Ask HN: I can't find a First job, now what? - <AUTHOR> I have graduated with a Master's degree over 6 weeks ago. I have been submitting for job openings for over 3 months now, with no luck.
Overall, I have submitted a little under 100 job applications. I started with a selective attitude, but recently I have been submitting to everything that fits the technology stacks I know.
I have kept an updated resume, a personal website, another website for my open-source projects (+ Github), a (not very active) blog and created a profile on all major job platforms such as Linkedin.
I'm starting to question if I'd ever find a fist job, and what to do if not.
I thought I was doing everything the right way, and was wondering if someone here has been in this dark place and what did you do to get out of it? <comment><USER2> It's curious because all the companies in France are looking for developers. Specially in web development. What's your stack?

Since you have studied in France, I assume you have done one or several internships (usually 6 months) or even one or several years of apprenticeship (really common here in IT)?

If yes, did you try to get a job in the same company? Did you ask for references to your manager, your product owner, your team members, your CTO?

If no, you should start with an internship I think. Unfortunately, what your learn at school is rarely useful in your daily job. I don't know any company that hire candidates without some real xp.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input, indeed I have interned in an R&D lab of prestigious European company.

However they are in a hiring hiatus. I was given a very positive recommendation. However, they didn't offer any position to any intern.

        >what's your master, your school and the technology stacks you know?

\- Masters (IFI) : Computer Fundamentals and Engineering

\- School : Polytech Nice

\- Stacks:

PHP (Native, Laravel, Symfony)

Node (MEAN, Sails.js)

Frontend HTML/CSS/JS/jQuery

.. and some JAVA

<comment><USER2> Your stack seems fine to me (PHP & JS are the most used technologies in web dev).

Did you look for any jobs in Paris (99% of the companies are here)?

Did you try any startups/small companies?

But, as you said, the VISA sponsorship is surely a factor. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, I'd probably revisit HOW you're marketing yourself. Your hit rate should be much better than virtually 0 out of 100. Generally, from my 5 years of experience since college, if I'm not getting responses it's because I need to refine my resume, punch up my cover letter, or tweak my LinkedIn profile. In your case it will also be very advantageous to complete some of your open source projects. Working products is critical. Try to make sure that your repo is essentially a showcase for your abilities. If your repo is filled with unfinished stuff, or other crud then you'll want to clean it out and make it presentable. The other tip I picked up somewhere is to try and exercise your intelligence by determining who the hiring manager and/or HR representative is for the company, dig up their email, and email them your resume and cover letter directly. When you do this make sure you convey poise, and confidence (without being arrogant), and illustrate why you think you're a good fit for their position (without being overly verbose).

Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: Just more information, I'm looking for jobs mostly in Europe (Since I have studied in France) but I require VISA sponsorship.

Which might be a factor in my situation.

<comment><USER4> Well, It is hard to know what is happening without more information. It seems you are applying to a right amount of jobs, it could be that maybe your CV doesn't stand up among other CVs. First thing I would is to improve the CV somehow, try to get feedback from recruiters or other people with experience looking for jobs. It must show you have built something by your own, so you can work on something related because you have already probe you can. If you don't have anything, them start spending sometime working in a pet project and put it open source in GitHub.

Other thing it can happen is that maybe you are not applying to the right places with the right CV, for example it doesn't make sense for me to apply to companies in france with a CV in english, but I would keep my LinkedIn in english. If you are looking for a job in London them you need to now the local websites the recruiters use for this. The are different per country. Do some research on this.

About sponsorship I think this could be the key factor too. I think it is almost impossible for a company justify a VISA for a junior profile. So first you need experience in your local market in order to not be a junior developer. If you want to do something abroad you might want to search for summer interships, summer camps or similar. But don't expect to make money with them, they barely cover the costs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your input.

I have a Github with a couple dozen projects that I have made over the years, however none of them are "completed products", most are a few thousands lines of code that I put together during the weekend.

Do you think that I should be pushing more _finished_ and cleaner projects?

\--

I'm mainly applying in Europe because the local market for developers/engineers in my Arab country is very poor and under-developed. It is very rare to find a junior position that would allow me to enrich my CV, plus with a starting average salary of 400$/month it very hard to make any long-term economies.

<comment><USER4> Applying for a sponsored job in Europe is going to be difficult. You are a high risk, you do not have any experience and you come from a different country with a different culture. If I am a recruiter with several candidates, I would consider someone else before. (Sorry to be honest with this)

So, as I said they are special program from big companies for international students/recent graduates. Try to find them and apply to them. You will gain experience and you will probe you can work with people with different culture. Meanwhile it is not going to hurt you to get a local job in something you like. You will get some money and experience.

Things are not going to come from one day to another, but if you have more or less clear what you want, then you can make a plan to accomplish it. It will take time, but focus in making small steps. Get some local experience in the things you like, try to get some international experience, then try to find a better job, probably in a different country, and keep moving. It is going to take some years, but it pays off. Just remember it is a long trip and you have to focus in small steps.

UPDATE: I have just read you have a master in another country. That is good. And also a interview with a company of one of your friends. That is also quite good. Don't give up! It takes time but it seems you are closer than what I was picturing in my mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stay in India?</comment>


Facebook | Do we really need to write our own search engine? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2535632130 <comment><USER2> In theory, if everyone had a facebook profile, wouldn't a facebook search be more useful than a google search in many instances? I don't think the search has to be difficult to be useful. A facebook search can certainly provide more contextual (and by extension, more useful) information than a google search. The question is, how large of a context do you want your search to touch?

I think that the size of the facebook (or myspace) user population can grow to such a point that internal search becomes a serious substitute for a more general search with an engine like google or yahoo.

<comment><USER3> I think the trend you are pointing out is already in full force: often you'll jump over to Wikipedia directly, or IMDB to get data on movies. It is really easy to make search work when individuals format their own data into a specific format for usage by your search engine. This keeps on being useful until people start abusing it. In a social app like facebook it seems relatively less rewarding to abuse the system though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Search engine" is an amazingly ambiguous term, to the point of being almost meaningless. It can refer to anything from a one-line SQL query to Google's system. Searching data that's completely under your control just isn't very difficult in general. When money is no object it's usually trivial, just throw memory at it. I look forward to the many clueless articles claiming this is a challenge to Google.

