u/hn-mc

So far I've only tried the weakest Zyn (1.5 mg, available in Europe). I like how it feels, it's not a strong buzz, but it's good enough, to wake me up a bit when I don't want to drink more coffee, or to improve my mood a bit when I feel bad. I don't take it often. Max twice a day so far, but many days I don't take any at all.

Now I am wondering if the differences of strength only matter if you're dependent, so you need a stronger one for the same effect, or on any level of dependence (or lack thereof), you can experiment with different strengths for different effects? Do you always go with the same strength or you pick different strengths for different needs?

What is basically the difference between how 1.5, 3, 6, or 11 mg feels?

When I say "fast reader" I mean anyone who reads more than 300 words per minute, especially if it is over 400 WPM.

I am asking this because I am a slow reader and I literally do not understand how fast reading works.

I am a 120 WPM guy.

I will describe to you my process in detail, and I hope you can describe your process in as much detail as well. So here we go. (You can skip the rest of this article if you don't care about my phenomenology of slow reading. I opened this thread because I am curious about your fast reading phenomenology, and this description of mine serves just as an example of what kind of detailed account I am looking for)

First of all not all reading is the same. Sometimes I just skim, scan, or read a bit faster just to obtain information. I can do it unconsciously without even noticing. For example when I am scrolling I often just read titles and parts of posts I find interesting. I get a dopamine hit from scrolling / reading about the information I find interesting. In this process I am the boss, text is the slave. I do not pay due respect to the text, I just take from it what I want, what I find interesting. In this mode of reading I don't know exactly what my WPM is, but I think it would probably be faster, but not drastically faster than my regular WPM. To calculate WPM honestly and properly for this type of reading you would have to count only those words of the text I actually read. So if I read just bits and pieces that comprise 20% of the article, you should only count these 20% of the words. Since total word count in this mode is rather slow, the resulting WPM, even if it is faster than in standard reading it is still relatively low, when properly calculated. Anyway, even in this mode, and in any other mode of reading as well, I actually voice each word that I read in my mind. They become a part of my inner monologue, and I can actually HEAR every single word PROPERLY pronounced in my head, before I move on to the next word.

Now the second more of reading is "reading proper". This is when I take an article, a book, a short story or whatever, and I want to read the whole thing. Regarding voicing words in my head, obviously this happens in this mode of reading as well. I hear every word properly pronounced, before I move to the next. I do not actually speak the words, not even slightly with my mouth. My mouth is shut and I am perfectly silent. But my brain produces sounds that I can actually hear in my mind. My brain simulates pronunciation of each word.

Now the difference is, that in "reading proper", the text is the boss, and I am the slave. If I want to be able to claim that I have read something properly, I can only honestly claim it if I have, to the best of my knowledge, actually read every single word that exists in the text, from start to finish. Now, let's get into details. In "reading proper", I am reading everything... both interesting and boring parts. Since it is rare that I find the whole text interesting, I will have to go through many boring parts as well. When reading such material, I am not getting my dopamine. So my WPM falls a bit, and reading becomes effortful. Now, when it comes to decoding meaning, when I read I try to decode ALL the meaning that is there that I am able to decode. If they mention 5 things in a sentence, my mind tries to parse all of them, and to imagine all of them and to process the meaning of all of them. Now of course, I will not be able to decode the entire text. Sometimes I will bump into words that I don't know, and I will have to guess their meaning and sometimes my guess will be incorrect. But when it comes to parts of text that consists of known words, my brain tries to get the whole thing. So if a sentence in the book says "She hit snooze on the alarm clock three times that morning which is a bit too much even for a habitual snooze hitter that she is, which can probably be explained by gin induced poor sleep she had previous night, but after a day like that, after soul drenching meetings with her always unpredictable boss prone to giving always unclear tasks and planning even less clear projects, the gin was essential for her sanity", my brain tries to get the whole information:

