply. I didn't use a
clock, I counted off the seconds in my head.

But that's a completely subjective measure, I say. Nope. You're
quite firm. Your method of timekeeping was quite accurate. Further,
you had friends who counted off the times with you. Sure, there was
some spread, but you're "real sure" that you and your friends couldn't
be off by as much as a whole second.

So. If you were in my shoes, would you believe 100 meters in less than
8 seconds? Or would you be somewhat skeptical? What would you think
of this firm belief that counting off times in your head is perfectly
ok?




(note also that it depends on what you read for. Someone once posted
a list of things they might have tested on, as a teacher, to see if
someone had actually read "Starship Troopers"; most of them were
things that I looked at and said "I wouldn't have CARED about that, so
I wouldn't remember it".)

.

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