</comment><comment><USER5> Uh ohh . . .</comment>


Ask HN: GitHub alternatives? (except for Gitlab and Bitbucket) - <AUTHOR> I was thinking about Gitea and GitKraken. Any other alternatives you've used that you can recommend? <comment><USER2> If you want to follow the workflow used with Github, Gitlab, and others, it is hard to beat Gitea. Heck, I like it so much that I even posted bounties for a few features.

If you set it up correctly, maintenance is low, and resource usage on the server is slim. Quite the apposite of Gitlab, for example.

However, after using SourceHut[1] for the last couple of months, I am convinced that their workflow is superior, and highly recommend using it. Using git send-mail is a joy compared to pull requests, and not having to enable JS for everything, even more so.

I am currently using their hosted version, but looking to self-host it for my company.

[1] [https://sourcehut.org/](https://sourcehut.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check it out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> cgit

Example: [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git)

<comment><AUTHOR> Got it, thanks</comment></comment>


Bruce Schneier: Risk Intuition - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/08/risk_intuition.html

<comment><USER2> Not the focus of the article, but very poignant:

 _Children have surprisingly perceptive risk intuition. They know when parents are serious about a threat and when their threats are empty. And they respond to the real risks of parental punishment, not the inflated risks based on parental rhetoric... There have to be real consequences._

<comment><USER3> Hah, just had an argument with my mom over this the other day - I'm 23 (living separately), my sister is 12 (living with mom), and her and my mom were visiting. I had just emptied a piggy bank and my sister (12 yo) was counting the coins. First my mom said "oi, those are dirty, you shouldn't touch them", and was promptly ignored. She kept escalating her rhetoric, finally describing the unimaginable diseases my sister could pick up. Still ignored, until she raised her voice. At that point, I stepped in, and the argument turned into whether or not I should question my mother's authority in front of my sis. Whether or not my sister learned it, I still think that questioning authority calmly and firmly is a great lesson. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The concept of a "risk thermostat" is interesting -- people seem inclined to maintain a more or less constant level of risk. I've noticed an effect that interacts with that: my risk inclination seems to have some initial static friction that changes to a lower level of kinetic friction once I'm moving. Example: some years ago I was feeling a little hesitant to try snowboarding because it seemed "risky" (I knew I'd fall a lot). The first time I tried it, I was having so much fun that I pushed myself well into exhaustion and took some crazy tumbles that didn't stop me from getting up and riding more. I suppose my initial response might just have been an underestimation of the "reward" part, rather than an incorrect estimation of the "risk" part.

</comment><comment><USER5> Aside: When I used to ride a motorbike, I found the combination exhilarating of the more severe consequences of an accident, with greater ability to be aware of it and greater ability to deal with it. Unlike a car, a motorbike has a full field of vision, and you can also see over cars because you are higher. It's also more agile: you can turn, brake and accelerate more quickly, it being lighter; and of course you can pass through smaller gaps to get out of trouble.

It's incredible fun.

But I limited my riding to a year, because you can't avoid some accidents, and the consequences _are_ severe: a friend worked in prosthetics, and half of the recipients are motorcycle riders.

<comment><USER6> A friend of mine was in hospital for a quite serious motorcycle accident (as in "lost half a leg" type serious), and was in a ward with 3 other motorcycle accident patients. The four of them had a lot of fun, whenever any visitors started questioning their intentions about continuing to ride, by pointing out the the _next_ ward had four guys all of whom had fallen off ladders.

Yeah, motorcycling is dangerous - you're around 10 times more likely to be hospitalised or killed per kilometer travelled according to local (Australian) stats - but _life_ is dangerous, and not having fun isn't living...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> One additional thing is that the punishments have to be realistic. If your policy is to fire someone who is lax in security, your managers are likely to cover up infractions so that they don't have to fire their employees.

You have to be willing to follow through.</comment>


Ask HN: Whats your leisure activity away from the keyboard that keeps you sane? - <AUTHOR>

Maybe III like it too. My current addictions are hiking and pack-rafting(for an overview search on youtube). <comment><USER2> Mine vary as interests come and go... for a while, it was a lot of athletic stuff: mountain biking, trail running, powerlifting, brazilian jiu-jitsu, etc. Lately it's been more hardware hacking... (re)learning some basic electronics stuff and hanging out at Splatspace and building stuff.

One of my projects is this thing:

[https://plus.google.com/photos/114301088526097505896/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/114301088526097505896/albums/5679443220743590177)

which is just an opportunity for me to build something that I'll use for electronics experimenting, while getting my hands dirty and using the band saw, drill press, dremel tool, etc.

And then there's this stuff:

[https://plus.google.com/photos/114301088526097505896/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/114301088526097505896/albums/5651251134562190369)

[https://plus.google.com/photos/114301088526097505896/albums/...](https://plus.google.com/photos/114301088526097505896/albums/5650980399687868385)

</comment><comment><USER3> Guitar. Learning new music and playing old favorites require effort and concentration but it seems like it uses a completely different part of my brain then coding or writing. I can pick up my guitar mentally exhausted then lose myself playing for an hour or two and come out completely refreshed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Currently it is fitness related. Weightlifting and I want to get into Muay Thai as well. Come the spring, I would like to take a blacksmithing class but we'll see. Nothing outside of computer science/programming really holds my interest for very long.

</comment><comment><USER5> My vacations from my computer involve me programming with an iphone, every time.

</comment><comment><USER6> Juggling. Chess. Coding.</comment>


Emails detail Amazon's plan to crush a startup rival with price cuts - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/emails-detail-amazons-plan-to-crush-a-startup-rival-with-price-cuts/ <comment><USER2> I don't think it's so much an issue of size as vertical integration. In this case, you have someone providing BOTH a platform AND products on the platform.

The same issue happens with Internet, where one company provides both the infrastructure AND the ISP services. In some countries (Japan), it's not legal to own both the platform and a service on that platform.

If a company provides a marketplace, they should not be allowed to also sell their own products on that marketplace because it makes the marketplace inherently unfair.

