Would you say that you really digest the books you listen to like that? It seems difficult to fathom to me. I generally try to use tedious downtime to think through things and solve problems in my head rather than listening to anything, but I've found that I can't even really keep my thoughts straight while walking outside due to watching where I'm going and the large variety of distracting external stimulus. I feel like I would get absolutely nothing out of listening to an audiobook at 2x speed while cycling.
On the one hand, I visually read a book significantly faster than 2x listening speed, so the speed in itself doesn't seem problematic.
On the other hand, if I'm listening while doing other things, then my attention is split. Which is why 1x works best for me. I can pay attention and still fold my laundry or make a meal or whatever.
Listening at 2x while cycling sounds positively dangerous to me. Unless you're somewhere with virtually no traffic, or you really just aren't paying attention to what you're listening to. Our brains only have so much bandwidth.
It's no more dangerous than people talking on their speakerphones while driving, something it seems everyone does even though it feels insane to me.
It all comes down to practice, familiarity and instinct.
I'm specifically talking about 2x speed. That's using twice the brain processing.
People aren't speaking on speakerphone at 2x speed.
It has nothing to do with practice. It's entirely about whether you've got enough attention left over to detect unexpected situations the moment they start.
I really do appreciate the concern.
What I've done a poor job of explaining in this thread is that audiobooks are ... recorded ... at ... molasses ... speed.
When I listen to a book at 1x, it sounds like they are doing a bad William Shatner impression.
If they didn't record them slowly, I wouldn't need to speed them up to a normal conversational pace.
I'm not a neuroscientist but listening at 2x taking twice the brain processing feels off to me. I suspect that it's sort of like variable bit rate encoding, and that factors like practice, narration quality, sound quality, external noise, other distractions all come into play.
When you're sitting at a table with multiple conversations going on around you, do you feel like your brain is working twice as hard to separate out what is being said to you? Our brains have evolved some pretty impressive special case handling features for these scenarios.
If the book is recorded at essentially half-speed, then yes fair point. :)
> listening at 2x taking twice the brain processing feels off to me
It's not about the listening -- you're right, that's all habitual in terms of converting sounds into words. It's about the cognitive processing of the content. Whether you're listening to fiction or non-fiction, you're engaging in twice as much imagination, world-building, conceptualization of what you're listening to in the same amount of time... therefore a much greater proportion of your total attention and focus is engaged in that, which leaves less for paying attention to the world around you. It's mathematically twice as much information streaming in, and our brain's attention mechanism is finite.
People aren't usually consciously aware of these things, in the ways they insist they can drive fine even though they're tired, even though they've had a few, etc. Because we literally can't notice what we're not noticing. But accident rates tell a different story.
You've made some well-argued points. Thanks for speaking up.
If I'm listening to Andy Weir, it's enjoyable and completely manageable at 2.5x.
If I'm listening to anything involving math or physics, 1.5x is typically a ceiling for true comprehension.
Honestly, it all depends on a few important factors: first, a lot of audiobooks are read at a speed that genuinely feels absurdly slow, as though they are chugging cough syrup before recording.
Next, don't discount what I said about high-quality earbuds; anyone that tries listening above 1x on a speaker is doing it wrong whereas having the sound in your ear makes >1x listening easy. You won't get it until you try it, and then you'll feel the same smug superiority I do, I promise. It's a night-and-day change.
As for the rest, including the listening-while-cycling thing, it all comes down to practice and comfort. Like all things worth doing well, listening effectively in the way I describe is a skill. Your reaction to me listening to a book while cycling seems like how I feel about people driving while talking on the phone; I think it's insane and horrifying, but people roll their eyes when you imply that it seems like it's surely dangerous.