- that she hit snooze 3 times

- that it's too much even for her

- that she's a habitual snooze user

- that she slept poorly

- that it was because of gin

- that she had a terrible day at work the day before

- that it was because of meetings with her unpredictable boss

- and because of his unclear tasks

- and less clear projects

- that gin was, nevertheless essential for her sanity

This is what my brain tries to do by default. But hear me out now. Sometimes I read about this, all with vocalizing each word in my head. But I might at some point be thinking about something else. My brain will play those words in the foreground, and I will hear them, but I will not always listen. Sometimes I will be thinking about what I need to eat for dinner. Or about how long I have been reading, or about how many pages I've read in this session, or about some health issue, or about really anything. But the fact that I still did pronounce every single word in my mind will mean that even if I didn't give them my full attention, they have at least been partially processed.

But not paying attention is definitely an obstacle to good reading and it sometimes does happen to me. Sometimes when I catch myself doing this, or when I read a whole page and have no clue what I just read, I go back and re-read.

Also if I find that I don't understand what I am reading, I can feel myself stuck at a single point in the book and re-read a sentence or paragraph multiple times. When I am distracted, worried, or thinking about other things, I can be very slow.

When I am free from other worries, I read a bit faster. Also if material is easier and more engaging I read faster.

So basically depending on the type of content, how anxious or worried about other things I am, the size of letters and size of page, how tired I am, how difficult the text is, etc... I can read anywhere from 7-8 to 20 pages an hour.

But consider that in "reading proper", I am a slave. I want to read the whole thing as some kind of self imposed assignment. I mean, if i decided to read it, I want to read it. If I don't read the whole thing, the task is not done. I don't have to. But then I will not claim I've read it.

So when I encounter parts with which I struggle, I can slow down significantly. Those are obstacles.

Anyway, if I am reading 15 pages per hour, I consider this a solid pace for myself.

I typically read a bit SLOWER than audiobooks. Why? Because I want to get ALL the meaning. And if I am just walking (or running) through text without stops I will miss certain bits. That's why I am not a fan of audiobooks as they just go, go, go. But I am not like that when I read. When I am reading and if I catch myself thinking about dinner and not paying attention (which happens a lot), if I get a sense that I didn't get certain part, I'll go back and re-read it. I want to get the full message, that's it. If I am thinking about something else while listening to audiobook, the audiobook doesn't care, it just keeps going, what I missed, it's permanently lost, unless I rewind. And rewinding audiobooks is a killjoy, so for this reason audiobooks typically aren't for me, because I can't process information this fast if I want to get it fully, and I hate when I miss parts and can't catch up. If I am to follow and pay attention, I need to be engaged. I become less engaged if I lose the thread of what's going on.

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Jeste možda glupo pitanje, i ne impliciram ovim da su žene sponzoruše. Ali ipak svjestan sam da i one koje nisu sponzoruše možda ne htjele biti s nekim ko ne radi uopšte, živi s roditeljima i nema prebijene pare. Zato me zanima postoji li ta neka granica? I gdje je ona? Ja sam ponekad razmišljam o tome jer sam neko vrijeme bio nezaposlen, i imao sam taj trip kako ne mogu ponuditi ništa u materijalnom smislu, ne bi imao para da izdržavam djecu, itd. Sad imam posao, al stambeno pitanaje i dalje nije rješeno. Zanima me kako žene zaista gledaju na to?

Philosophers argue whether free will truly exist, in technical sense. Well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but except for some things, like criminal justice system, it's largely irrelevant. If free will doesn't exist, I guess our approach to criminals should be a little less harsh and more empathetic. But, other than that, actual existence of free will isn't that practically important.

But there are other important issues, which I think tend to be neglected:

1. Subjective feeling of free will (whether true or illusion). For example there have been situations in my life in which I felt lack of free will. Like when I am going to work, and I am at the last intersection before my workplace. Each morning I can decide to keep going straight, or to turn left, towards my office. Even though I can keep going forward, I feel as if some force compels me to turn left and go to work. At that point I realized how deterministic my behavior really is.