</comment><comment><USER3> A real shame this hasn't broken through to the front page. Well-documented anti-competitive behavior from Amazon should be something all founders are aware of; taking on a competitor willing to take $200M before acquiring you is pretty remarkable.</comment>


Bump stocks are turned in or destroyed as ban takes effect - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/ea1b1c1b13194118b83a1f0d4aa08a2a <comment><AUTHOR> "Anyone in possession of a bump stock from now on can be charged with a federal offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison."

I may be wrong, but I don't think this is widely known right now. I live in an area where there are a lot of gun owners and "AR" type rifles are one of the most popular among those who love to shoot guns. I'm sure quite a few own bump stocks, but not at all sure they know they need to get rid of them.

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm keeping my rubber bands tho.... Are they going to ban rubber bands now? Dumbass law that does nothing!

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5XzQ1BS7gU&t=0m25s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5XzQ1BS7gU&t=0m25s) [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ0jTMLK9jI&t=0m18s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ0jTMLK9jI&t=0m18s)

<comment><AUTHOR> As I said, I live in an area where guns are very much a part of the culture. Hunting is big here, and so is shooting for fun.

76% of my neighbors voted for Trump, and they're very open and vocal about that and their 2nd Amendment rights.

I don't personally own a gun and very rarely shoot them. I don't hunt either, but I don't have any fears of or animosities for those who do.

But they've been completely silent on this on FB. And looking back, with all the noise from Kavanaugh to the Mueller report this issue has been buried by the media, and that 10 year potential prison sentence has too, and that really bothers me.

I don't know what to make of that. I don't know if they're uninformed or not willing to criticize Trump or why they're so silent. They've been very open about their right to own firearms in the past and the right to own a bump stock.</comment></comment>


Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging from Health Officials - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/politics/us-coronavirus-pence.html <comment><USER2> Which means that we can't trust any official statements from health officials.

<comment><USER3> You can definitely trust them when they say there's been an outbreak in Alabama.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Ala...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Dorian%E2%80%93Alabama_controversy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Meh. Not really fair to criticize the government for not having coherent messaging and then to criticize them again for attempting to have coherent messaging.

This isn't China--if the official word is intentionally incorrect, I guarantee the truth will leak out.

<comment><USER5> No one is criticizing "the government" for trying to organize a way to have coherent message.

People are criticizing "the government" for installing a partisan to control the messaging. Especially when "the government" has accused members of one political party of using this crisis to weaken "the government".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> God help America!

I mean that seriously.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is Trump throwing Mike under the bus just before the elections?</comment>


You hear a voice in your head when you're reading, right? - <AUTHOR> http://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/02/you-hear-voice-in-your-head-when-youre.html?m=1 <comment><USER4> If you think this is interesting, definitely read "Generalizing From One Example" at Less Wrong [1].

Turns out that people have varying degrees of ability to mentally imagine things, where the range seems to be from "purely abstract" to "number of stripes on a tiger".

Also; Feynman noted that people keep track of time in very different ways[2], either visual (imagining a clock) or symbolic (counting by talking to yourself inside your head).

And that whole internal monologue thing? Turns out that some people report not having that...

If anyone has more examples, please add them. This stuff is endlessly fascinating :)

[1][http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/)

[2][http://generallythinking.com/richard-feynman-on-thinking- pro...](http://generallythinking.com/richard-feynman-on-thinking-processes- did-he-know-nothing-about-psychology-v/)

<comment><USER5> I don't generally hear an "audible" voice in my head, the thoughts just appear, as concepts, or at least as atomic words. I look at the words on the page and the shape of them manifests the meaning. I still kindof imagine speaking the word, but it's not like imagining any other sound.

In contrast, I can imagine music very vividly, with different instruments and their timbres fully defined. It's very close to the sensation of hearing music, to the point where I sometimes have to stop myself from dancing to music that only I can hear, definitely not something to do in public! (The music never has lyrics btw. Even if I'm imagining a real song that has words, they just end up as wordless vocalizations.)

The closer to being in the "flow" state I am, the less of an experience of inner speech I have. When I've been programming or doing music for an hour, I don't really think in words at all, the concepts just seem to flash past, going almost directly from the unconscious to motor actions. With art especially you don't have words for most of the things you're doing anyway, so how could you possibly think in a monologue?

However when I need to think carefully about what I'm doing, when I need to use deductive logic or it's very important that I make absolutely no mistakes, I do veer more towards inner speech. The other major one is rehearsing possible social interactions, or having hypothetical conversations, which is something I actually do quite a lot of (I think it's quite common) and obviously that involves speech.

Finally, at times of emotional stress or fear (but not panic), I'm forced into a consistent inner monologue. It's very similar to the way you can't deliberately give up conscious control of your breathing once you take hold of it, and I can easily see how it could be scary for some people. Sometimes it does feel like a step down the road towards madness, in comparison to my normal state. If I woke up one morning and was stuck like that, I would 100% be going to a psychiatrist.

Don't get any of that stuff about being able to see numbers unfortunately. I have very poor imaging ability. I can't really see pictures in my head at all.

<comment><USER6> For me, I think it depends on how closely I care about the words or (for fiction at least) whether the scene is people talking or a description of the area or some action.

With dialog, or a narrator's voice, I often imagine them speaking it or provide a voice for them in my own head. With action scenes, especially engrossing ones, I sort of just spend the extra mental energy trying to picture the scene rather than "hearing" the words. I have a very hard time paying attention to what the characters look like or are wearing. Usually imagine it briefly as it is being described and move on.

Oddly enough, when I'm reading aloud, sometimes I sort of stop imagining what is going on as I'm too busy trying to sort out how to speak the dialog (especially in some different voices) that I no longer pay complete attention to the scene.

For non-fiction, I generally spend more mental energy trying to visualize the concepts being described and stop "hearing" the words. Or if I'm merely skimming and want to get a sense of what is being said without the details.

So I think a "voice" is something I can and do switch on and off depending on whether my brain thinks it is important and probably on the difficulty of the text itself.

