OK here’s a tangential but maybe relevant (to typing) question:
How is Baba Is You going? Making good progress, making slow progress you think should be better, stuck, or stopped without being stuck?
For typing, one thing you can try is going much faster. What is the fastest you can type with > 80% accuracy? (or maybe even > 50%?) If that was 120wpm, then probably typing at 60 wpm would feel slow and like you have plenty of time to hit the right key accurately.
This idea is related to a technique for improving speed reading: put the speed up significantly, lose reading comprehension (do this on a less important book or a reread), and then when you slow it back down some it feels slower and easier. (This is easiest using tools with computer-controlled speed settings but is possible with self-paced speed reading too.)
I don’t know where your max typing speed is (where you still have some accuracy not just typing random keys). In general, it’s hard to do something well or accurately when it’s really near your max “can do it at all” speed. Like if your at-all max is 100, then it might be really hard to get your good-job max over 75 (maybe less; I don’t know specific numbers).
For speed reading, I’ve done 1200 wpm on easy text with mediocre comprehension (but a fair amount of comprehension not just missing everything). But what I can do well and comfortably is more like 600 wpm (only half of peak). I still use 500 wpm a lot and rarely use over 700 wpm.
One thing you can do is a warm up at higher speeds, then slow down in the same session. I’ve done that with speed reading and it can make the slower speed feel slower and easier than it normally would. And it doesn’t need to be double. Like just doing 700 wpm for 5 minutes can then make 500 wpm feel extra slow for me.
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If you really want to improve typing, an option is to work on music and hope it carries over (not just hope; try to make it carry over; but it might not work out). You could try fast guitar stuff to try to get your finger speed up, or you could try piano since that’s more similar to typing. This is fairly indirect and could take a lot of time without necessarily getting much results, but it has a chance to work. Whether it makes sense would depend on how interested you were in the music practice for its own sake, not just the typing goal. I’m not recommending it but it could be a reasonable approach, depending on your preferences. It’s also an example of a reasonably common type of problem solving option: doing something fairly tangential because you’re stuck. Sometimes that’s a good idea, though not most of the time.
My play time is 32.5 hours, and I have 81 dandelions. I think my main trouble is scheduling it. I haven’t done enough playing, but when I do play I like it. I don’t feel stuck.
Btw, i will be afk for the rest of today (big work day).
I just did some tests. Trying to just type really fast and ignoring errors consistently gave me worse times than just trying to type properly. It felt very strange and chaotic. I couldn’t get my error rate down near 50% without it just being hitting random keys and not keeping up with the cursor. I could get ~80-90%, but the times were slower than when I was aiming for accuracy.
The fastest typing i’ve ever done was with monkeytype english 200 which was 92wpm @ ~98% accuracy. That’s on a small word set i had practised a lot with no punctuation or capitals, so I can physically type that fast.
I think something I might also try to investigate is how I tap the keys. Some fingers have less independence than others and i kind of press into the keys with those, rather than use small taps that return. I think finger independence is something that could also carry over from music-things.
I think that 4 could be a child of 3 and still make sense. But I think now that I notice how 1 and 4 are related, I prefer 4 being a child of 1.
I’ll do some more like this. Is there more you’d like to cover with this paragraph?
Does 4 make sense as talking about 2?
I guess so, in the same way as it does for 3. 4 doesn’t seem to really clearly not make sense as a child of 2 and 3 to me.
From your essay Write How You Speak:
There are many different paths that people can use to make philosophical progress. Many paths use a lot of writing, but a few don’t. There are other options. What prerequisites you need to develop a skill depends on the path you’re using to get there.
sentences numbered:
-
There are many different paths that people can use to make philosophical progress.
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Many paths use a lot of writing, but a few don’t.
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There are other options.
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What prerequisites you need to develop a skill depends on the path you’re using to get there.
I think 1 is the clear topic of the paragraph and should be the root node. The topic is the different paths to philosophical progress.
2 brings up that many of the different paths mentioned in 1 use a lot of writing. I think 2 is a child of 1.
3 seems like a part of 2. It is making the second clause in sentence 2 more explicit. 3 means that there are options other than writing.
4 talks about prerequisites. 4 seems to make the most sense as a child of 1. Just a paragraph including 1 and 4, without 2 and 3, makes sense.
I think the three key ideas in this paragraph are a) many paths to progress b) that many paths use writing c) that prerequisites depend on the path.
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So if 4 provides additional information about 1, 2 and 3, then 4 can be seen as modifying the group {1,2,3}. If that’s the case, how would you do the tree?
Oh yeah. If that’s the case then I’d do the tree would be how you diagrammed it here. With 2 and 3 a child of 1 and 4 a child of 1.
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From Write How You Speak:
Issues with writing can be hard. People can get stuck and stay stuck. But writing issues can also be relatively easy to fix and get past. I’ll present an approach that is worth understanding and considering.
sentences:
- Issues with writing can be hard.
- People can get stuck and stay stuck.
- But writing issues can also be relatively easy to fix and get past.
- I’ll present an approach that is worth understanding and considering.
1 is the topic of the paragraph, and I think it’s the root.
2 is a child of 1 I think but I’m having a hard time articulating how. Is it an example of one of the hard writing issues? Kind of. Getting stuck is a potential issue with everything though. Is it trying to show how hard the issues can be? The issues are the things that people get stuck on. Getting unstuck from your issues with writing can be hard. Hmm. It seems like a part of 1.
3 starts with a ‘but’ so it’s a contrast to one of the previous two sentences. I think it’s a contrast to 1, not 2, because I think it’s contrasting how writing issues can be relatively easy to fix with how writing issues can be hard.
