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cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1006130
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The original was posted on /r/aboringdystopia by /u/Last_Salad_5080 on 2023-10-03 14:21:04.
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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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what's the concrete advantage of the average person reading at a high level is, past some sort of weird elitism?
they clearly haven't needed the skill in their lives, or their reading level wouldn't have "atrophied" over time, so what's the point?
i also don't particularly care how well the average adult has their multiplication tables memorised
I'm not sure I'd trust someone who reads like a 11/12 yo with signing potentially life changing (not in a good way) contracts.
I don't care how good your reading level is: unless you've studied law, you shouldn't trust anybody but a lawyer to correctly parse a life-changing contract.
Do you think lawyers are supergeniuses who've memorized every law and case file? Maybe ones who charge $750 to take a dump, but not the lawyer you're talking to.
Usually the basic contract lawyer you talk with has seen your issue a few times before and just looks it up online for more details. Or they just wing it. They're a second opinion who may or may not be valuable, depending on how much research you've done.
Because it's an area with technical terms that are easy to misconstrue, with a lot of misinformation online for somebody trying to DIY contract law.
Do I think it's impossible for somebody to correctly parse a contract? No, obviously not. But if you're dealing with a "life changing" contract, why would you fuck around?
How would you find out which lawyer to hire?
Would someone with good reading skills be more or less susceptible to online misinformation?
Would someone with good reading skills be more or less able to read a simple (non-life changing) contract?
And lawyers tend to talk to other lawyers so they have insider knowledge and a familiarity with contracts that typically helps them spot incongruities quicker.
High reading level shouldn't be elitist, we should strive to have a well educated population
It's really weird to call a 7th grade reading level or better elitism in the first place, and calling it "weird elitism" is even worse.
Sorry to say but society works by hierarchies, some people deserve more than others.
No they don't.
this is also elitism
That’s… why I agree with it.
And why is that?
Poorly educated people are more susceptible to manipulation, misinformation, and propaganda. And a low reading level is both an indication of a poor educational level, and an impediment to a person educating themselves further.
Reading is a fundamental skill in the modern world.
Clearly reading above a 6th-grade level isn't a fundamental skill in the modern world, or 54% of American adults wouldn't be able to function in it.
Being able to parse a long sentence filled with long words has absolutely no bearing on your susceptibility to propaganda.
No. I don't consider those adults to be "functioning" at an appropriate level.
cool we're back to elitism
Maybe you should try reading what people are writing instead of falling back on strawmen.
I do not believe people who cannot read at an adult level are able to access and understand the information and knowledge they need to navigate the world effectively. And that makes them vulnerable.
That's not elitism.
It's not a direct cause and effect between better reading and propaganda resilience, it's an enabler hence gets reflected as "probability of", not as a certainty.
The more effective you are at taking in information and gaining understanding through reading, if you actually use it often, the more you know (both in terms of contextual knowlege around various subjects and other things you read on that subject hence have references to compare new information about it) so the more resilient you are to propaganda (for example: some things are only obviously illogical if you know enough about the context to see that they can't happen as a piece of propaganda is trying to convince you they did).
Being good at reading doesn't make people resilient to propaganda directly, it makes it more likely that they are resilient to propaganda because it's easier for them to acquire broader and deeper knowledge so many do, whilst many who would otherwise tend to seek broader knowledge give up because their level of reading makes it a much harder task (for the latter reading is a barrier more than an enabler).
This is also why reading level isn't an elitist thing: bright curious people no matter their origin will go much farther if they have better tools to acquire knowledge and understand it, and the fastest most effective way to provide a lot of those tools to them is schooling, so if they don't have them it's probably not their fault.
PS: also and as a side note, to get to advanced levels in lots of occupations you need the capability to acquire lots of information, hence you need to know how to read at a good level (for example, for dealing with certain cars, a car mechanic will have to read technical manuals - they can acquire the knowledge for run-of-the-mil repairs from others, but for advanced, better paying work they have to be able to figure it out themselves and in the present day that will be by reading technical manuals). Sure, people can "function" with low reading skills (that's such a low standard that both my grandmother and my grandfather could "function" as totally illiterate people), but low reading level makes it harder to prosper in the modern world because so much of the advanced stuff is "locked" behind complex texts which require fast reading with good reading comprehension to be "unlocked" in a reasonable time frame.