<comment><USER7> I agree that the type of content is important. I personally experience reading as similar to a campfire story, hearing someone else describe a situation. My brain just isn't good at filling in the details of a scene. I am able to control the voice though. Reading textbooks became way more fun once I started reading them as documentaries narrated by Morgan Freeman! I have found the key is to read no faster than a person could speak the words, otherwise I just hear my own voice talking rapidly. I would guess this would be due to a lack of familiarity with the "templates" for the other voices talking quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I do, and I don't. If you imagine there's some form of pipeline in your brain from sound to phonemes to words to concepts to comprehension, my reading probably comes in right at the "words" level. I "hear" the words like I hear them when real people are speaking them, but they do not really have "sounds" or "phonemes". When reading fiction, I may pick up accent if the author is spelling it out but I generally have no voice particularly in mind for a character. Not a "neutral" voice, it's really _no_ voice whatsoever. Just words.

For one thing, if a real voice was speaking at the speed I normally read, it would be virtually incomprehensible. I can't be simply "sounding out words" for that reason.

I imagine people come in at different places in the pipeline and that probably explains the difference. There more phases of the pipeline than there are common words to try to explain our experience.

<comment><USER9> Count me in on this as well. It's very strange because it's not a voice, but in some sense there is sound--I can "hear" when there's a rhyme, for instance.

I've heard it claimed that the reason some people think they dream in black and white is that there wasn't any color content at all (not even grayscale). They think back and can't remember any colors, and assume it must have been grayscale, because their waking consciousness can't imagine what it would be like to see something without color.

Similarly, it's hard to imagine how you could hear words with no voice speaking them (at least it's hard for me) even though we're experiencing it right now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, I think I always subvocalise when reading and found it hard not to when I just tried. I just asked my wife and she says she never hears a voice or even music in her head like that and was a bit shocked when I said I could.

When I was a teenager I took elocution lessons, read poetry and acted in plays. I would read through a piece imagining where I would pause, where to put emphasis, etc. So I know I subvocalised then, but don't know if I did before or if that's when I learned to do it.

I know it takes me much longer to read a book than my brother or father or many of my friends. I can read a book once and remember small details from the story they have completely forgotten and sometimes they've read a book multiple times when I have far better recollection of it from a single much slower reading. I'm wondering if subvocalisation plays a part in that.

Edit: another factor is that I remember words from their sound, not their spelling, so have always had difficulty with spelling. I can't visualise the word, and often need to actualy write a word out before I can figure out how to spell it. Just spelling out words letter by letter vocally is very hard for me.

<comment><USER11> Interesting. I do subvocalize but my memory is terrible. The best way I can describe it is that I have a inaccurate lookup table so I can kind of remember things but recalling specific things is hard particularly when I need the information. I don't usually have issues with spelling though.

So I end up using a ton of Google and obsessively taking notes/making lists. Quip has been a lifesaver.

<comment><USER12> I'm the exact same. I prefer to "hear" the voice in the writing as it helps me understand (but not necessarily remember every detail).

How do you use quip?

<comment><USER11> I like Quip because it's multi platform shared note taking. I use it to generate todos (different notes for different subjects), lists and scratch for developing ideas/documents.

For example, I've been working on a security primer for internal consumption. The output will get turned into a presentation eventually. Quip makes it easy to invite a colleague to collaborate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ok this is very strange. When I read I hear the same inner voice or steady stream of consciousness I hear all the time. It's my own voice. The article says some people find it scary or distracting? So when they have normal thoughts and are not reading does that mean they don't hear their own voice like me? Is it scary and distracting when just having normal thoughts and not reading? This is amazing if this hasn't really been discussed much and studied before.

I'm really curious to hear other people's answers to this.

<comment><USER14> The majority of the time when I'm reading, I don't hear anything at all. So, you'll probably be unsurprised by my answer to your second question - <USER3> generally don't hear my voice (or any voice) when I'm thinking. That does happen sometime, but only when my task is particularly language-focused, like when I'm writing.

When I'm writing _english_, that is. No voices, no language when coding.

<comment><USER15> That's interesting, because I was wondering "what must it be like to not hear a voice when reading?" and until you said the bit about coding, I didn't know.

Then I realized the same thing. I don't hear a voice when I'm coding or reading code. Odd.

<comment><USER16> Ah-ha! This was a great insight for me. I can't not subvocalise when reading. But I too certainly don't subvocalise when reading code. Now I know what it's like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps we only perceive a "voice" when someone makes us direct our conscious mind towards analyzing, describing, or _remembering_ the reading experience.

I mean, consider reflex actions in response to pain: Plenty of people will (quite honestly) tell you that "it hurt, so I pulled my hand back" but the lower-level neurological evidence suggests we're fooling ourselves.

<comment><USER18> The report (I don't even want to call it "research") is not quite scientific. However, I have a lot of faith in my fellow HN readers.

What would be a good experiment to test your hypothesis?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "For people who only ever heard the same internal reading voice, this was usually their own voice, but it was often different in some way from their speaking voice, for example in terms of pitch or emotional tone."

I hear a voice when I read, and it's always the same one, but I don't think of it as my own voice. An interesting side effect of that is, even though I read posts from hundreds of people on the internet every week, they're all in the same voice, so I basically imagine all of you as, like, one person.

<comment><USER20> Why is that person such a jerk all the time, right? What's their problem? ;)

I have the "voice when I read" thing too; I've actually always thought of it as some kind of "true voice." I haven't perceived that it's changed since kindergarten (though, of course, change could be so slow that I don't notice it, since it's not like I have any external recordings to compare it against).

<comment><USER19> Funny about kindergarten: You just reminded me that when I was growing up, the voice would get mushy and garbled when I was reading cursive writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I listen to podcasts at 2.7x speed. There is a funny jump, from the speed where you still vocalize to something faster. It feels like it's pumping it directly in to your brain :)

2.7 is the speed I can jump in any time, if I speed up incrementally I can easily go to 3.2 or something.

(i use windows media player for the speed up, best real-time sound stretching I found)

<comment><USER22> By "sound stretching", do you you just mean increased audio speed, or something more complicated? I'm generally stuck at about 1.7x or 1.8x because I stop being able to make out the words even though I'm not having a problem processing them. It's hard for me to imagine 2.7x being remotely intelligible. (Can you do this for any sort of speech, or only speech where you can fill in half the words mentally?)

I've been dying for a audio/video playback program that would speed up faster between pauses (breaths, breaks, etc.) while slowing down to ~1.6 speed for words. I don't even really know what search terms to use. Here's my SE question:

[http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/27175/video-...](http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/27175/video- playback-that-smooths-speech-at-high-speeds)

Would love more info here.