So 1, 2, 3 seem like a group together. 2 and 3 seem like parts of 1.
4 I think is a child of 1. Its introducing an approach to the issues.
Which provides a better contrast and why?
“got past hard issues”
“got past being stuck”
This is a common thing people do that’s a problem in debates or critical discussions that aim for high accuracy and precision.
The answer doesn’t answer part of the question or is misleading (your actual belief when considering 2 as well is {1,2,3} but you communicated {1,3}). I was trying to get you to check each of the sentences but you didn’t.
One of the main reasons people don’t answer direct questions is they make assumptions about what the point is and then skip steps they think are irrelevant (without explicitly saying what they’re doing). They’re trying to go straight to what they think the conclusion or the point is, as a shortcut over giving a more direct, literal answer. This makes discussion or debate harder between people with significantly different perspectives (so assumptions related to the other person are more often wrong). It’s a habit that is socially desired in some contexts (friends may get annoyed if you’re too literal or go step-by-step and don’t jump to conclusions and get their point fast) but it’s undesirable in other contexts. People tend to be unaware of it and unable to turn it off contextually.
One reason it doesn’t seem like a random accident is what happened when I repeated the question:
The answer began “I guess so” which expresses some sort of hesitance, reluctance or resistance. The answer wasn’t like “Oops I forgot to answer that. Yes.” which would be suggest an accident.
Yes okay, I can see that my answer didn’t answer the whole question.
I did some introspection about what was happening during my replies to your question.
Prior to your question you had shared what I interpreted as your answer, so now (I thought) I knew the answer. In light of your answer, when you asked me to check which sentences 4 could be talking about, I now assumed that I was wrong that 4 made sense as a child of 2 or 3, and that I was supposed to think 4 was just a child of 1. I think I was reluctant to share this disagreement. That might have to do with why I only answered half the question, and then said that I can see how 4 seems more like a child of 1 (to show that I did partly agree with what I saw as the answer). I think this is part of why I then answered reluctantly to you asking the question again about 2.
My assumption that in your answer 4 wasn’t related to 2 and 3 was wrong though (4 is a child of 1 but modifies the group {1, 2, 3}). So I had wrongly assumed I understood your answer, and was hiding my disagreement with that wrong understanding.
I don’t know. Your point about making assumptions about the point of a question and skipping what seems irrelevant is something I definitely recognise from social situations.
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I’m not sure I understand your question. Do you mean which of those above fragments provide a better contrast with sentence 3 and why?
no
You’re trying to figure out the parent of 3. Your candidates are 1 and 2.
3 is connected with “but”. “but” contrasts the two things in connects. So you need to find a contrast between something in 1 or 2 and something in 3. Does that make sense? What contrasts can you find and how would you evaluate them?
Yes thanks, that does make sense.
Okay, I’m going to rewrite each sentence 1 and 2 with 3 as if they were one complex sentence. (It might help me to see the contrasts better.)
{1, 3}: Issues with writing can be hard, but writing issues can also be relatively easy to fix and get past.
{2, 3}: People can get stuck and stay stuck, but writing issues can also be relatively easy to fix and get past.
So:
{1, 3} contrasts the fact that writing issues can be hard with the fact that writing issues can be relatively easy to fix. Both clauses also talk about writing issues.
with {1, 3}, it’s kind of a confusing contrast to me, actually. It seems to be saying that writing issues can be hard but also that they can not be hard (to fix). The meaning of ‘writing issues can be hard’ at first glance appears to me to be that writing issues can be hard to fix. I suppose writing issues could be hard in other ways though e.g, their effects could be hard to deal with; they could be hard to notice; they could be hard to understand. But I feel that 1 means hard in the same sense that 3 means easy, i.e to fix. Writing issues can be hard to fix, and writing issues can be easy to fix.
{2, 3} contrasts the fact that people can get stuck (on writing issues?), with the fact that writing issues can be relatively easy to fix and get past.
How would I evaluate them?
They both seem like quite plausible contrasts. {1, 3} contrasts hard issues with easy to fix issues. {2, 3} contrasts getting stuck with getting past being stuck. Is one more of a contrast than another? I don’t know. 1 and 2 could plausibly be a group that is modified by 3. In which case 1 could be the parent of 3, but 3 is modifying the group {1, 2}.
Something I thought of is that it seems uncommon for a sentence to start with a conjunction and for it not to refer to the sentence immediately before it. I don’t know if that intuition is right or not, or if it’s relevant.
Yeah, I think sentences starting with conjunctions usually connect with the previous sentence. That sounds right. I haven’t checked a lot of examples though. If multiple sentences in a row start with a conjunction, it may be different. Also watch out for lists splits over multiple sentences like “X. Y. And Z.”
OK so one of the key principles for textual analysis is don’t ignore any words. That means:
For {1,3} you should consider if the “get past” part of 3 makes sense with 1.
For {2,3} you should consider if the “relatively easy to fix” part makes sense with 1.
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Here is my first tree for the sentence in Eternity’s topic.
The latter was a normal state; creatures of Lummox’s breed were always ready for a little snack, even after a full meal.
I have ‘were’ as the parent of ‘even’, and the prepositional phrase ‘after a full meal’ as the child of ‘even’.
I am fairly confident ‘were’ is the parent of ‘even’. I think ‘even’ is an adverb modifying the whole clause lead by ‘were’, and it is being used in the following highlighted sense:
I am not very confident in the placement of the prepositional phrase. Another option that seems plausible to me is that its parent is ‘ready’, and another option is that it is a child of ‘were’.
Edit: The colour code I’ve used is the same Elliot has used e.g here. Also I made a mistake colour coding my tree and the semi-colon should be coloured red.