Speed reading is like speed sex... Choose between 1 hour with 1 person or 1 minute with 60 people? Okay I get that you might prefer 20 minutes with 3 people and that's fair.
Everyone can learn to read faster and everyone can claim to understand what they read. However, is that all there is to reading? There are things like imagery, sounds, feelings, etc and they can be invaluable both for the enjoyment axis and for the comprehension axis. Not to mention that I couldn't care less about your comprehension 5 minutes after the fact. Come back to me in a week and tell me how much you remember.
But let's look at these often forgotten parts of reading!
Imagery. IRL you can become over-whelmed by visual stimuli. This means there's a limited bandwidth there. Since we're mostly visual creatures there's a lot of bandwidth there but it's still quite finite(If you want convincing participate in one of those visual research experiments). When you read faster, you should expect more of this bandwidth to be taken up. As a consequence your brain will take shortcuts to minimize load and stress. It may feel like you're seeing it all but you probably aren't. It's the fast system of your brain working. The slow part of your system is taking a vacation.
Yes, you can improve your temporal resolution but not by much. Sounds are a lot like imagery.
Emotions. We are bio-chemical systems and there's a time scale over which emotions happen. They won't take place any faster. If you are like me and you care about emotions when reading, you will slow down (All I get from speed-reading is a fast-beating heart and stress quite like the stress in one of those visual labs).
Consider this. Emotions are very important for long-term memory (which is probably the most important part of reading some kind of technical text). By reading very fast you are cutting your emotions short if they happen at all. You effectively average out your emotions. It might not feel like it because you are still experiencing the peaks and valleys but they are smaller and you'll never know it. Memories are formed better when the emotions are stronger.
Speed-reading is just another phenomenon in a series of maximizations along one dimension by disregarding full the effects it has the other dimensions. Other phenomenons are known as texting, facebooking, etc. Okay, these kinds of things have their place but the more we do them, the easier it is to let them take over our lives. Our brains are not designed that way. I just find it hard to justify calling it "I read x wps" when it's more so "I lossy-scan the page and get the jist of it while stressing over my speed".
Everyone can learn to read faster and everyone can claim to understand what they read. However, is that all there is to reading? There are things like imagery, sounds, feelings, etc and they can be invaluable both for the enjoyment axis and for the comprehension axis. Not to mention that I couldn't care less about your comprehension 5 minutes after the fact. Come back to me in a week and tell me how much you remember.
But let's look at these often forgotten parts of reading!
Imagery. IRL you can become over-whelmed by visual stimuli. This means there's a limited bandwidth there. Since we're mostly visual creatures there's a lot of bandwidth there but it's still quite finite(If you want convincing participate in one of those visual research experiments). When you read faster, you should expect more of this bandwidth to be taken up. As a consequence your brain will take shortcuts to minimize load and stress. It may feel like you're seeing it all but you probably aren't. It's the fast system of your brain working. The slow part of your system is taking a vacation.
Yes, you can improve your temporal resolution but not by much. Sounds are a lot like imagery.
Emotions. We are bio-chemical systems and there's a time scale over which emotions happen. They won't take place any faster. If you are like me and you care about emotions when reading, you will slow down (All I get from speed-reading is a fast-beating heart and stress quite like the stress in one of those visual labs).
Consider this. Emotions are very important for long-term memory (which is probably the most important part of reading some kind of technical text). By reading very fast you are cutting your emotions short if they happen at all. You effectively average out your emotions. It might not feel like it because you are still experiencing the peaks and valleys but they are smaller and you'll never know it. Memories are formed better when the emotions are stronger.
Speed-reading is just another phenomenon in a series of maximizations along one dimension by disregarding full the effects it has the other dimensions. Other phenomenons are known as texting, facebooking, etc. Okay, these kinds of things have their place but the more we do them, the easier it is to let them take over our lives. Our brains are not designed that way. I just find it hard to justify calling it "I read x wps" when it's more so "I lossy-scan the page and get the jist of it while stressing over my speed".