<comment><USER23> As the other comment said, PocketCast does this for podcasts, you can set it to cut the silence. Also I believe Overcast on iOS.

For audiobooks, Listen Audiobook Player on Android does the same, though for some reason I find it distracting for audiobooks.

<comment><USER22> Unfortunately, PocketCast isn't very aggressive about clipping short pauses in speech, probably because it would tend to mangle things unless done carefully. (I suspect it would require a lot more software sophistication with human speech to appreciably change the average playback speed.) It cut out less than a second over the first few minutes of a conversation I used as an example, so it essentially does nothing.

Thanks for the suggestion, though. I never tried Overcast since I'm on an android, but I suspect it's similar to Pocketcast.

I really wants something that ups the average speed to ~2.5 while maintaining intelligibility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Whenever I read anything, it's as if I'm actually have a conversation. Every single word is spoken in my head with the real tone and intonation that I would expect if somebody were telling me a story in a coffee shop.

I've always assumed that this is because I'm a very audible learner. When I'm paying attention to somebody who is talking, I tend to have a hard time focussing on anything else. For example, I'll miss turns driving if my wife is talking to me in the car unless I'm just actively ignoring her. As a result, she knows if we're following directions not to talk to me about anything because if I don't miss the turn, I wasn't listening to her. :-)

The side effect of this is that I don't read particularly quickly. I can if I make myself but it's like the voice in my head becomes the Micro Machine guy. I read at about the speed I'd expect somebody to talk.

I tend to write the same way. If it doesn't "sound right" I have to keep editing the sentence.

<comment><USER20> I have the same thing. If I try to over-read my head-voice speed, I can do it but it's exhausting and I don't retain the information nearly as well.

I've also always been a pretty good speller; at some point, my brain started caching two copies of each word---how it sounds, and how it should sound based on how it's spelled.

<comment><USER25> > _my brain started caching two copies of each word---how it sounds, and how > it should sound based on how it 's spelled._

Oh, man. This happens to me all the time. Glad to hear I'm not alone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I assume this is the same as subvocalization, right?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization)

Or is there a separate notion of hearing a voice over and apart from subvocalizing? (If I had to try to think about them as different concepts, I'd probably say that I never subvocalize, and usually don't hear a voice when reading quickly, but perhaps do hear a voice when reading slowly or focusing on individual words.)

<comment><USER27> As your Wikipedia link discusses, the "internal voice" is a _component_ of subvocalization, but subvocalization also includes other things that happen at the same time (involuntary muscle movements.)

> If I had to try to think about them as different concepts, I'd probably say > that I never subvocalize, and usually don't hear a voice when reading > quickly, but perhaps do hear a voice when reading slowly or focusing on > individual words.

Since the involuntary muscle movements that are the other part of subvocalization are generally _undetectable to the person doing the reading_ , what is your basis for saying that you _never_ subvocalize, even though you do hear a voice when reading slowly?

<comment><USER26> > Since the involuntary muscle movements that are the other part of > subvocalization are generally undetectable to the person doing the reading, > what is your basis for saying that you _never_ subvocalize, even though you > do hear a voice when reading slowly?

I guess that's a totally unsubstantiated intuition. Can I test it effectively with an EMG?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> People's subjective experiences vary considerably. Yvain's 2009 Less Wrong article on the subject is very good: [http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/dr/generalizing_from_one_example/)

</comment><comment><USER29> For me, reading definitely doesn't involve any internal dialog. My eyes scan the page and the information passes directly into my consciousness. I guess that I'm a very fluent reader, however I don't remember any intermediate "translation" steps when I was young.

I think a good illustration of this internal dialog is learning a new language. At first you (verbally) translate each word in your head into your native language. But as you gain fluency, you begin to understand the new language directly.

Many decades ago I learnt Morse Code, and the process was similar. At first I mentally (and painstakingly) translated each letter. Later I translated each word. But eventually the information just flowed into my head without any intermediate steps.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good news, Everyone! I'm sending you all on a mission into your inner subconscious. While there, you can read the rest of this comment in my voice.

<comment><USER31> I don't usually have an inner voice when I read. Now I do, thank you!

Seriously though, I don't really have an inner voice, unless it is maybe something like this where I'm expressing myself and I read in my voice the thoughts I'm trying to express. I was just trying to image accents as I read and this comment sealed it that yes, I can hear accents and a separate voice when I read something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I hear a voice when I read, but what's amazing is that I hear a British voice when I read The Economist. TE uses various britishisms, but even in the parts that don't, I always hear some brit reading to me. It's partly why I like reading it so much.

</comment><comment><USER33> Not really. I do when writing/typing, but not when reading. I don't even really subvocalize, that I've ever been able to tell - I read too quickly to transform the words into sounds.

I have a slightly above average reading speed (with average to above-average retention), mostly because I don't spend as time converting the words to sounds.

Of course, this does mean that I don't always recognize words when said aloud that I've only seen in text before. Less of an issue as I grow older, but hearing some words vocalized was an interesting experience the first time (such as aileron or Qeynos (pronounced as kē-nōs, for those who never played Everquest))

</comment><comment><USER34> Normally, I read slower and experience an internal voice. It is different from hearing a voice with my ears. Not just quieter, but different in a way I can't put into words. Yet also similar.

If I either speed up, or consciously suppress it, I can read without the internal voice, but comprehension goes way down. There's some comprehension, but it's pretty ineffective overall.

If I'm in a relatively quiet place, I don't move my lips or tongue. If I'm in a very noisy place, moving my lips/tongue seems to help.

I once knew someone who said she could not read at all without whispering the words to herself.

</comment><comment><USER35> I thought it was common knowledge that some people do, some don't. I always thought the don't column was a learned skill... After all, unless your voice is one of the chipmunks, it's going to limit your reading speed.

If you want to turn the voice off (off the text), you can try counting in your head as you read.

<comment><USER36> I just tried your counting trick and all I wound up with was two simultaneous voices going through my head.

On the reverse side, for anyone who doesn't hear text as they read, I'm really curious how your mind handles the following paragraph. I can't imagine processing it in any way besides taking it one word at a time, but that is likely a limit of my own imagination.

