Quote:
Originally Posted by Buddha  I'm not reading all that. Short attention span. |
Haven't you ever learned how to speedread or skim texts?
Its fairly easy to learn as long as you're not ADD/ADDHD. I can skim a text like that in a minute or less and get the general gist of it, and then pick out something interesting I noticed. Skimming can be difficult with something I'm not familiar with, but I'd guess everyone here is familiar with the subject of this writing.
If you're not good at speedreading or skimming, there are two other tricks you can use. You can read the introductory and conclusionary sections because the author often summarizes his ideas in these places. In this case, the first few paragraphs present the author's intent fairly clearly, and the conclusion begins with the 4th from last paragraph where he begins with "So..."
Another thing you can do is take specific terms you know or are interested in, see where they show up, and read those sections in detail. For instance, look for the word 'agnostic' in the first two posts. Read the sentence its in and maybe the paragraph its in... depending on how much time you want to spend.
As for skimming, here is an example of a common way of ordering info. Look at my first post. His first 4 paragraphs are intro and he even specifies in his 4th paragraph that he is concluding his intro. Also, in his 4th paragraph, he points out that he is about to go into some details. If you look at the paragraphs that follow, the structure of them gives you a sense of how to look for info and what kinds of info to look for.
He says, "First..." which means he is about to list certain details quite probably with a specific detail per paragraph. The next paragraph he starts with "If.." meaning its probably connected as a qualifier to the previous paragraph. Next paragraph: "The agnostic, one might add..." meaning the second point is being made. Next paragraph: "But if..." meaning another qualifier.
This pattern of writing style is a common way of conveying info and a rhetorical method of creating rhythm. The second 'if' statement qualifies and questions the point made in the previous paragraph, but also leads into the next paragraph that answers the question or builds on it.
One other important technique is to read things in quote. Quotes are usually important info because it means that the author is referring to something that was a seed to his own thoughts. A quote often says something more clearly and concisely than the author felt they could say themselves. In this case, I only noticed 3 quotes and they were only partially helpful. The first was only there as a starting point. The second was written in a confusing style. The third by Paul mentions the importance of faith over knowledge which is helpful in getting at the central point of the second half.
After having said all of that, was your issue really with having a short attention span? Or was it simply you simply weren't interested in the topic at the moment? And if you weren't interested, then why'd you bother to post?
Its not that long of a piece of writing. Even if you read the whole thing very slowly, it would take around 10 minutes to read. If you read it quickly, you could read it in a few minutes.