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I very much agree and it saddens me often when I see folks dial it up to 1.5x or 2x "because it is boring otherwise". They might think they just get as much, only in half the time, but I'd hypothesize that they retain less because the mind needs some time to digest.

Similar with the trend to auto-cut pauses that speakers make, just to cram in more text into a youtube video. Destroys not just the pacing but any chance for the mind to take its time.

I'd love to see studies about this.

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When I’m understimulated by a teacher, my mind wanders. I’ll start thinking about something else entirely. When my mind comes back, I’ll have missed a couple minutes of content. I can overcome this with willpower, but doing so is exhausting.

Playing videos at 1.5-2x fixes the problem entirely. My attention is held without any effort.

If a concept is new or difficult enough, I just slow the video back down or pause it whenever I need to think things through.

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I don't think you can make blanket statements. Consider:

1. Teacher 1 speaks at 100 words per minute.

2. Teacher 2 speaks at 50 words per minute, for the exact same content as Teacher 1.

You're not really losing anything by playing Teacher 1 at normal speed vs Teacher 2 at 2x speed. For every learner, there will be an optimal teaching speed for a given topic. This may mean listening to some audio at normal speed, some at higher speeds, and some even at slower speeds. I always customise my playback speed to the specific content I'm trying to learn.

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It's not about the rate of speaking but rather about what is actually being spoken. I am currently going through the Neetcode DSA course and it's just obnoxious. His video on Union Find, a 15 LoC algorithm, is 20 minutes.
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There's a difference between pacing (good), and repetitive speech (bad). Between pacing and repetitive speech.
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Ironically, spaced repetition is the key to successful learning.

Obviously one can overdo it. And there is variance in what people require. But not giving things time, instead giving in to the dopamine-craving, that's killing your learning abilities.

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Repeating a sentence twice in a row during an explanation, is not spaced repetition at all. Spaced repetition means testing recall at increasing intervals, usually starting 1 day apart.

"Paris is the capital of France. Paris is the capital of France" -> not spaced repetition.

"Paris is the capital of France. [one day later]. What is the capital of France? [three days later] What is the capital of France?" -> spaced repetition.

And in fact, it's this plus practice where the real value lies in learning and memorising. The only purpose of an explanation from a teacher is to help you understand the concept. Generally once you understand it once, you don't need to understand it again - unless you forget, and that's where the practice / spaced repetition comes in. That's why I prefer the teaching part to be as efficient as possible, so I can focus my limited time on the parts that will make me internalise it.

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