> During winter, and touring the humor, poignant observation to Hobbes, as if > to created as an outside action—you can be found him for examples aliens > typically The Family Circus, criticized him is the thing through Saturday, > December 16, 1995. Mom's first appeared in some newspaper chapeaux during > nature is the only babysitter are characters in another.

Source: [http://projects.haykranen.nl/markov/demo/](http://projects.haykranen.nl/markov/demo/)

<comment><USER37> I don't hear a voice in my head when I read. When I try to read that paragraph, I can't get past the 4th word without an uncomfortable mental pause. In order to continue reading I do have to "hear" it as I'm reading it. How did you come up with this?

<comment><USER36> It's a random Markov chain based on the Calvin and Hobbes wikipedia. I can't really take credit - the source I listed was the generator I used.

My (completely unsupported) suspicion is that individuals who don't subvocalize tend to take advantage of common structures in texts to process everything at the sentence level, instead of the word level. The catch is that sentences which don't match their common expected structure tend to get lost in the shuffle. For example, when reading that "the man who hunts ducks out on weekends", individuals who don't sub-vocalize would be more likely to miss the "out" and believe that the hunter hunts ducks.

As part of my hypothesis, I would suspect that the following example, which isn't a Markov chain, but rather a quote from Finnegan's Wake, will also force people to switch to "hearing" when they read, simply because of the unusual sentence structure.

> In the ignorance that implies the impression that knits knowledge that finds > the nameform that whets the wits that convey contacts that sweeten sensation > that drives desire that adheres to attachment that dogs death that bitches > birth that entails the ensuance of existentiality

<comment><USER25> I knew it had to be _Calvin and Hobbes_!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> If I know who wrote a piece and they have a distinctive manner of speaking, I sometimes "hear" the text colored by their voice. In most cases I don't experience anything like that, but I suppose it's possible that I do and just read so much that it gets filtered out.

</comment><comment><USER39> I have an inner dialogue as well. Not always but it's generally there especially when writing.

The annoying thing is my inner dialogue is the same for writing and reading (Is this the same for others?). This is bad because my reading dialogue skips words and makes up pronunciations for words that are long or are just a pain to say. I imagine this evolved from the necessity to read faster. So when I write and even sometimes speak about complicated things I will skip words and maybe go lax on pronunciation (especially if its an emotional thing because well.. its hard for me to communicate emotions).

The other annoying thing with inner dialogue is I often screw up homonyms. As seen in this recent comment with brake and break: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11159104](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11159104) . Its exceedingly embarrassing for me when this happens. Even trivial mistakes like "to", "too", "two", "your" and "you're". This doesn't happen on serious writing but it does on the internet and I feel like an idiot when it happens (as I do know how to use the words correctly).

EDIT: I just noticed I screwed up its and it's again.

<comment><USER40> I guess you intended to say inner _dialogue_ , and you didn't mistakenly use it instead of inner _monologue_. I couln't be sure because I've mostly seen inner _monologue_ until now.

I do have an inner _dialogue_ too (I guess I've an inner Socrates which doesn't know to shut up for a second and to stop bothering me with stupid questions), I usually think in a dialectical manner. I haven't experienced your ortographic mistakes, or I haven't recognised yet that I do make them too. But sometimes I think of typing one word and I end up typing a completely different one: I want to type _baboon_ and I end up typing, sth. like _trumpet_ (made up example). This only happens with english though, so maybe it's because english is slowly becoming a sinaitic language with an iconographic ortography.

That said I use my inner dialogue to study languages, and I've succeeded with English and Italian, my L2 and L3. I've perfect english reading writing skills, and in italian high reading skills and good listening comprehension (and I studied it for one and a half year, without native speakers to talk to except for scarce weekly lessons at the uni). What I do is I do my daily thinking in the target language. And if I have to speak in one of the languages (including my mother tongue, turkish), I have to do a context switch, which takes some seconds. If I had to switch from one language to another in the middle of the phrase, my pronunciation will be very very bad, with a very strong turkish accent, whereas if I were in _context_ , I articulate way way better.

One thing is, this method is hard to share, when someone asks me how I study languages, I have to talk about self immersion etc., because I don't want to make people think that I'm nuts.

<comment><USER39> It is often a dialogue and I did mean it but you are right monologue would have been the better word choice given what I explained.

That is I do have conflicting conversations. I meant to discuss that as well. Basically there is a narrator/actor and pundit on the side when reading. It is sort of annoying at times as I will get distracted reading and fixate on some topic with a long drawn out debate in my head.

<comment><USER40> I experience very similar phenomenon, and I've found some research with relevant content, from the related reading list at the bottom of the original post:

[http://digest.bps.org.uk/2013/12/the-science-of-how-we- talk-...](http://digest.bps.org.uk/2013/12/the-science-of-how-we-talk-to- ourselves.html)

It seems that you were actually right in using dialogue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I have an inner monologue when thinking and I hear an inner voice when reading (sometimes several if there are several characters in a text).

The voices differ. When reading something from a friend I will hear their voice, my own when reading my own, and my brain will try to create a auditory context if its by an unknown author. For example, Hacker News covers a lot of news from Silicon Valley/San Francisco so reading the comments here I mostly hear an American voice with an Californian accent, mixed together with my own voice.

My brain pairs this together with inner images. So if I read a book about exploding stars, for example, I will hear an inner voice narrating the topic while also seeing images of the things being explained. These voices and images are very weak compared to the real thing though. My inner voices lack clarity and my inner images have no color.

Obviously this is not great for my reading speed. I did a test a while ago and according to that test my reading speed was compared to that of a 5th grader, with high memory retention of general concepts and average memory retention of specific details. I read for several hours every day.

As for numbers, when doing maths in my head, I do it visually. I see the numbers as images. What is strange though, compared to other things I imagine, is that results to math problems manifest themselves as a gut feeling rather than as the logical result from a chain of continuous inner dialogues and imagery. If I try to calculate 5*5 I get a gut feeling to answer 25, often faster than I consciously understand how I arrived at the answer.

Needless to so say I have a very strong imagination, sometimes so strong that I stop paying attention to the real world for a little while.

<comment><USER9> On the off chance you haven't heard of him, you might want to check out Daniel Tammet [1]. He's a high-functioning savant who has number-related synesthesia, can do calculations by juxtaposing images as you describe, and he's cultivated these abilities to the point that he can perform incredible feats of calculation and memorization.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Tammet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> How does this inner voice compare to a real voice?

