Speed Reading

I always considered speed reading as a major way to improve one's overall performance. Especially in brain related activities.
So I read this book and here is a brief outline of it:

1. In a world that speeds up all the time reading faster without loosing meaningful information is vital.
2. There must be a goal (reading speed increase, ratio of speed to understanding) to aim and a time span to achieve it. 
3. Speed Reading Techniques:

• Reading the table of contents
• Meta-Guiding (pointing what to read next with you finger)
• Visualization (not a standalone technique still very helpful skill)
• Keyword search
• Chunk Reading
• Skimming (if you want to grasp the overall idea)
• Scanning (if you have an idea to scan for)

Gymnastics to widen up your sight area:

• Fixate your sight at a dot in the middle area of a text. Try to read from outer areas with your sight.
• Thumb-to-thumb glancing.
• Eye Writing
• Hooded Eyes
• Eye Squeezes

Exercises to increase your comprehension:

• Self-assessment
• Questionnaires, crossword puzzles
• Meta Cognition
• Extensive learning
• Communicate
• Contemplate

Other exercises:

• Push - up
• Push - down
• Alarm clock reading
• Timed reading
• 3-2-1 Drilled
• Chunks reding
• Speed Reading Comprehension tests

Additional considerations

1. Calming environment: light, noise ratio, smells
2. Focus: low level of distraction
3. Physical Exercise
4. Bad Food
5. Good Food
6. Sleep

Also discussed your tips to improve and fix major issues standing in your way and the overall benefits of speed reading.

I liked the book overall. It's a concise recap of good old technique with some more examples and ways to work it out.

Is AI a good or a bad thing

The history of the human race is a history of love and warfare.

A lot of things have been developed with no other application but fighting one alike.
We've got a whole lot of highly technological things such as nuclear submarines, jet carriers, interceptors, tanks and so on that can not really do anything but war.
Now, in regard to the most stunning examples of warfare I do want to give you some rough numbers on mortalities in the world wars:

World War I - 15,486,153 to 18,423,970

World War II - 70,000,000  to 85,000,000
It's not just numbers. It's all people. Someone's fathers, sons, mothers and daughters. Every single one was a person with his own history, aspirations and ideas. Lots of those people died not for themselves but for the countries, families and nations they were part of.

Now, with artificial intelligence coming to the scene I am considering a few major transformations of the world we know now:

• AI is to push a lot of people out of their professions. Today it sounds like only proles are at risk, but I'm quite confident that the next aim is white collars. IBM Watson can already diagnose patients better than the majority of MDs and considering more facts such as genomics. So in a medium term there's going to be a lot of people devastated by being pushed off from work they know without a plan to handle it. Consequences of this misfortune are not hard to imagine.
• AI is to set the bar high in the quality of care / farming / etc. But it will be very hard for people to catch up with all the knowledge computers can process on a factor of magnitude faster than any human being. And so lots of young professionals will simply give up on professions without even trying. The overall degradation of the educated people will commence across the globe.
• AI (at least the way it looks now) will learn from the examples provided by humans. Not only the results of the learning can be askew and we will get a nazzi AI but it will not really introduce any creative ways of doing things. And the society driven by AI will head towards promoting mediocracy. There will be no trial and failure loop or inventions made by failure. Tell me how many times great things started for you while thinking of something on a piece of napkin in a bar?

Now on the existential threat end

• If a passenger jet is hit by a missile, is it the fault of the missle or the one who launched it? Now, all the missiles of the world nuclear ones included are just a scratch on the surface what AI can become in a matter of days if not hours once it is born. Considering that AI learns so much faster than any of the best brains on the planet ever could will we be able to stop it if something goes wrong? 
• AI is tought from the examples provided only by us with our fallacies and weaknesses. Will it be fallable by design then?
• Can anybody give me a rational explanation why we need to exist on the Earth? If we don't have it, why would you think AI invented by us should have one?

I think the mejor fallacy of gAI is it has no emotions and empathy to human beings. If built on a pure rational basis I don't see a good reason for it to treat us as necessary addition to its wellbeing. Thus I think we need not only how to teach it learn, but how to teach it feel as well.