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- aboringdystopia@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- aboringdystopia@lemmit.online
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.
This wouldn’t be a problem except all of those people who don’t read good are allowed to vote.
So elitism, then?
What correlation is there between voting and reading at a high level?
I would very much like my fellow voters to be able to read and understand things before making a decision.
In Athens they gave political offices away in a lottery. (Slaves and women excepted, of course.) This meant that because the stupidest person in the city could randomly get the highest office, they had a reason to make sure everybody was at least a little competent.
What exactly would you like them to read and understand that requires a reading level above 6th grade level?
Proposed and actual legislation. Complex articles about the implications of policy decisions. Scientific and medical articles. Anything that can produce an informed electorate is what they should be able to read, and most of that is well above a sixth grade level.
I’m really enjoying you trying to change the mind of someone who is clearly three fifth graders in a trench coat.
My hope is that somebody else reading the exchange will see the depths of the ignorance of OP. Because they’re pretty fucking dumb.
Why on earth do you think high reading level is a skill that correlates with the ability to parse legislation? I’ve literally had somebody trained in law try to explain specific laws to me and be completely wrong. Knowing long words isn’t going to help you. A similar argument applies for your other examples.
If you’re reading a technical document aimed at professionals in the field, I literally don’t care what your reading level is: you’re probably not going to correctly parse the text unless you have the background knowledge the text assumes you have.
If you’re reading an article aimed at a general audience, then congratulations: it’s already written in a way that you can understand it, because it’s aimed at a general audience. If nobody could read it, nobody would buy it.
If you think that reading level is just “long words” then your literature teachers completely failed you, and I’m sorry.
If you have a high enough reading level you can do further research to learn what the experts know. You can read multiple sources and make your own connections. You don’t have to trust someone just because they say they have expert knowledge - you can check them.
So if most people can only read at a 2nd grade level it’s okay for journalists to write articles like See Dog Run? How are we supposed to communicate complicated ideas without complex language?
Reading level is literally a formula involving the average word length and the average sentence length.
Given that, I don’t think there’s much point in me responding to the rest.
Coming up with a way to quantify the complexity of a text to determine reading level is very different from the process of people reading.
But if you’re okay with an educated elite ruling over the ignorant masses, I don’t think I can convince you that people aren’t things.
Lol. That’s why, as explained in the Wiki article you linked to, it’s a requirement in many states that auto insurance policies be written at no more than a 9th grade reading level.
But sure, having 6th grade reading skills is perfectly fine.
What a joke.
Do you have a sixth grade reading level? Otherwise I don’t think this helps your argument.
No, I went and fact checked with different lawyers, since I understand that parsing legislation isn’t something that’s performed particularly well by laymen.
How did you fact check with different lawyers?
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Good thing there are a wealth of articles explaining in detail exactly what every single line of the constitution means.
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you can’t just claim the goalposts have moved because you didn’t actually critically consider the original question
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Are you saying that you would be comfortable having US citizens solely rely on others to interpret and explain the Constitution to them? You don’t want them to have the ability to read and understand it themselves? Who would those people explaining the Constitution to everyone else be?
In all of your comments on this thread you seem to be arguing that having a seventh grade + reading level serves no purpose. Do you see any value in having a higher than sixth grade reading level as an American citizen?
I don’t want everybody working off their own interpretation of what the constitution says, no. This is the same argument as people who are anti-vax because people should “do their own research” rather than trusting experts.
There’s obviously value in certain circumstances and walks of life where a higher-than-average reading level is beneficial. However, I can’t really see how any current problems in society could be linked back to the average US citizen’s ability to parse a text that uses long words and long sentences.
So, you’d like only a select group of experts - an elite, if you will - to interpret and explain things to the masses.
Honestly, we do need some elites to guide us retarded Americans to a higher plane so I’m fine with that.
At least where I live in the US, voters are asked to vote on city or state ballot proposals. These proposals appear on the ballot in a wall of text. They are also usually available online before election day for interested voters to read. These can be very complicated to parse - not only the language and technical terms in the text, but the policy itself and how it might affect different groups of stakeholders in the community and different existing policies and competing proposals. A voter might need to read a lot of news articles and opinion pieces to get the lay of the land on a particular issue. I think having a higher than sixth grade reading level would be more than helpful in understanding an issue and related ballot proposals.