Given that the scientists link that with auditory hallucinations, I'd expect that for at least some people it's indistinguishable from a real voice (one of the earliest known example would be Socrates' daimonion).

I hear a voice usually when I'm reading but it is of some kind of soundless intensity. I think different characters in books have slightly different voices but it's possible that my brain knows that different characters should have different voices and it just tricks me in believing it.

I only have an inner voice for my thoughts when I try to articulate something. Otherwise I only think in concepts, structures and visualisations.

This is also how I tackle programming or solving problems in general. I visualize the problem and build a "problem structure" and then try to make it collapse into a simpler structure.

<comment><USER43> I think you answered your own question several times:

> I hear a voice usually when I'm reading but it is of some kind of soundless > intensity.

and

> I only have an inner voice for my thoughts when I try to articulate > something.

I'm sure just like some people see colours when they hear sounds, other people experience their inner voice as very, very real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm curious what this means with regards to someone who is deaf? Language comprehension and the auditory system are decoupled, with obvious empirical evidence (people who can't hear can still read, write, and speak). What is a 'voice in your head' for a deaf person?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not deafness, but there's a visual hallucination that affects people with deteriorating eyesight.

It's called "Charles Bonnet Syndrome". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_release_hallucinations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_release_hallucinations)

You can hear about it here: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b071fs79](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b071fs79)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I can read very quickly and not hear a voice, but usually I read slow enough that I can. The tone usually depends on what it is I'm reading (Hacker News sounds different to Harry Potter), but I think the actual voice is the same. I've never really thought about it before.

</comment><comment><USER46> Sometimes I hear, sometimes not, depends on how much fantasy I unleash or if I use voice "recordings" to prevent me from making mistakes in writing a text in a foreign language. And I practiced fast reading as a kid (e.g. 1 page in 2-5s), and that was for sure without any distinctive voice. Now this helps me to spot a line in code I need to change extremely quickly ;-)

It's like with thinking - when you are a kid, you think in some proto-thoughts that aren't really based on a language (something like assembly language of mind) and the older you are and more languages you know, you tend to think in languages instead, except when you are in a creative flow when things just happen automagically.

</comment><comment><USER47> When I read a fiction book I hear a general main narration voice, usually my own but it could be someone else if I know the author was American for example. Then I also hear accents for all the characters in the book, for example many of the characters in the book I'm reading atm are Scottish, and they all have Scottish accents and the women have women's voices while the men have men's.

To those who do not hear an inner voice: I'm really struggling to imagine how the information gets in, how are you actually aware of the information ?

<comment><USER48> Do you struggle to imagine that people born deaf can read at all?

<comment><USER47> no, I don't struggle to imagine _that they can read_ , I struggle to imagine what it feels like to them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I do not believe this has not been studied before. In psychology you talk about the inner monologue, in linguistic you have experiments measuring if silent reading activates muscles in the speech apparatus (as far as I remember, it does), speed reading is all about silencing the inner monologue.

A quick search brought this up on Google Scholar:

        Auditory imagery, D Reisberg - 2014 -
        books.google.com

        "Psychologists have debated the role of inner
        speech in silent reading, and clinicians ...."

</comment><comment><USER49> So it's a study about what a 136 person described on a forum? hmm... Not sure we can jump on conclusion nor sure the population is big enough to user decimal points in the percentages.

<comment><USER50> Yeah, I was thinking that, too. And it's not just any forum, either. It's the notorious Yahoo Answers where people regularly troll each other as both question askers and answerers. See, for example: [http://memebase.cheezburger.com/artoftrolling/tag/yahoo- answ...](http://memebase.cheezburger.com/artoftrolling/tag/yahoo-answer-fails)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There could be a "feed forward" mechanism in language processing, which gets involved in reading also. That is to say, when you hear speech, perhaps that same "reading voice" is _also_ there: perhaps the speech that you're hearing is synthesized into a voice, and those voices are compared, which reinforces whether or not you "heard it right", and perhaps this takes place in a loop which clarifies the speech.

</comment><comment><USER52> For me, the voice in my head is always there. My every thought manifests as a voice, both when I'm reading and when I'm not. The voice isn't mine and it's not the voice of anyone I know. It's just a voice, and is always the same. I can also imagine things in a decent amount of detail, but it's not always visual, it's as if the voice is describing the details to me.

I thought that was normal.

</comment><comment><USER53> I wonder how this relates to how we learn our primary language in the first place. My parents put objects in front of me and gave me the word to associate with them, or talked around the meaning of abstract words. I learned English (my primary language) entirely verbally. Then, when I began to learn to read, I learned what sounds letters made, and verbalized these sounds when reading, and tried to parse those sounds into a word I recognized. Since I learned my language verbally, the process to comprehension included conversion to sound. This has continued to my adult life; I wonder if I can re-train my brain to associate text with meaning. I also wonder if I do this already, but every time I try to notice whether I'm internally verbalizing, I internally verbalize (because it's in the back of my mind), so I think I do regularly even though that may not be the case.

Experimenting with this idea would likely require teaching children with text, which may or may not be ethical. Sign language is different enough from English that it doesn't directly relate.

</comment><comment><USER54> I hear a voice when I read, and I just need a few seconds of concentration to change it to another voice. I can choose voices that seem to fit the content in energy level, general way of speaking and accent and do that a lot. But they never speak to me when I am not reading.

I realized just now that it is my brain reading me a story and I listen to the voice that reads it to me like a fascinated kid.

</comment><comment><USER55> I never have.

This may have something to do with why I can only appreciate poetry when read aloud.

<comment><USER56> I had this problem with Shakespeare, as well. No internal voice. He's very hard to read unless spoken aloud, probably because it lets you experiment with intonation and emphasis.

<comment><USER57> That's what I heard about JRR Tolkien's Silmarillion too. I tried reading it when I was younger, and when I tend to drop sound conversion when I read. It seemed impenetrable. Years later, when someone told me it was meant to be heard, not to be read, I gave that a try, reading it aloud in my head. It was a much different experience. Reading Silmarillion felt like reading a magical book of creation, where the speaking of the words themselves create the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> > But as this is the first ever investigation into the question, and it used > an unconventional methodology, it's fair to say the results are far from > conclusive.