Sixth grade reading is being able to extract information from written word. Below that grade level, you're basically reading words but none of them need to have logical impact on some greater theme or topic. Sixth grade reading level is the ability to read things that matter. Eighth grade reading is reading at a level where you can apply introspection to the underlying theme or topic that's being extracted from the written word.
So, and this is simply my opinion, I believe it is important to be able to read things and understand how they apply to one's self in a logical manner. The ability to extract the impact that the particular piece has is critical to subsequently applying that introspective quality to the piece. So, yes, I believe being able to read at sixth grade level is incredibly important. It is difficult to understand how something applies to you if you cannot correctly extract what the point that is being discussed, actually is, in the first place.
Well a lot of everyday life is not present in those terms. Your employer does not sit there and go "this machine is big enough to stick a arm into it and applies enough pressure to remove that arm from your body" without also following it up with "so do not stick your arm into this machine." In fact, legal requirements likely dictate a "DO NOT STICK ARM INTO MACHINE" or something similar sign right beside the machine.
There is a massive difference between the utility as a function of labor and employment and utility as a function of operating within a society. So do try to apply this at say a social level. Employers can change the condition of the environment one works in to accommodate a lot of leeway. So do try to think of it less in "what does this higher reading level provide in objective utility in a work environment?"
Well that is interesting that you bring that up because rote memorization of multiplication is third grade level stuff. Things like "all things multiplied by two are even" is higher grade thinking. There is actually a point where you stop thinking of multiplication as some table to be memorized and start seeing it as a pattern that has deeper meaning.
If I add a zero to the end of a number, "3 to 30 or 45 to 450" I have multiplied that by 10, and that has a deeper meaning all over in various engineering domain. In computer terms we call that bit shifting and there's optimizations in rendering pipelines and memory access that comes from this deeper understanding of multiplication. Or things like (x,y) coordinates, it is easy to just think of it as plotting point on a grid, but at some point you obtain a deeper meaning and start seeing (x,y) as (r,θ) and you begin to have an understanding of vectors and that understanding is critical to literally everything that might have to traverse your GPU. Want to change the heading of an airplane? You can do vector addition to know exactly what will happen when you change that heading.
And even then you stop seeing exactness of math and start seeing the general patterns of it. You begin to understand this kind of change in this variable has this kind of effect. And you can pick that kind of feeling up with on the job training no doubt. But with a deeper understanding of math you begin to understand more than what on the job training can give you, because you can break those actions down into more mathematical terms that can be manipulated easily within your mind, rather than the good old trail and error method (which obviously wouldn't be a good method for an airplane that you are currently flying).
There is also more to it than the surface level implications of education. Yes, we can just look at the surface level stuff and conclude that the "real" world reigns supreme. But having that deeper understanding, be it in written word or mathematical eloquence, gives us a richer understanding of the world we live in. Gives us more access to the potential of this world. We do not per se "need it", much like we don't pre se need things like medicine, refrigerators, guns, bulldozers, and what not. Our ancestors did without them for countless years. But having that deeper meaning gives us access to things that we would otherwise not have. This nice world we have of comfort is not a product of it being forced upon us, it is a side result of various people who went further than the surface level understanding of this world that was routinely offered.
So if you are curious of the advantage, look around you. That is the advantage.
This wouldn't be a problem except all of those people who don't read good are allowed to vote.
For me personally, it seems like reading comprehension is a pretty necessary skill. Between social media, texting, email, etc we are reading more than ever. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had to jump on a call because some colleague has misinterpreted or misrepresented something from an email.
You can vote for non-wolves and prevent destroying the planet.
I agree it's not necessary for immediate survival, but long term.
An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for the survival of a free people.
People who can't read well, can't easily learn further skills, fact check, do proper research, and invariably lack the ability to do proper critical thinking.
The end result is gullible stupid people, making stupid decisions. People who think research involves watching youtube/tiktok videos.
I don't think memorising multiplication tables is a thing anymore, but if you can't do basic calculations, you're an easy mark for many businesses.
Teaching people to read, write, and do basic maths is about making them self-reliant.
This kind of serves as a pretty good example, because despite the first part of this response reading like you were trying to hit a minimum word count, it conveys information no more effectively than the same text written more normally would.
this is elitism
you could be illiterate and still have strong critical thinking skills
Are you a critical thinker?
Or are you a contrarian?