There's some fascinating research by Rachel Griffith which shows that advertising can be significantly welfare reducing for not only customers, but also for companies themselves (they just overall make lower money taken together); it is just another dimension of competition, like pricing/positioning, and adding a meaningful dimension is costly.
How do you actually speedread? And how much time does this take for about a 200 page book? I really like the explaining to friends part; wonder if you could give me a couple of examples of specific books where you did this.
Almost all my books are pdfs so I just load them in the reader and then navigate using the spacebar. I mostly focus on headings, asides highlight, the first and last lines of each paragraph, the figures. The goal is to familiarize myself with the structure of the book and some of the concepts, so I tend to skip examples, stories, and techniques. It’s about 3 to 15 seconds for a page, but I can linger on a section I like.
As for explanations, they tend to be contextual. So if someone tells me they have issue with time management, I can briefly explain the gtd method. If someone tells me about some habit they’re trying to follow, I advise to use the atomic habits principles. I also have a few WhatsApp groups spanning my interests, so I can share there too. I keep the explanations short and expand if asked.
I had kindles for a while until I read that the higher resolution on ipad makes it as easier on the eye and is possibly more important than lesser light on e-ink. Ultimately I settled on the ipad due to the amazing pencil and versatility while reading pdfs of papers/color material, and the ability to search on device far more easily. I've often wanted to switch easily between reading and listening but nothing seems to provide that.
If it's a passage, I usually input it manually, which can be a pain.
But it's more common for me to just ask general questions. For example, when confused about a term, I asked "In Thoughts on the Funding System and Its Effects from 1824, what did Piercy Ravenstone mean by a sinking funding system?"
Sometimes, it needs a lot more context to output anything that makes sense.
well sometimes Fortnite is in the menu, so why have many screens?? ;)
With that said around 2017 I was living in a tiny apartment in London (then moved to a bigger one). The space was 25-30sqm so.. not much room. I bought a second-hand 40" TV, and used it for both work, play, netflix/hbo, etc. Although I prefer Fortnite on 'smaller' (below 35") screens.
Two big things immediately:
1. I often ask it to summarize specific chapters or parts of the book after a particular point because the book has started feeling repititive from that point; and then I go into rabbit holes about that content
2. I ask ChatGPT to find related podcasts/content online for specific parts of the book
This reminds me of the search engine aggregators in the old days that used to somehow install themselves on internet explorer and then collected search results from multiple providers and sometimes compared them. I wonder if this time these tools will persist.