See also the Independent article here: [http://www.independent.co.uk/life- style/health-and-families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health- and-families/health-news/most-people-hear-voices-when-they-read-normal- psychological-study-finds-a6890766.html)

As I understand it (and I could be wrong) "hearing a voice" pretty much means you hear a voice as if someone was speaking but there's noone there. The paper talked about claimed that 80% of people "hear a voice" when they read.

I find that surprising, and I'd want to know what exactly is meant by "inner reading voices" \- are these voices that people hear, or are they something else?

> Why hasn't this topic been studied before? Vilhauer's study hints at an > answer because she found that many people assumed that their inner > experiences when reading were shared by everyone. This worked both ways, so > some of the people who had an inner reading voice were convinced of its > normality: "We all hear our voices in our heads at times – even those of > others we know – especially while reading," said one Yahoo contributor. Yet > others who claimed to have no inner voice felt they were the normal ones. > For example, in response to a question posted on the site about whether > anyone else hears an inner voice while reading, one responder said "Nooo. > You should get that checked out" and another wrote, in capitals: "NO, I'M > NOT A FREAK".

The other reason is that until relatively recently everyone freaked the fuck out if you said you heard voices, and hearing voices was a sign of serious severe mental illness. We now know that's probably not true.

<comment><USER58> Can you "hear" something in your head when you try remember a sentence someone said?

<comment><AUTHOR> Me? I have my normal internal thoughts. I don't think I can hear it in their voice, no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> It depends on what I'm reading. Comments in a forum? I hear a voice in my head, with a certain character style based on either the text or if it's a known commenter.

Most books, especially good fiction, I visualize to a high degree which is why I often want to avoid movie adaptations because they cannot match what I experienced while reading.

</comment><comment><USER60> I generally don't hear a voice when I read and find that when I do intentionally, it slows me down. I've found that I often miss puns and other plays on the sounds of words in written text due to not sounding out the words.

</comment><comment><USER61> I find that this is happening most of all when I'm reading in a non native language. And when reading in native, the thought process is much faster and better that I don't get voices(:D) so much.

</comment><comment><USER62> Has anyone found this affects memory? I 'see' thoughts but since words never completely describe an object, my brain seems to auto fill in the rest. And when asked later I can describe what I read along with what my brain auto filled in (and sometimes can't remember which I actually read and which my brain filled in). For instance I read about a tree, and I 'see' in my thoughts a pine tree. When asked later about the tree I might describe it as a pine even though that was never physically described.

</comment><comment><USER63> I hear my own voice. It's only ever my own voice -- it's not modified by the speaking character or the writer. I also feel my tongue forming the words even though nothing's moving.

</comment><comment><USER64> When I read a comment on HN from a voice I know (DHH, patio11, Rob Walling, etc) I usually hear their voice as I read it. (in DHH's case, inserting a few extra obscenities for good measure)

</comment><comment><USER65> Never hear a voice. It just goes directly to symbols/images in my head. Exception when learning something difficult, at which time I slow down to words.

<comment><USER66> This can be learned. Basically you force yourself to scan the visible area, looking for structure. And then focus on the key areas. So reading becomes a very nonlinear process.

TL;DR Speed reading :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Not if I read fast enough. Which can be done by looking at 1/3X of the Line N, then looking at 2/3X of the line, then recurring with Line N+1.

This has >10x sped up my reading speed and improved comprehension as my brain takes in the whole picture (gestalt of the paragraph) more times total and more times per second. Try it!

</comment><comment><USER68> Speed reading techniques often try to break written word streams down into visual chunks and let the wetware do the rest. Unsurprisingly, results vary widely. Ironically though, this sounds a bit like a very high level description of segmentation as in computer vision

</comment><comment><USER69> When I'm typing or reading english or any other foreign language I hear a voice — now that I think about it. Not in Danish though, which is my native tongue. This never occurred to me before; very strange indeed.

</comment><comment><USER18> "One hundred and sixty posts from [ _Yahoo Answers_ ] were analyzed using a qualitative content analysis approach"

Cool tips on how 2 become a rsercher?

The discussion here on HN is interesting, though.

</comment><comment><USER70> I don't hear a voice in my head. I read much faster than anyone can talk - <USER3> can't imagine what that would sound like.

</comment><comment><USER71> Only when I want to, which isn't often because it slows me down. Sometimes it's fun to listen to the dialogue, though.

</comment><comment><USER72> I also often see the words that are spoken by someone else.

As a result, I have a high-level ability to spell and be grammatically- correct.

</comment><comment><USER73> on a side note, i heard its suggested that you don't have the audible voice if you want to achieve faster speeds at reading comprehension :)

</comment><comment><USER74> I think 'hear' is the wrong word. It has nothing to do with hearing. No hearing is involved at all, it is an auditory imagination and recollection. Like a good song that keeps playing in your head. And most people can clearly distinguish this kind of sensation from actual hearing, and they'd never mistake the auditory imaginations for actual things that are heard.

</comment><comment><USER75> Just wonder how the voice-hearing people skim or fast-read. Does it sound like a fast-forward with a funny voice to them?

<comment><USER76> Most speed reading techniques start by encouraging you to suppress the inner voice hearing and just consume the words visually. (Which is also why I don't understand why they are saying it's the first investigation in the subject matter).

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> What? No of course you don't "hear" the words. How could you? Reading is several times faster than speaking, and it's not like you look individually at every word and read them out, you see a larger area of text as a unit.

This makes no sense. If you mentally read out every word you are doing it wrong!

<comment><USER52> I get what you mean, but it's not as if you're reading it out. I'd say I read pretty fast: my eyes skim quickly across the page and I understand what is written there, but it's as if the voice in my head is reading it out to me at the same speed as I'm reading. It doesn't slow anything down.

<comment><USER78> _It doesn 't slow anything down._

That depends.

Some readers do what is known as "subvocalization"[1], where they literally speak the words they're reading, but silently, actuating the muscles in their tongue and throat as if they were speaking aloud. If you're doing that then it _does_ slow you down.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subvocalization)

<comment><USER52> Nope. It's solely in my head. I don't subvocalize.</comment></comment></comment></comment>