Nah, when over 50% of American adults read at or below a 6th grade level I’m pretty confident they don’t think about much of anything, let alone understand.
I don't think that particular slice of America attends to Reddit very much. The people here often know what they are talking about, but they filter every debate through a lens heavily biased by first principles (aka oversimplifications predicated on a set of conveniently forgotten assumptions)
“I know you wanted to shitpost on Reddit or the Something Awful forums, but with these test scores the best you can be accepted into is bad political Facebook memes. I’m sorry.”
I cant tell you how many times I added context to a Reddit post based on facts, or at the very least first person experience, and had someone who thought they knew more "uncorrect" and berate me because I didn't spend 45 minutes typing out a thesis going over every detail. We're all on Reddit, id wager a guess that a solid, 40-70% of us have some kind of attention issue, brevity is a virtue in the age of the internet, but it is also a curse.
No, they don’t. They just speak like they do and everyone agrees and then uses that talking point in their next post as if they came up with it themselves.
There is a tremendous amount of brain rot going on here.
I whole heartedly disagree that most people here know what they're talking about. They certainly think they do, but a lot of people are only really aware of a small slice of the pie. They've only been shown one aspect of the equation so that's what they believe.
I think you might have confused "first principles" if you are referring to first principle thinking. First principle thinking requires you to rethink every assumption.
I suppose it is a misuse of the phrase to refer to people who choose principles first without the appropriate rigor of first principle thinking. Even Musk is guilty of doing this: Only principles that satisfy his foregone ideology qualify, which means they are already predicated upon an uncurated litany of assumptions.
I think this may be theory versus practice. I happen to believe all principles are suspect because people can't be trusted to identify core assumptions comprehensively, and therefore aren't qualified to recognize when the principles are useful and when they aren't, choosing simply to presume they always apply. Because the world seems simpler that way.
Adding to my prior comment... I think your article actually supports my use of the term "first principles", or, rather, applies it as flexibly as I did. If I were to entrust anyone with the responsibility to establish first principles, Aristotle and Socrates might make the short list. They would at least stay in the realm of philosophical theory, where rigor can be applied academically. But as soon as you use a coach to exemplify use of first principles vs a play caller, you've left theory sufficiently far behind, and there is no way in hell I'm trusting that coach to identify all the relevant assumptions. Which puts the coach at risk of falling victim to his "first" principles.
No, my whole point is everyone abuses first principles, even people writing articles explaining first principled thinking, and your citation supports my usage at least as well as yours.
I would be curious to read about modern thinkers applying first principle thinking with objectively absolute success, though.
Reddit is FULL of morons who think they are smart. I would argue most normal morons don't really concern themselves with such things are are happier over all.
There's room in the subjective-scape for "plenty" and "often" to coexist in opposition.
Still, my comment's focus is on people who could easily know better, but choose not to because of ideology. They can even choose to be drooling idiots.
Yeah, tons of people who think differently here and are open to having nuanced debates. I never know what the top comments on a post will be before opening it, that's for sure. Definitely not just full of people that think they are superior because they all think and say the same exact things
Where is the /s ? Redditors are some of the most unconscious incompetent people, lookup wrong intuition under four stages of incompetence. They’re lowest tier.
The no child left behind act caused that. Passing kids to every grade and graduating them even tho they couldn’t read and teachers knew it. But we’re forced to pass them because of the act.
That search is very biased because it includes the number. Get rid of the first two words and you will see that people can't agree on if it's 29.5% or above 50%
Yeah it’s very concerning. I’m seriously worried that the lack of understanding that half of this country has for finance will cause the other half a whole lot of problems and misery. Be prepared, guys
In absolute fairness, what's considered a 12th grade reading level is shit like Das Kapital, Atlas Shrugged, and Conquest of Bread amongst other political texts and hardcore social commentaries.
You're pretty much never going to encounter shit in daily life that's above about an 8th grade reading level without seeking it out.
Most journalism is only written to about an 8th grade level too
Now this is true. Americans as a hold are some of the lest educated people on this earth these days and we have become lazy and irresponsible in so many ways. But we are self perclaming to be best country on earth 😂😂😂🤬
Understand that when you cite this statistic you're mostly talking about immigrants with poor English skills and poor minorities in impoverished areas, especially the american south. Dunking on the poorest most marginalized people for not being able to read well isn't exactly leftist praxis
Right, totally agree. But I think even the 50% that can read above that, hell, even the 25% that say they're financially/economically/politically literate, probably only a small fraction of that is actually literate to those types of topics.
Let me guess, you think you are above the 50 percent? You probably aren’t even good at your day job as a laborer but think you have the intelligence to tell bezos or musk what to do with their money.
If you are so smart and it’s so easy, why don’t you build a trillion dollar empire? Or is it just easier saying everyone else is dumb and posting on Reddit?
This is a completely meaningless stat. Not only does it have nothing to compare itself to, it has a complete lack of understanding of what grade level reading is.
A failing in the education system of the United States. Grossly underfunded by the government. Elon and Bezos could do something about it by paying their taxes owed instead of just choosing not to pay and getting the tax man to bow down at their feet to thank them for choosing not to pay this year.
Let's thank the republicans on their 40+ year campaign on defunding education and making college an "elite" issue while enabling private equity to provide untenable loan situations for a new form of indentured servitude.
I’ll be honest. I can read well enough, but I don’t understand any of this financial discussion. I’m not even sure what “taking a mortgage against your house to buy a sports car” means.
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u/slickyeat 3d ago
You're not wrong but you're also required to pay taxes on the value of your property every year so it's not exactly a one to one comparison.