2. Agency (how agentic we are) - this is about to how much extent can we consciously arrange things in our life to go according to our plans. In many case a lot of things seem to be random. Like choice of friends, partners, college majors, careers, etc. Yes, we spend some time deliberating some of these choices, but many times a job or a relationship simply happens to us. And not only that - being too intentional about such things can sometimes be seen negatively, as cold and calculating.

3. Authenticity of will (to what extent my decisions come from my true desires) - If I spend 4 hours before bed scrolling, does it come from my deep core being, or is it evidence that my will was hijacked? I guess it's the later, because if I wrote an explicit plan what to do during the evening, I guess I would never write something like 10 PM - 2 AM - scrolling.

4. Free will and luck - how our free will, or lack thereof, sometimes decides important outcomes in our life. Like imagine a student who is not prepared for an exam, decides not to turn up for an exam. So he doesn't set an alarm clock, and decides to sleep in that morning. But for some reason he wakes up right on time so that he can go to take exam. And for some reason, as if his legs don't listen much to him, they take him to the college, and he turns up for the exam... and passes it. If his will was more free, he wouldn't not turn up, and would not pass the exam. So his deficient free will in this case proved lucky for him, while some other student who was in the same situation, didn't turn up, and didn't pass it. Now... if we consider that we can be foolish, that we can have destructive and self-sabotaging idea, like the idea not to turn up for an exam, then having a deficient free will would be an advantage in this situation, because our body wouldn't listen to us and wouldn't implement our crazy ideas. It would somehow make us go to exam anyway, so that we can pass it.

I'm speaking from experience. There have been times where some challenge felt insurmountable and I really wanted to give up. But some "force" compelled me to face the challenge anyway, and it usually produced good consequences. But at other times it didn't happen and I truly gave up, which often produced bad consequences.

So I'm wondering how important factor that is in determining major outcomes in life.

I know it's not a very scientific sounding question, but you all know what I mean.

Here are some concerning trends which are hard to reverse, that I'm noticing:

1. the loss of community. Less third places. More urbanization. Rural flight. In the cities on the other hand people are more atomized individuals. If you don't have a self-made social network of friends and acquaintances, you're pretty much left alone. You can live in a big apartment building and not know anyone.
2. One of the key things that made small communities real and thriving in the past was physical impossibility of interacting with those outside that community. So people were forced to orient towards each other. When you live in a village with 1000 people where any other settlement is too far away to go there daily, you're physically forced to orient towards these 1000 people, and they really become community. You have multiplex type connections with them. Your hairdresser is not only your hairdresser, but also for example a mother of your son's friend. And you'd call her on your family events, etc. So we had multiple different ties with the same people.

Now, when you live in a big city, you orient to a huge mass of people in that city, and with each person you typically just have a single tie. The hairdresser is just a hairdresser. When you go out of her shop she stops meaningfully existing for you.

But now more importantly... even when we live in a small village the Internet allows us to connect with people all over the world. So this physical impossibility of interaction with distant people that made small communities possible and thriving in the first place is removed. Now you can physically live in a village with 500 people, and your mind can be on Reddit, or on various Discord communities that consist of people from all around the world. So you're physically present in your village, but mentally absent.

This is, I think, an important insight. What made communities possible is not any special thing that those communities provided. It was the impossibility of interacting with anyone else. This restriction made communities possible. Once you remove it, communities lose a lot of their meaning. They become based just on economic functions and transactions.

3. At the same time you notice: the more urbanized, complex societies get, the more educated workforce, the more working women, the better healthcare, etc... (all things that are considered positive), the worse fertility you get. Seems like sort of self-correcting mechanism. Seems like nature says to us: you can't both have your cake and eat it. If you want a complex, developed society, such a society will eventually collapse due to demographics. And it's not some distant possibility. It's already happening big way in many places. Like, imagine in China, TFR is just around 1. This, over long term means, that population will be halving in each generation. Not only does it lead to much smaller and less complex civilizations over long term, but it also leads to numerous problems during that process. Like unfavorable ratio of workers to retirees, etc... It can look ugly.

(Though if we get AGI powered abundance, maybe work itself will be irrelevant - but then you get a different question: how will we redistribute all the wealth and abundance that robots make? How will you get UBI in societies that are strongly opposed to it)

P.S.

4. There's more to add. Even within families we grow more distant from each other. If everyone is staring at their own screen looking at content that algorithm curated for them specifically to maximize engagement, then we have very little topics in common. Your spouse, your parents, your children, can become stranger to you, even if you live under the same roof. Everyone lives in their own bubble.

5. Also there's a loss of social skills. In real world interactions, every interaction came with real world consequences. If you messed up in your village, or in your friend circle, you had a price to pay. That's why people cared about reputation, had to develop social skills, to negotiate, to be diplomatic, etc. On the Internet, there are way less consequences. You can say to anyone that they are idiot and nothing happens. Even if you get banned on one platform, you can (usually) open a new account. So we don't have to exercise any kind of social skills. This also makes us way more narcissistic and self-centered. The whole Interent and all the people there are kind of there just for our own entertainment. This can look so from such self-centered perspective.

Why are our societies age segregated? First of all, I don't think kids should be friends with adults. But I also don't think we should have permanent generational segregation. Right now we are mostly friends with just our own generation, plus or minus 5 to 10 years, at max. I, for example, even though I know them... am NOT a friend of my parents' friends. And I think it kind of sucks. I think parent should integrate children in full adult society when they turn 18 or 21. Similar as it was in War and Peace, where you had balls for debutants, and once someone is introduced to big society, they are a full member on equal terms.
So in the past you had 2 big age categories: kids - everyone under 18 or 21, and adults, everyone above this age. And within each of these groups, you could be a friend with any other person.
So the adult group was extremely wide... basically from 20 till death.
I think such system made people more socially skilled and better integrated with others. Now we are permanently stuck into our narrow age groups, and for this reason we have big generation gaps and misunderstanding even within families.
Of course parents have nothing to talk about with their adult children when they live in totally different worlds: hang out with different friends, watch different content, talk about different topics, care about different values and causes, etc.
But if a young gentleman / lady, was introduced to full adult society at the age of 21 and started, from this age hanging with other adults, the following could ensue:

1. the young could learn more about the dynamics of the adult society, their values, the ways they talk, the ways they joke, what they care about, etc... they would learn about the world they are inheriting from their parents in an organic way, by directly meshing with ti.
2. the old, by granting the same status and respect to young, once they turn 21, would be forced to attentively listen to them as their equals, so they would also learn about values, issues, cares, values, etc... of the new generation. Basically you'd have one single adult society that's tightly interconnected.

And you know what? They might be a minority, but such people, who from their early 20s successfully integrate with much older adults (like their parent's generation) do exist and they are much more socially skilled. Those are the fellas who keep in touch with relatives, who go to weddings, who know how to engage in small talk even with much older cousins, who skillfully talk about adult topics, and who present as full adults even when they are just 21, and so the adults also when they see their attitude, treat them likewise, because they see another adult in front of them.

But many youths don't manage that. They are stuck with their own generation in some sort of Peter Pan syndrome, or failure to launch... and even when they do launch, they can't spend 5 minutes in serious talk with someone older.

On the other hand you have precocious individuals like Sebastian Kurz, who managed to become a prime minister, and had to mesh with a lot of older folks in politics in order to make his way. Or Draško Stanivuković who became a mayor of Banja Luka at the age of just 27 - so he had to know how to talk to and appeal to even to elderly, and certainly to people much older than him.

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